I thought the king had more affected
the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.
It did always seem so to us.
But now, in the division of the kingdom,
it appears not which of the dukes
he values most.
Is not this your son, my lord?
His breeding, sir,
hath been at my charge.
I have so often blushed to acknowledge him
that now I am brazed to it.
- I cannot conceive you.
- Sir, this young fellow's mother could.
Whereupon she grew round-wombed,
and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle
ere she had a husband for her bed.
Do you smell a fault?
I cannot wish the fault undone,
the issue of it being so proper.
But I have a son, sir, by order of law,
some year elder than this
who yet is no dearer in my account.
Though this knave came something saucily
to the world, before he was sent for,
yet was his mother fair;
there was good sport at his making,
and the whoreson must be acknowledged.
Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund?
No, my lord.
My lord of Kent. Remember him hereafter
as my honourable friend.
My services to your lordship.
- I must love you, and sue to know you better.
- Sir, I shall study deserving.
He has been out nine years,
and away he shall again.
The King is coming.
Attend the lords of France and Burgundy...
- Gloucester.
- I shall, my liege.
Meantime we shall express
our darker purpose.
Give me the map... there.
Know that we have divided
in three our kingdom,
and 'tis our fast intent
to shake all cares and business
from our age,
conferring them on younger strengths,
while we unburdened crawl toward death.
Our son of Cornwall,
and you, our no less loving son of Albany.
We have this hour a constant will
to publish
our daughters' separate dowers,
that future strife may be prevented now.
The two great princes,
France and Burgundy,
great rivals in our youngest
daughter's love,
long in our court have made
their amorous sojourn.
And here are to be answered.
Tell me, my daughters,
since now we will divest us both of rule,
interest of territory, cares of state,
which of you shall we say
doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend
where nature doth with merit challenge.
Goneril, our eldest born,
speak first.
Sir, I love you more than words
can wield the matter,
dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty,
as much as child e'er loved,
or father found.
A love that makes breath poor,
and speech unable.
Beyond all manner of so much, I love you.
Of all these bounds,
even from this line to this,
we make thee lady.
To thine and Albany's issues
be this perpetual.
What says our second daughter,
our dearest Regan, wife to Cornwall?
Speak.
I am made of that self mettle as my sister
and prize me at her worth.
In my true heart
I find she names my very deed of love.
Only she comes too short, that I profess
myself an enemy to all other joys
which the most precious square
of sense possesses,
and find I am alone felicitate
in your dear highness' love.
To thee and thine hereditary ever
remain this ample third
of our fair kingdom.
No less in space, validity, and pleasure,
than that conferred on Goneril...
And now, our joy,
although our last not least,
to whose young love
The vines of France and milk of Burgundy
strive to be interessed.
What can you say to draw
a third more opulent than your sisters?
Speak.
- Nothing, my lord.
- Nothing?
- Nothing.
- Nothing will come of nothing.
Speak again.
Unhappy that I am,
I cannot heave
my heart into my mouth.
I love your majesty
according to my bond, no more nor less.
How, how, Cordelia!
Mend your speech a little
lest you may mar your fortunes.
Good my lord,
you have begot me, bred me, loved me.
I return those duties back as are right fit,
obey you, love you, and most honour you.
Why have my sisters husbands,
if they say they love you all?
Haply when I shall wed,
that lord whose hand shall take my plight
shall carry half my love with him,
half my care and duty.
Sure I shall never marry like my sisters,
to love my father all.
But goes thy heart with this?
- Ay, good my lord.
- So young, and so untender?
So young, my lord, and true.
Let it be so! Thy truth then be thy dower!
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
from whom we do exist, and cease to be,
here I disclaim all my paternal care,
propinquity and property of blood,
and as a stranger to my heart and thee
hold thee from this for ever.
- Good, my liege?
- Peace, Kent!
Come not between the dragon
and his wrath. I loved her most.
Hence! Avoid my sight!
Call France! Who stirs?
Call Burgundy. Cornwall, Albany.
With my two daughters' dowers
digest the third.
Let pride, which she calls plainness,
marry her.
I do invest you jointly with my power,
pre-eminence.
Ourself by monthly course,
with reservation of one hundred knights,
by you to be sustained, shall our abode
make with you by due turn.
