King Lear by William Shakespeare (summer reads txt) 📕

man:—

But yet I call you servile ministers,

That will with two pernicious daughters join

Your high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a head

So old and white as this! O! O! ‘tis foul!

 

Fool.

He that has a house to put ‘s head in has a good head-piece.

The codpiece that will house

Before the head has any,

The head and he shall louse:

So beggars marry many.

The man that makes his toe

What he his heart should make

Shall of a corn cry woe,

And turn his sleep to wake.

—for there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a

glass.

 

Lear.

No, I will be the pattern of all patience;

I will say nothing.

 

[Enter Kent.]

 

Kent.

Who’s there?

 

Fool.

Marry, here’s grace and a codpiece; that’s a wise man and a fool.

 

Kent.

Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night

Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies

Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,

And make them keep their caves; since I was man,

Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,

Such groans of roaring wind and rain I never

Remember to have heard: man’s nature cannot carry

Th’ affliction nor the fear.

 

Lear.

Let the great gods,

That keep this dreadful pother o’er our heads,

Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,

That hast within thee undivulged crimes

Unwhipp’d of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand;

Thou perjur’d, and thou simular man of virtue

That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake

That under covert and convenient seeming

Hast practis’d on man’s life: close pent-up guilts,

Rive your concealing continents, and cry

These dreadful summoners grace.—I am a man

More sinn’d against than sinning.

 

Kent.

Alack, bareheaded!

Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;

Some friendship will it lend you ‘gainst the tempest:

Repose you there, whilst I to this hard house,—

More harder than the stones whereof ‘tis rais’d;

Which even but now, demanding after you,

Denied me to come in,—return, and force

Their scanted courtesy.

 

Lear.

My wits begin to turn.—

Come on, my boy. how dost, my boy? art cold?

I am cold myself.—Where is this straw, my fellow?

The art of our necessities is strange,

That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.—

Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart

That’s sorry yet for thee.

 

Fool.

[Singing.]

He that has and a little tiny wit—

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,—

Must make content with his fortunes fit,

For the rain it raineth every day.

 

Lear.

True, boy.—Come, bring us to this hovel.

 

[Exeunt Lear and Kent.]

 

Fool.

This is a brave night to cool a courtezan.—

I’ll speak a prophecy ere I go:—

When priests are more in word than matter;

When brewers mar their malt with water;

When nobles are their tailors’ tutors;

No heretics burn’d, but wenches’ suitors;

When every case in law is right;

No squire in debt nor no poor knight;

When slanders do not live in tongues;

Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;

When usurers tell their gold i’ the field;

And bawds and whores do churches build;—

Then shall the realm of Albion

Come to great confusion:

Then comes the time, who lives to see’t,

That going shall be us’d with feet.

This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.

 

[Exit.]

 

Scene III. A Room in Gloster’s Castle.

 

[Enter Gloster and Edmund.]

 

Glou.

Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing. When I

desired their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the

use of mine own house; charged me on pain of perpetual displeasure,

neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain him.

 

Edm.

Most savage and unnatural!

 

Glou.

Go to; say you nothing. There is division betwixt the dukes,

and a worse matter than that: I have received a letter this

night;—‘tis dangerous to be spoken;—I have locked the letter in

my closet: these injuries the king now bears will be revenged

home; there’s part of a power already footed: we must incline to

the king. I will seek him, and privily relieve him: go you and

maintain talk with the duke, that my charity be not of him

perceived: if he ask for me, I am ill, and gone to bed. If I

die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king my old master

must be relieved. There is some strange thing toward, Edmund;

pray you be careful.

 

[Exit.]

 

Edm.

This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke

Instantly know; and of that letter too:—

This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me

That which my father loses,—no less than all:

The younger rises when the old doth fall.

 

[Exit.]

 

Scene IV. A part of the Heath with a Hovel. Storm continues.

 

[Enter Lear, Kent, and Fool.]

 

Kent.

Here is the place, my lord; good my lord, enter:

The tyranny of the open night’s too rough

For nature to endure.

 

Lear.

Let me alone.

 

Kent.

Good my lord, enter here.

 

Lear.

Wilt break my heart?

 

Kent.

I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter.

 

Lear.

Thou think’st ‘tis much that this contentious storm

Invades us to the skin: so ‘tis to thee

But where the greater malady is fix’d,

The lesser is scarce felt. Thou’dst shun a bear;

But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,

Thou’dst meet the bear i’ the mouth. When the mind’s free,

The body’s delicate: the tempest in my mind

Doth from my senses take all feeling else

Save what beats there.—Filial ingratitude!

Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand

For lifting food to’t?—But I will punish home:—

No, I will weep no more.—In such a night

To shut me out!—Pour on; I will endure:—

In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!—

Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,—

O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;

No more of that.

 

Kent.

Good my lord, enter here.

 

Lear.

Pr’ythee go in thyself; seek thine own ease:

This tempest will not give me leave to ponder

On things would hurt me more.—But I’ll go in.—

[To the Fool.] In, boy; go first.—You houseless poverty,—

Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.—

 

[Fool goes in.]

 

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them

And show the heavens more just.

 

Edg.

[Within.] Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom!

 

[The Fool runs out from the hovel.]

 

Fool.

Come not in here, nuncle, here’s a spirit.

Help me, help me!

 

Kent.

Give me thy hand.—Who’s there?

 

Fool.

A spirit, a spirit: he says his name’s poor Tom.

 

Kent.

What art thou that dost grumble there i’ the straw?

Come forth.

 

[Enter Edgar, disguised as a madman.]

 

Edg.

Away! the foul fiend follows me!—

Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind.—

Hum! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.

 

Lear.

Didst thou give all to thy two daughters?

And art thou come to this?

 

Edg.

Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led

through fire and through flame, through ford and whirlpool, o’er

bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow and

halters in his pew, set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud

of heart, to ride on a bay trotting horse over four-inched

bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor.—Bless thy five

wits!—Tom’s a-cold.—O, do de, do de, do de.—Bless thee from

whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some charity,

whom the foul fiend vexes:—there could I have him now,—and

there,—and there again, and there.

[Storm continues.]

 

Lear.

What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?—

Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give ‘em all?

 

Fool.

Nay, he reserv’d a blanket, else we had been all shamed.

 

Lear.

Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air

Hang fated o’er men’s faults light on thy daughters!

 

Kent.

He hath no daughters, sir.

 

Lear.

Death, traitor! nothing could have subdu’d nature

To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.—

Is it the fashion that discarded fathers

Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?

Judicious punishment! ‘twas this flesh begot

Those pelican daughters.

 

Edg.

Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill:—

Halloo, halloo, loo loo!

 

Fool.

This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.

 

Edg.

Take heed o’ th’ foul fiend: obey thy parents; keep thy word

justly; swear not; commit not with man’s sworn spouse; set not

thy sweet heart on proud array. Tom’s a-cold.

 

Lear.

What hast thou been?

 

Edg.

A serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that curled my hair;

wore gloves in my cap; served the lust of my mistress’ heart, and

did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as I spake

words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven: one that

slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it: wine loved

I deeply, dice dearly; and in woman out-paramour’d the Turk;

false of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox

in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.

Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray

thy poor heart to woman: keep thy foot out of brothel, thy hand

out of placket, thy pen from lender’s book, and defy the foul

fiend.—Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind: says

suum, mun, nonny. Dolphin my boy, boy, sessa! let him trot by.

 

[Storm still continues.]

 

Lear.

Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy

uncovered body this extremity of the skies.—Is man no more than

this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast

no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume.—Ha! here’s three

on’s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself:

unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked

animal as thou art.—Off, off, you lendings!—Come, unbutton

here.

[Tears off his clothes.]

 

Fool.

Pr’ythee, nuncle, be contented; ‘tis a naughty night to swim

in.—Now a little fire in a wild field were like an old lecher’s

heart,—a small spark, all the rest on’s body cold.—Look, here

comes a walking fire.

 

Edg.

This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet: he begins at curfew,

and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin,

squints the eye, and makes the harelip; mildews the white wheat,

and hurts the poor creature of earth.

Swithold footed thrice the old;

He met the nightmare, and her nine-fold;

Bid her alight

And her troth plight,

And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!

 

Kent.

How fares your grace?

 

[Enter Gloster with a torch.]

 

Lear.

What’s he?

 

Kent.

Who’s there? What is’t you seek?

 

Glou.

What are you there? Your names?

 

Edg.

Poor Tom; that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the todpole, the

wall-newt and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when the

foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets; swallows the old rat

and the ditch-dog; drinks the green mantle of the standing pool;

who is whipped from tithing to tithing, and stocked, punished,

and imprisoned; who hath had three suits to his back, six shirts

to his body, horse