Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Shakespeare (1564–1616). The Oxford Shakespeare. 1914.

Act III. Scene II.

King Lear

Lear.Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!

Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once

That make ingrateful man!

Fool.O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters’ blessing; here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool.

Lear.Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;

I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,

You owe me no subscription: then, let fall

Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,

A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man.

But yet I call you servile ministers,

That have with two pernicious daughters join’d

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 his head in has a good head-piece.

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.

Kent.Who’s there?

Fool.Marry, here’s grace and a cod-piece; 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

The 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 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! bare-headed!

Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;

Some friendship will it lend you ’gainst the tempest;

Repose you there while I to this hard house,—

More harder than the stone 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.

Lear.True, my good 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.