Only we shall retain the name,
and all the addition to a king.
The sway, revenue, execution of the rest,
beloved sons, be yours, which to confirm,
this coronet part between you.
Royal Lear, whom I have
ever honoured as my king,
loved as my father, as my master followed.
The bow is bent and drawn;
make from the shaft.
Let it fall rather, though the fork invade
the region of my heart.
Be Kent unmannerly when Lear is mad.
What wouldst thou do, old man?
Think'st thou that duty shall have dread
to speak when power to flattery bows?
On thy life, no more!
My life I never held but as a pawn
to wage against thine enemies.
- Out of my sight.
- See better, Lear.
Now, by Apollo...
Now, by Apollo, King,
thou swear'st thy gods in vain.
O, vassal, miscreant!
- Forbear!
- Revoke thy gift.
Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat
I'll tell thee thou dost evil.
Hear me, recreant,
On thine allegiance hear me!
That thou hast sought
to make us break our vow,
which we durst never yet,
take thy reward.
Five days we do allot thee for provision
and on the sixth to turn thy hated back
upon our kingdom.
If on the next day following
thy banished trunk be found in our dominion,
the moment is thy death.
Away!
By Jupiter, this shall not be revoked.
Fare thee well, King,
sith thus thou wilt appear,
freedom lives hence,
and banishment is here.
The gods to their dear shelter
take thee, maid,
that justly think'st,
and hast most rightly said.
And your large speeches
may your deeds approve
that good effects may spring
from words of love.
Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu.
He'll shape his old course
in a country new.
Here's France and Burgundy,
my noble lord.
My lord of Burgundy,
we first address toward you,
what in the least will you require
in present dower with her,
or cease your quest of love?
Most royal majesty, I crave no more
than what your highness offered.
Nor will you tender less.
Right noble Burgundy, when she was
dear to us, we did hold her so.
But now her price is fallen.
Sir, there she stands.
She's there, and she is yours.
I know no answer.
Sir, will you, with these infirmities
she owns,
unfriended, new-adopted to our hate,
dowered with our curse and strangered
with our oath, take her or leave her?
Pardon me, royal sir,
election makes not up in such conditions.
Then leave her, sir,
for, by the power that made me,
I tell thee all her wealth.
For you, great king.
Avert your liking a more worthier way
than on a wretch whom Nature is ashamed
almost to acknowledge.
This is most strange, that she whom even
but now was your best object,
balm of your age,
should in this trice of time
commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle
so many folds of favour.
I yet beseech your majesty
if for I want that glib and oily art
to speak and purpose not, that you make known
it is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
no unchaste action or dishonourable step that
hath deprived me of your grace and favour.
But even for want of that
for which I am richer.
Better thou hadst not been born
than not to have pleased me better.
Is it but this, a tardiness in nature
which often leaves the history unspoke
that it intends to do?
My lord of Burgundy,
what say you to the lady?
Will you have her? She is herself a dowry.
Royal Lear, give but that portion
which yourself proposed,
and here I take Cordelia by the hand,
Duchess of Burgundy.
Nothing! I am sworn.
I am sorry that you have so lost a father
that you must lose a husband.
Peace be with Burgundy!
Since that respects of fortune are his love,
I shall not be his wife.
Fairest Cordelia,
that art most rich, being poor,
most choice, forsaken,
and most loved, despised,
thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.
Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! 'Tis strange
that from their cold'st neglect
my love should kindle to inflamed respect.
Thy dowerless daughter, King,
thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France.
Thou hast her, France; let her be thine,
for we have no such daughter,
nor shall ever see that face of hers again.
Therefore begone,
without our grace, our love,
our benison!
Come, noble Burgundy.
Bid farewell to your sisters.
The jewels of our father, with washed eyes
Cordelia leaves you. I know you what you are.
And, like a sister, am most loath to call
your faults as they are named.
Prescribe not us our duties.
Let your study be to content your lord,
who hath received you at Fortune's alms.
You have obedience scanted.
And well are worth the want
that you have wanted.
Time shall unfold
what plighted cunning hides.
Come, my fair Cordelia.
Sister...
It is not a little I have to say of what
most nearly appertains to us both.
I think our father will hence tonight.
That's most certain, and with you,
next month with us.
You see how full of changes his age is.
He always loved our sister most.
