The Tragedy Of King Lear

1 Enter Edgar.
2 EDGAR.
3 I heard myself proclaim’d,
4 And by the happy hollow of a tree
5 Escap’d the hunt. No port is free, no place
6 That guard and most unusual vigilance
7 Does not attend my taking. While I may scape
8 I will preserve myself: and am bethought
9 To take the basest and most poorest shape
10 That ever penury in contempt of man,
11 Brought near to beast: my face I’ll grime with filth,
12 Blanket my loins; elf all my hair in knots,
13 And with presented nakedness outface
14 The winds and persecutions of the sky.
15 The country gives me proof and precedent
16 Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
17 Strike in their numb’d and mortified bare arms
18 Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;
19 And with this horrible object, from low farms,
20 Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills,
21 Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,
22 Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod! poor Tom,
23 That’s something yet: Edgar I nothing am.
24 [_Exit._]