Part Two
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout!
And thou, all-shaking thunder, strike flat the thick rotundity o'the world!
Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters' blessing.
Here's a night pities neither wise man nor fool.
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters.
I tax you not with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, called you children.
You owe me no subscription.
Then let fall your horrible pleasure!
But yet I call you servile ministers
that have with two pernicious daughters joined
your high-engendered battles
gainst a head so old and white as this.
O! 'tis foul!
He that has a house to put's head in
has a good head-piece.
The cod-piece that will house
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse, -
So beggars marry many.
No, I will be the pattern of all patience.
I will say nothing.
Who's there?
Marry, here's grace and a cod-piece,
that's a wise man and a fool.
Alas, sir, are you here?
Tremble, thou wretch!
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,
unwhipt ofjustice!
Hide thee, thou bloody hand, thou perjured!
Cry these dreadful summoners grace!
I'm a man more sinned against
than sinning.
Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel.
My wits begin to turn.
Come on, my boy, how dost, my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself.
Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
that's sorry yet for thee.
Here is the place, my lord, enter.
- Let me alone. - Enter here.
Wilt break my heart?
I had rather break my own. Good my lord, enter.
Thou think 'tis much that this contentious storm invades us?
Good my lord, enter here.
Prithee, go in thyself, seek thine own ease.
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder on things that hurt me more.
But I'll go in.
In, boy, go first. You houseless poverty.
I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.
Poor naked wretches,
that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
how shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
your loopt and window'd raggedness,
defend you from seasons such as these?
O, I have taken too little care of this!
Take physic,
pomp!
Expose thyself to feel
what wretches feel.
Fathom and half! Poor Tom!
Come not in here, nuncle, here's a spirit.
Who's there? What art thou that dost grumble i'the straw? Come forth.
Away! The foul fiend follows me!
Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind.
Go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.
Hast thou given all to thy two daughters? And art thou come to this?
Who gives any thing to poor Tom?
Whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and flame, over bog,
made him course his own shadow
for a traitor.
Bless thy five wits!
Didst thou give 'em all? Couldst thou save nothing?
He reserved his blanket.
Else we had been all shamed.
- He hath no daughters, sir. - Death, traitor!
Is it the fashion,
that discarded fathers should have thus little mercy on their flesh?
Judicious punishment!
Twas this flesh begot those pelican daughters.
Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill - Halloo, halloo, loo, loo...
This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.
Take heed of the foul fiend. Tom's a-cold.
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.
Here's three on's are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself.
Unaccommodated man
is no more but such a poor, bare, forkt animal
as thou art.
Off, off!
You lendings!
Come, unbutton here.
Prithee, nuncle, be contented, tis a naughty night to swim in.
- How fares your Grace? - It shall be done!
I will arraign them straight!
Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer.
Thou, sapient sir, sit here.
Now, you she foxes!
Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?
Arraign her first. Tis Goneril.
I here take my oath before this honourable assembly,
she kicked
the poor king her father.
And here's another, whose warpt looks proclaim
what store her heart is made on.
Stop her there! Arms, arms, sword, fire!
Corruption in the place!
Then let them anatomize Regan.
See what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause that makes it hard.
You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred.
Only I do not like the fashion of your garments.
Now, my good lord, lie here and rest awhile.
Make no noise, make no noise.
Draw the curtains...
So, so, so.
We'll go to supper in the morning.
So, so, so.
And I'll go to bed at noon.
Who's there? What is't you seek?
What are you there? Your names?
This is the foul fiend! He walks till the first cock, he gives the web.
Aroint thee, witch!
What are you?
My name is poor Tom!
But mice and rats, and such small deer,
Have been Tom's food for seven long year.
What, have your Grace no better company?
Trouble him not. His wits are gone.
I'll bring you where both fire and food is ready.
And drive towards Dover where thou shalt meet welcome and protection.
If thou shouldst dally, his life, and ours, stand in assured loss.
His daughters seek his death.
