The Tragedy Of King Lear

1 LEAR.
2 Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! blow!
3 You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
4 Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
5 You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
6 Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
7 Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
8 Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
9 Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once,
10 That make ingrateful man!
11 FOOL.
12 O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this
13 rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in; and ask thy daughters
14 blessing: here’s a night pities neither wise men nor fools.
15 LEAR.
16 Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
17 Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters;
18 I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
19 I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children;
20 You owe me no subscription: then let fall
21 Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
22 A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man:
23 But yet I call you servile ministers,
24 That will with two pernicious daughters join
25 Your high-engender’d battles ’gainst a head
26 So old and white as this! O! O! ’tis foul!
27 FOOL.
28 He that has a house to put’s head in has a good head-piece.
29 The codpiece that will house
30 Before the head has any,
31 The head and he shall louse:
32 So beggars marry many.
33 The man that makes his toe
34 What he his heart should make
35 Shall of a corn cry woe,
36 And turn his sleep to wake.
37 For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.
38 LEAR.
39 No, I will be the pattern of all patience;
40 I will say nothing.
41 Enter Kent.
42 KENT.
43 Who’s there?
44 FOOL.
45 Marry, here’s grace and a codpiece; that’s a wise man and a
46 fool.
47 KENT.
48 Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night
49 Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies
50 Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,
51 And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,
52 Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
53 Such groans of roaring wind and rain I never
54 Remember to have heard. Man’s nature cannot carry
55 Th’affliction, nor the fear.
56 LEAR.
57 Let the great gods,
58 That keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads,
59 Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
60 That hast within thee undivulged crimes
61 Unwhipp’d of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand;
62 Thou perjur’d, and thou simular of virtue
63 That art incestuous. Caitiff, to pieces shake
64 That under covert and convenient seeming
65 Hast practis’d on man’s life: close pent-up guilts,
66 Rive your concealing continents, and cry
67 These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
68 More sinn’d against than sinning.
69 KENT.
70 Alack, bareheaded!
71 Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;
72 Some friendship will it lend you ’gainst the tempest:
73 Repose you there, whilst I to this hard house,—
74 More harder than the stones whereof ’tis rais’d;
75 Which even but now, demanding after you,
76 Denied me to come in,—return, and force
77 Their scanted courtesy.
78 LEAR.
79 My wits begin to turn.
80 Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
81 I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
82 The art of our necessities is strange,
83 That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.
84 Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
85 That’s sorry yet for thee.
86 FOOL.
87 [_Singing._]
88 He that has and a little tiny wit,
89 With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain,
90 Must make content with his fortunes fit,
91 Though the rain it raineth every day.
92 LEAR.
93 True, boy. Come, bring us to this hovel.
94 [_Exeunt Lear and Kent._]
95 FOOL.
96 This is a brave night to cool a courtezan. I’ll speak a prophecy
97 ere I go:
98 When priests are more in word than matter;
99 When brewers mar their malt with water;
100 When nobles are their tailors’ tutors;
101 No heretics burn’d, but wenches’ suitors;
102 When every case in law is right;
103 No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;
104 When slanders do not live in tongues;
105 Nor cut-purses come not to throngs;
106 When usurers tell their gold i’ the field;
107 And bawds and whores do churches build,
108 Then shall the realm of Albion
109 Come to great confusion:
110 Then comes the time, who lives to see’t,
111 That going shall be us’d with feet.
112 This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.
113 [_Exit._]