'Tis the infirmity of his age. Yet he hath
ever but slenderly known himself.
The best and soundest of his time
hath been but rash.
Such unconstant starts are we like to have
from him as this of Kent's banishment?
Pray you, let us hit together.
If our father carry authority
with such dispositions as he bears,
this last surrender of his
will but offend us.
We shall further think of it.
We must do something, and i' the heat.
Thou, Nature,
art my goddess,
to thy law my services are bound.
Wherefore should I stand
in the plague of custom
and permit the curiosity
of nations to deprive me,
for that I am some twelve or fourteen
moonshines lag of a brother?
Why bastard?
Wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well-compact,
my mind as generous, and my shape as true
as honest madam's issue?
Why brand they us with base?
With baseness?
Bastardy? Base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature take
more composition and fierce quality
than doth within a dull, stale, tired bed
go to the creating a whole tribe of fops
got 'tween asleep and wake?
Well then,
legitimate Edgar,
I must have your land.
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund.
As to the legitimate.
Fine word, legitimate!
Well then, my legitimate,
if this letter speed
and my invention thrive,
Edmund the base shall top the legitimate.
I grow. I prosper.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
Kent banished thus? And France in choler
parted? And the King gone tonight?
All this done upon the gad!
- Edmund, how now? What news?
- So please your lordship, none.
Why so earnestly seek you
to put up that letter?
- I know no news, my lord.
- What paper were you reading?
- Nothing, my lord.
- No?
What needed, then, this terrible
dispatch of it into your pocket?
Come! Let's see. If it be nothing,
I shall not need spectacles.
I beseech you, sir, pardon me.
It is a letter from my brother
I have not all o'er-read,
and for so much as I have perused,
I find it not fit for your o'er-looking.
Give me the letter, sir.
I hope for my brother's justification
he wrote this but as an essay
or taste of my virtue.
"I begin to find an idle and fond bondage
in the oppression of aged tyranny.
"Come to me that of this
I may speak more."
"If our father would sleep
till I waked him,
"you should enjoy half his revenue,
and live the beloved of your brother Edgar."
Conspiracy! "Sleep till I waked him,
you should enjoy half his revenue..."
- When came this to you? Who brought it?
- It was not brought me, my lord.
There's the cunning of it. I found it
thrown in at the casement of my closet.
You know the character
to be your brother's?
- I would fain think it were not.
- It is his!
It is his hand, my lord, but I hope
his heart is not in the contents.
Abhorred villain! I'll apprehend him.
Abominable villain! Where is he?
I do not well know, my lord.
I dare pawn down my life for him,
that he hath writ this
to feel my affections to your honour,
and to no other pretence of danger.
- Think you so?
- If your honour judge it meet.
I will place you where you shall hear us
confer of this.
- He cannot be such a monster?
- Nor is not, sure.
To his father, who so tenderly
and entirely loves him.
Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him out.
Frame the business after your own wisdom.
I will seek him, sir, presently.
These late eclipses of the sun and moon
portend no good to us.
Love cools, friendship falls off,
brothers divide.
"In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord;
in palaces, treason...
"and the bond cracked
'twixt son and father."
This villain of mine comes under
the prediction: there's son against father.
The King falls from bias of nature,
there's father against child.
We have seen the best of our time:
machinations, hollowness, treachery,
and all ruinous disorders,
follow us disquietly to our graves.
Find out this villain, Edmund,
it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully.
This is the excellent foppery
of the world,
that, when we are sick in fortune,
often the surfeits of our own behaviour,
we make guilty of our disasters the sun,
the moon, and stars,
as if we were villains by necessity,
fools by heavenly compulsion,
knaves, thieves, and treachers,
by spherical predominance,
drunkards, liars, and adulterers,
by an enforced obedience
of planetary influence,
and all that we are evil in
by a divine thrusting on.
An admirable evasion of whoremaster man,
to lay his goatish disposition
to the charge of a star!
Edgar. Pat he comes.
O these eclipses do portend
these divisions.
How now, brother Edmund!
What serious contemplation are you in?
I am thinking, brother, of a prediction
I read this other day,
what should follow these eclipses.
Do you busy yourself about that?