Thou say'st the king grows mad.
I am almost mad myself.
I had a son, now outlaw'd from my blood.
I will have my revenge!
How, my lord, I may be censured
that nature thus gives way to loyalty.
O heavens! That this treason were not,
or not I the detector!
The letter hath made thee Earl of Gloster.
I will persevere in my course of loyalty,
though the conflict be sore between that and my blood.
Post speedily to my lord your husband, show him this letter.
The army of France is landed.
Seek out the traitor Gloster!
Hang him instantly.
Keep you our sister company.
Advise the duke to a most festinate preparation.
Our posts shall be swift and intelligent betwixt us.
Where's the king?
My Lord of Gloster hath conveyed him hence.
- Who's there? The traitor? - Ingrateful fox! 'tis he.
Bind fast his corky arms.
Good my friends, consider you are my guests: Do me no foul play.
- Bind him, I say! - Hard, hard! O filthy traitor!
I'm none!
To this chair bind him.
What will you do?
What letters had you late from France?
We know the truth.
What confederacy have you with the traitors late footed in the kingdom?
- A letter not from one opposed. - It's false.
Where hast thou sent the king?
- To Dover. - Wast thou not charged at peril?
Wherefore to Dover?
I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.
Wherefore to Dover?
Because I would not see thy cruel nails pluck out his poor old eyes.
But I shall see the winged vengeance overtake such children.
See't shalt thou never. Fellows, hold the chair.
Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot.
Give me some help! O cruel!
One side will mock another; the other too.
If you see vengeance...
Hold your hand.
I have served you ever since I was a child. I bid you, hold!
How now, you dog!
I bid you hold, too! What do you mean?
My villain!
Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger!
A peasant stand up thus!
My lord, you have one eye left...
...to see some mischief on him. - Lest it see more, prevent it.
Edmund!
Edmund! Edmund!
All dark and comfortless!
Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature to quit this horrid act.
Thou call'st on him that hates thee.
It was he that made the overture of thy treason to us.
O my follies! Then Edgar was abused.
Go thrust him out at gates!
And let him smell his way to Dover.
Turn out that eyeless villain. Throw this slave upon the dunghill.
Untimely comes this hurt.
Give me your arm.
Yet better thus, and known to be contemn'd,
than still contemn'd and flatter'd.
To be the worst, the lowest thing of fortune,
stands still in esperance, lives not in fear.
The lamentable change is from the best.
The worst returns to laughter.
Welcome, then, thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!
The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst owes nothing to thy blasts.
Away, good friend, be gone.
Thy comforts can do me no good at all, thee they may hurt.
Alack, sir, you cannot see your way.
I have no way, and therefore want no eyes.
I stumbled when I saw.
O dear son Edgar!
Might I but live to see thee in my touch,
I'ld say I had eyes again!
Tis poor mad Tom. Fellow, where goest?
Is it the naked beggar-man?
Madman and beggar too.
He has some reason, else he could not beg.
In the last night's storm I such a fellow saw.
Which made me think a man a worm.
My son came then into my mind.
I have heard more since.
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport.
I will entreat him to lead me.
Alack, sir, he is mad.
Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind.
- Sirrah, naked fellow! - Poor Tom's a-cold.
Come hither, fellow.
I cannot daub it further.
And yet I must.
Bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed.
Know'st thou the way to Dover?
Both stile and gate, horse-way and foot-path.
Poor Tom hath been scared. Bless thee, good man, from the foul fiend.
Here, take this purse.
- Dost thou know Dover? - Ay, master.
There's a cliff, whose high and bending head looks in the deep.
Bring me but to the very brim of it, and I'll repair thou the misery.
From that place I shall no leading need.
Give me thy arm. Poor Tom shall lead thee.
Welcome, my lord.
I marvel our mild husband not met us on the way.
- Now, where's your master? - Within, but never man so changed.
I told him of the army that was landed, he smiled at it.
