| |
[The same.] Storm still
Enter LEAR and Fool
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 1 fires, | 4 |
| Vaunt-couriers 2 of 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 3 spill 4 at once, | 8 |
| That makes ingrateful man! | |
| Fool. O nuncle, court holy-water 5 in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in; ask thy daughters’ blessing. Here’s a night pities neither wise men nor fools. | |
| Lear. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain! | |
| Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters. | 12 |
| I tax 6 not you, you elements, with unkindness; | |
| I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children; | |
| You owe me no subscription. 7 Then let fall | |
| Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand, your slave, | 16 |
| A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man; | |
| But yet I call you servile ministers, | |
| That will with two pernicious daughters join | |
| Your high engender’d battles 8 ’gainst a head | 20 |
| So old and white as this. Oh! Oh! ’tis foul! | |
Fool. 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. |
| The man that makes his toe |
| What he his heart should make |
| Shall of a corn cry woe, |
| And turn his sleep to wake.” 9 |
For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass. | |
| |
Enter KENT
Lear. No, I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing. | |
| Kent. Who’s there? | 24 |
| 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 10 the very wanderers of the dark, | 28 |
| 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 | 32 |
| The affliction nor the fear. | |
| Lear. Let the great gods, | |
| That keep this dreadful pudder 11 o’er our heads, | |
| Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, | 36 |
| That hast within thee undivulged crimes, | |
| Unwhipp’d of justice! Hide thee, thou bloody hand; | |
| Thou perjur’d, and thou simular 12 of virtue | |
| That art incestuous! Caitiff, to pieces shake, | 40 |
| That under covert and convenient seeming | |
| Has practis’d 13 on man’s life! Close pent-up guilts, | |
| Rive your concealing continents, 14 and cry | |
| These dreadful summoners grace. 15 I am a man | 44 |
| 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. | 48 |
| Repose you there; while I to this hard house— | |
| More harder than the stones whereof ’tis rais’d; | |
| Which even but now, demanding after you, | |
| Deni’d 16 me to come in—return, and force | 52 |
| 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? | 56 |
| The art of our necessities is strange, | |
| And 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. | 60 |
Fool. [Singing.]| | “He that has and a little tiny wit,— |
| With heigh-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. | 64 |