I promise you, brother, the effects
he writes of succeed unhappily,
as of unnaturalness between the child
and the parent,
death, dearth, dissolution
of ancient amities, divisions in state,
menaces and maledictions against kings
and nobles, and I know not what.
How long have you been
a sectary astronomical?
- When saw you my father last?
- The night gone by.
- Spake you with him?
- Ay, two hours together.
Parted you in good terms?
Found you no displeasure in him
by word nor countenance?
None at all.
Bethink yourself wherein
you may have offended him,
and at my entreaty forbear his presence
until some little time hath qualified
the heat of his displeasure.
- Some villain hath done me wrong.
- That's my fear.
Retire with me to my lodging,
from whence I will fitly bring you
to hear my lord speak. Pray you, go!
There's my key.
If you do stir abroad, go armed.
- Armed, brother?
- Brother, I advise you to the best.
I am no honest man if there be any good
meaning towards you. Pray you, away.
- Shall I hear from you anon?
- I do serve you in this business.
A credulous father and a brother noble,
whose nature is so far from doing harms
that he suspects none.
I see the business:
let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit,
all with me's meet that I can fashion fit.
Did my father strike my gentleman
for chiding of his fool?
Ay, madam.
By day and night he wrongs me,
every hour he flashes into one gross crime
or other that sets us all at odds.
I'll not endure it!
His knights grow riotous, and himself
upbraids us on every trifle.
When he returns from hunting
I will not speak with him. Say I am sick.
If you come slack of former services you
shall do well. The fault of it I'll answer.
He's coming, madam, I hear him.
Put on what weary negligence you please,
you and your fellows.
I'd have it come to question.
If he distaste it let him to our sister,
whose mind and mine I know in that are one,
not to be overruled.
Idle old man,
that still would manage those authorities
that he hath given away!
Now, by my life, old fools are babes again,
and must be used with checks as flatteries,
when they are seen abused.
Remember what I have said.
I'll write straight to my sister
to hold my very course.
Prepare for dinner.
If but as well I other accents borrow
that can my speech defuse,
my good intent may carry through itself
to that full issue
for which I razed my likeness.
Now, banished Kent...
If thou canst serve
where thou dost stand condemned,
so may it come,
thy master whom thou lovest
shall find thee full of labours.
Let me not stay a jot for dinner!
Go get it ready!
- What art thou?
- A man, sir.
- What dost thou profess?
- I do profess to be no less than I seem.
To serve him truly
that will put me in trust,
to fear judgment, to fight when I cannot
choose, and to eat no fish.
- What wouldst thou?
- Service.
- Who wouldst thou serve?
- You.
- Dost thou know me, fellow?
- No, sir.
But you have that in your countenance
which I would fain call master.
- What's that?
- Authority.
What services canst thou do?
I can keep honest counsel, ride, run,
mar a curious tale in telling it,
and deliver a plain message bluntly.
How old art thou?
Not so young, sir,
to love a woman for singing,
nor so old to dote on her for any thing.
I have years on my back
forty eight.
Follow me, thou shalt serve me
if I like thee no worse after dinner.
Where's my knave, my fool?
Go you, call hither my fool.
You! You, sirrah! Where's my daughter?
So please you...
What says the fellow there?
Call the clotpoll back.
Where's my knave?
Agh! The world's asleep.
How now? Where's that mongrel?
He says, my lord,
your daughter is not well.
Why came not the slave back to me
when I called him?
Sir, he answered me
in the roundest manner he would not.
- He would not!
- My lord, I know not what the matter is.
But to my judgment your highness
is not entertained
with that ceremonious affection
as you were wont.
Sayest thou so?
I will look further into't.
But where's my knave?
I have not seen him this two days.
Since my young lady's going into France,
sir, the fool hath much pined away.
No more of that!
I have noted it well.
Go you, and tell my daughter
I would speak with her.
Go you, call hither my Fool.
O, you, sir, you! Come you hither, sir.
Who am I, sir?
My lady's father.
"My lady's father", my lord's knave!
You whoreson dog! You slave! You cur!
I am none of these things, my lord,
I beseech your pardon.
- Do you bandy looks with me?
- I'll not be strucken, my lord.
Or tripped neither,
you base football player.
- I thank thee, fellow.
- Come, sir, arise, away!
I'll teach you differences.
Away, away!
If you will measure
your lubber's length again, tarry!