I told him you were coming, his answer was, <>
Of Gloster's treachery and of the loyal service of his son when I
informed him, then he called me sot, and that I'd turned the wrong side out.
Then shall you go no further. It is the cowish terror of his spirit.
Our wishes on the way may prove effects.
Back to my brother. Hasten his musters
and conduct his powers.
Decline your head.
I have been worth the whistle: Become your head
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face.
She that herself will sliver and disbranch from her material sap,
perforce must wither, and come to deadly use.
No more! The text is foolish!
Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile,
filths savour but themselves.
What have you done? Tigers, not daughters,
what have you performed?
Milk-liver'd man!
That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs!
Who hast not an eye discerning thine honour from thy suffering.
Where's thy drum? France spreads his banners in our noiseless land.
Whiles thou, a moral fool,
sitt'st still, and criest: <>
See thyself, devil!
Proper deformity seems not in the fiend so horrid as in woman.
- What news? - My lord, the Duke of Cornwall's dead.
That shows you're above, that our nether crimes so speedily can venge!
This letter, madam, craves a speedy answer. 'Tis from your sister.
I'll read, and answer.
Why the King of France so suddenly gone back?
Something he left imperfect in the state required his return.
O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work to match thy goodness?
My life will be too short, and every measure fail me.
To be acknowledged, madam, is overpaid.
A century send forth!
Search every acre in the high-grown fields.
What can man's wisdom in the restoring his bereaved sense?
There is means, madam.
Our foster-nurse of nature is repose.
Seek, seek for him,
lest his ungoverned rage dissolves his life!
No, they cannot touch me for coining.
I have this right.
I am the king himself.
Nature's above art in that respect.
There's your press-money.
That fellow handles his bow like a crow-keeper.
Draw me a clothier's yard.
There's my gauntlet.
I'll prove it on a giant.
Give the word.
- Sweet marjoram. - Pass.
Ha! Goneril! With a white beard!
They flattered me like a dog,
and told me I had white hairs in my beard here.
To say 'ay' and 'no' to every thing that I said!
There I smelt 'em out. They are not men of their words.
They told me I was every thing.
Tis a lie. I'm not ague-proof.
Is't not the king?
Ay, every inch a king!
When I do stare, see how the subject quakes!
I pardon that man's life.
What was thy cause? Adultery? Die for adultery? No!
Let copulation thrive, for I lack soldiers.
Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary,
to sweeten my imagination.
There's money for thee.
O, let me kiss that hand!
Let me wipe it first. It smells of mortality.
Dost thou know me?
I remember thine eyes well enough.
Dost thou squiny at me?
Read thou this challenge.
Mark but the penning on't.
Were all the letters suns, I could not see one.
- Read. - What, with the case of eyes?
What, art mad?
A man may see how this world goes with no eyes.
Look with thine ears.
See how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief?
Hark, in thine ear:
Change places, and, handy-dandy,
which is the justice, which is the thief?
Through tattered clothes small vices do appear,
robes and furred gowns hide all.
Plate sin with gold, and the strong lance ofjustice hurtless breaks.
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
None does offend, none.
I say, none!
I'll able 'em, take that of me
who have the power to seal the accuser's lips.
Get thee glass eyes,
and, like a scurvy politician,
seem to see the things thou dost not.
Pull off my boots. Harder, harder.
I know thee well enough. Thy name is Gloster.
Thou must be patient. We came crying hither,
the first time that we smell the air,
we wawl and cry.
I will preach to thee: Mark.
Alack, alack the day!
When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.
It were a delicate stratagem
to shoe a troop of horse with felt,
and when I have stolen
upon these sons-in-law, then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!
Sir, your most dear daughter...
No rescue?
Use me well, you shall have ransom.
Let me have a surgeon. I am cut to the brains.
You shall have any thing.
No seconds? All myself?
Good sir...
I will die bravely, like a smug bridegroom.
I will be jovial. Come, come.
I am a king. My masters, know you that.
You are a royal one, and we obey you.
Then there's life in it.
Nay, an you get it, you shall get it by running.
Thou old unhappy traitor!
The sword is out that must destroy thee!
Now let thy friendly hand put strength enough to it.
Let go, slave! Out, dunghill!
Take my purse.
Give the letter which thou find'st about me to Edmund earl of Gloster.
Seek him out upon the English party.
What, is he dead?
I'm only sorry he had no other death's-man.
<<Let our reciprocal vows be remembered.
His bed is my gaol,
from the warmth loathed whereof deliver me.
Your wife, so I would say, affectionate servant, Goneril.
How does the king?
Madam, sleeps still.
There are many simple operative
whose power will close the eye of anguish.
O you kind gods!
Cure this great breach in his abused nature!
So please your majesty that we may wake the king.
- He hath slept long. - Very well.
Please you, draw near. Louder the music there!
O my dear father!
Restoration hang thy medicine on my lips,
and let this kiss repair
those violent harms that my two sisters have in thy reverence made!
Had you not been their father, these white flakes
had challenged pity of them.
Mine enemy's dog should have stood that night against my fire.
And wast thou fain, poor father, to hovel thee in short and musty straw?
He wakes. Speak to him.
Madam, do you; 'tis fittest.
How fares your majesty?
You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss,
but I am bound upon a wheel of fire.
Sir, do you know me?
You are a spirit, I know. When did you die?
- Still, still, far wide! - He's scarce awake.
Where have I been?
Where am I?
Fair daylight?
I am mightily abused.
O, look upon me, sir, and hold your hands in benediction over me.
No, sir, you must not kneel!
Pray, do not mock me.
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you,
and know this man.
And all the skill I have remembers not these garments.
Nor I know not where I did lodge last night.
Do not laugh at me!
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
to be my child Cordelia.
And so I am!
Be your tears wet?
Let me see.
Yes, faith.
I pray, weep not. If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me.
Your sisters have done me wrong.
You have some cause, they have not.
No cause, no cause.
Am I in France?
In your own kingdom, sir.
Do not abuse me.
You must bear with me.
Pray you now, forget and forgive.
Know of the duke if his last purpose hold,
or whether since he is advised by aught to change the course?
He's full of alteration.
Bring his constant pleasure.
Our sister's man is certainly miscarried.
Tis to be doubted, madam.
Now, sweet lord,
you know the goodness I intend upon you. Tell me, but truly...
Some officers take them away! Good guard!
Until their greater pleasures first be known that are to censure them.
Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?
No, no! Come, let's away to prison.
We two alone will sing like birds in the cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing,
I'll kneel down, and ask of thee forgiveness.
So we'll live, and pray,
and sing, and tell old tales,
and laugh at gilded butterflies,
and hear poor rogues talk of court news.
And we'll talk with them too, who loses and who wins,
who's in, who's out.
And we'll wear out, in a walled prison,
packs and sects of great ones,
that ebb and flow by the moon.
Take them away!
My Cordelia, have I caught thee? He that parts us
shall bring a brand from heaven, and fire us hence like foxes.
Wipe thine eyes.
The good-years shall devour them, ere they shall make us weep.
Come.
Captain, hark! Go follow them to prison.
One step I have advanced thee.
If thou dost as this instructs thee, thou dost make thy way still higher.
Know thou this, that men are as the time is:
To be tender-minded does not become a sword.
Edmund! Edmund!
Thy great employment will not bear question: Either say thou'lt do't or...
I'll do it. I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats.
If it be man's work, I'll do it.
Sir, you have shown today your valiant strain.
And fortune led you well.
You have the captives. We do require them of you.
So to use them as we shall find their merits
and our safety may equally determine.
I thought it fit to send the old king to some retention and appointed guard.
His age has charms in it, his title more,
to pluck the common bosom on his side.
Sir, by your patience, I hold you a subject of this war, not as a brother.
That's as we list to grace him.