Go to!
Have you wisdom? So.
Now, my friendly knave.
There's earnest for your service.
- Let me hire him too.
- How now, pretty knave!
Here's my coxcomb.
- Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.
- Why, fool?
Why, for taking one's part
that's out of favour.
Thou canst not smile as the wind sits,
thou'It catch cold shortly.
Take my coxcomb!
Why, this fellow has banished
two of his daughters,
and did the third a blessing
against his will.
If thou followst him,
thou must needs take my coxcomb.
How now, nuncle!
Would I had two daughters
and two coxcombs.
Why, my boy?
If I gave them all my living,
I'd keep my coxcombs myself.
There's mine.
Beg another of thy daughters.
You take heed, sirrah, the whip!
Truth's a dog must to kennel.
He must be whipped out,
while Lady Brach may stand by the fire
and stink.
- A pestilent gall to me!
- Sirrah, I will teach thee a speech.
Ay, do.
Mark it, nuncle.
Have more than thou showest,
speak less than thou knowest,
lend less than thou owest,
ride more than thou goest,
learn more than thou trowest,
set less than thou throwest.
Leave thy drink and thy whore
and keep in-a-door,
and thou shalt have more
than two tens to a score!
This is nothing, fool.
Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd
lawyer. You gave me nothing for't.
Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?
Why, no, boy.
Nothing can be made out of nothing.
Prithee tell him; so much the rent of his land
comes to. He will not believe a fool.
A bitter fool!
Dost thou know
the difference, my boy,
between a bitter fool and a sweet one?
No, lad. Teach me.
# That lord that counselled thee
to give away thy land
# Come place him here by me,
do thou for him stand
# The sweet and bitter fool
will presently appear
# The one in motley here,
the other found out there #
Dost thou call me fool, boy?
All thy other titles
thou hast given away...
That thou wast born with.
This is not altogether fool, my lord.
No, faith. Lords and great men
will not let me.
Nuncle, give me an egg...
- And I'll give thee two crowns.
- Which two crowns shall they be?
Well, after I have cut the egg i'the middle
and eat up the meat,
the two crowns of the egg.
When thou clovest thy crown i'the middle,
and gavest away both parts,
thy borest thine ass on thy back
o'er the dirt.
Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown
when thy gave thy golden one away.
Hey!
# Fools had ne'er less wit in a year
# For wise men are grown foppish
# And know not how their wits to wear
# Their manners are so apish #
When were thou wont to be
so full of songs, sirrah?
I have used it, nuncle, e'er since
thou madest thy daughters thy mothers.
For when thou gavest them the rod
and puttest down thine own breeches...
# Then they for sudden joy did weep
# And I for sorrow sung
# That such a king should play bo-peep
# And go the fools among #
Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster
that could teach thy fool to lie.
- I would fain learn to lie.
- And you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped.
I marvel what kin thou
and thy daughters are.
They'll have me whipped for speaking
true, thou will have me whipped for lying,
and sometimes I am whipped
for holding my peace.
I had rather be any kind of thing
than a fool.
And yet I would not be thee, nuncle.
Thou hast pared thy wits o' both sides,
and left nothing i'the middle.
- Here comes one o'the paring.
- How now, daughter!
What makes that frontlet on?
You are too much of late i'the frown.
Thou was a pretty fellow when thou
hadst no need to care for her frowning.
Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue.
So your face bids me,
though you say nothing.
Mum, mum.
That's a shelled peascod.
Not only, sir, this your all-licensed fool
but other of your insolent retinue
do hourly carp and quarrel,
breaking forth in rank
and not-to-be endured riots.
Sir, I had thought,
by making this well known unto you
to have found a safe redress,
but now grow fearful,
by what yourself too late
have spoke and done.
That you protect this course
and put it on by your allowance,
which if you should, the fault would not
'scape censure, nor the redresses sleep.
For you know, nuncle,
the hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long
that it had its head bit off by its young.
- Are you our daughter?
- Come, sir.
I would you would make use of that good
wisdom, whereof I know you are fraught,
and put away these dispositions which of late
transport you from what you rightly are.
Does any here know me?
This is not Lear.
Does Lear walk thus, talk thus?
Where are his eyes? Ha!
Waking? Sleeping?
'Tis not so.
Who is it who can tell me who I am?