He led our powers, bore the commission of my place and person.
Not so hot: In his own grace he doth exalt himself, not your addition.
In my rights by me invested, he compeers the best.
That were the most, if he should husband you.
Jesters do oft prove prophets.
That eye that told you so looked but a-squint.
General! Witness the world that I create thee here my lord and master.
Mean you to enjoy him?
The let-alone lies not in your good will.
Nor in thine, lord.
Let the drum strike, and prove my title thine.
Stay yet. Edmund, I arrest thee.
On capital treason.
For your claim, fair sister, I bar it in the interest of my wife.
Tis she is sub-contracted to this lord.
An interlude!
Thou art armed, Gloster. Let the trumpet sound.
If none appear to prove upon thy person
thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons,
there is my pledge.
- Sick, O, sick! - If not, I'll never trust medicine.
There's my exchange.
What in the world he is that names me traitor,
villain-like he lies.
- A herald, ho! - Come hither, herald!
Let the trumpet sound, and read out this.
If any man of quality or degree within the lists of the army
will maintain
upon Edmund, supposed Earl of Gloster, that he's a manifold traitor,
let him appear by the third sound of the trumpet.
Ask him his purposes, why he appears upon this call of the trumpet.
What are you? Your name, your quality?
And why you answer this present summons?
Know, my name is lost, by treason's tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit.
Yet am I noble as the adversary I come to cope.
Which is that adversary?
Thou art a traitor!
And, from thy head to the descent
and dust below thy foot, a most toad-spotted traitor.
Back do I toss these treasons to thy head!
Trumpets, speak!
- Save him, save him! - Thou art but cozen'd and beguiled.
Shut your mouth, dame!
Or with this paper shall I stop it!
No tearing, lady. I perceive you know it.
Say, if I do! The laws are mine, not thine.
Who can arraign me for it?
Most monstrous! Know'st thou this paper?
Ask me not what I know.
Go after her, she's desperate, govern her.
What you have charged me with, that have I done, and more, much more.
But what art thou?
The wheel is come full circle.
Let sorrow split my heart,
if ever I did hate thee or thy father!
I know it.
Where have you hid yourself? How have you known thy father's miseries?
By nursing them.
O, our lives' sweetness!
That we the pain of death would hourly die
rather than die at once!
- What now? - O, she's dead!
Who dead? Speak, man.
Your lady, sir.
And her sister by her is poisoned.
She hath confest it.
Produce their bodies.
This judgement of the heavens, that makes us tremble.
I was contracted to them both.
All three now marry in an instant.
I pant for life.
Some good I mean to do,
despite of mine own nature.
Quickly send to the castle!
For my writ is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia.
Quickly send to the castle!
For my writ is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia.
Run, run, O, run!
Howl, howl, howl, howl!
O, you are men of stone!
Had I your tongues and eyes,
I'ld use them so that heaven's vault should crack!
She's gone for ever...
I know when one is dead, and when one lives.
She's dead as earth.
Is this the promised end?
Or image of that horror?
Fall, and cease!
This feather stirs. She lives!
If it be so, it is a chance
which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.
- O my good master! - Prithee, away.
A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!
I might have saved her!
Now she's gone for ever!
Cordelia, Cordelia! Stay a little!
What is't thou say'st?
Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, -
an excellent thing in woman.
Who are you? Mine eyes are not o'the best.
- Your servant Kent. - He was a good fellow.
He'll strike, and quickly too... He's dead and rotten.
No, my good lord. I am the very man.
And my poor fool is hanged.
No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
and thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more.
Never, never, never!
Never, never!
Pray you, undo this button.
Thank you, sir.
Do you see this? Look on her. Look, her lips.
Look there!
Look up, my lord!
Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass!
He hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world
stretch him out longer.
Bear them from hence.
Our present business is general woe.
Friends of my soul,
you twain rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain.
I have a journey, sir, shortly to go.
My master calls me.
I must not say no.
The End