Lear's shadow.
I would learn that, for, by the marks
of sovereignty, knowledge and reason,
I should be false persuaded
I had daughters.
- Which they will make an obedient father.
- Your name, fair gentlewoman?
This admiration, sir, is much o' the savour
of other your new pranks!
I do beseech you
to understand my purposes aright.
As you are old and reverend,
should be wise.
Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires,
men so disordered, so deboshed and bold,
that this our court, infected with
their manners, shows like a riotous inn.
Epicurism and lust make it more like
a tavern or a brothel than a graced palace.
The shame itself doth speak
for instant remedy.
Be then desired, by her that else
will take the thing she begs,
a little to disquantity your train,
and the remainders that shall still depend
to be such men as may besort your age,
and know themselves and you.
Darkness and devils!
Saddle my horses! Call my train together!
Degenerate bastard, I'll not trouble you.
Yet have I left a daughter.
You strike my people, and your disordered
rabble make servants of their betters.
Woe, that too late repents!
O, sir, are you come?
Is it your will? Speak, sir.
Prepare my horses.
Detested kite! Thou liest.
My train are men of choice and rarest parts,
that in the most exact regard support
the worships of their name.
O Lear, Lear, Lear!
Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in
and thy dear judgment out!
Go, go, my people.
My lord, I am guiltless, as I am ignorant
of what hath moved you.
It may be so, my lord.
Hear, Nature, hear! Dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend
to make this creature fruitful.
Into her womb convey sterility,
dry up in her the organs of increase,
and from her derogate body never spring
a babe to honour her.
If she must teem,
create her child of spleen,
that it may live
and be a thwart disnatured torment to her.
Let it stamp wrinkles
in her brow of youth,
turn all her mother's pains and benefits
to laughter and contempt,
that she may feel how sharper
than a serpent's tooth it is
to have a thankless child!
Away!
Now gods that we adore,
whereof comes this?
Never afflict yourself to know more of it,
but let his disposition have that scope
as dotage gives it.
What, fifty of my followers at a clap!
- Within a fortnight?
- What is the matter, sir?
I'll tell thee...
I am ashamed that thou hast power
to shake my manhood thus.
Blasts and fogs upon thee!
Let it be so.
I have another daughter.
When she shall hear this of thee,
with her nails she'll flay thy wolvish visage.
Thou shalt find that I'll resume the shape
which thou dost think
I have cast off for ever.
Do you mark that?
I cannot be so partial, Goneril,
to the great love I bear you...
Pray you then, content. What, ho Oswald!
You, sir, more knave than fool,
after your master.
Nuncle Lear, nuncle Lear, tarry!
Take the fool with thee.
This man hath had good counsel!
A hundred knights!
'Tis politic and safe to let him keep
at point a hundred knights.
Yes, that on every dream,
each buzz, each fancy, dislike,
he may enguard his dotage
with their powers
and hold our lives in mercy.
Oswald, I say!
Well, you may fear too far.
Safer than trust too far.
I know his heart and I have writ my sister.
If she sustain him and his hundred knights
when I have showed the unfitness...
How now, Oswald!
- What, have you that letter to my sister?
- Ay, madam.
Take you some company and away to horse.
Inform her full of my particular fear.
Get thee gone. Hasten your return.
No, no, my lord.
This milky gentleness and course of yours,
though I condemn not, yet, under pardon,
you are much more a-taxed for want of
wisdom than praised for harmful mildness.
How far your eyes may pierce
I cannot tell.
Striving to better,
oft we mar what's well.
Nay, then?
Go you before to Regan.
I will not sleep, my lord,
till I have delivered your letter.
Shalt see...
thy other daughter will use thee kindly,
for though she's as like this as a crab's
like an apple, yet I can tell what I can tell.
What canst tell?
She will taste as like this
as a crab does to a crab.
Thou canst tell why one's nose
stands i'the middle of one's face?
No.
Why, to keep one's eyes
on either side's nose.
That what a man cannot smell out,
he may spy into.
I did her wrong.
Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?
- No.
- Nor I neither.
The reason why the seven stars are no more
than seven is a pretty reason.
- Because they are not eight?
- Yes, indeed.
Thou wouldst make a good fool.
To take't again by force!
Monster ingratitude!
If you were my fool, nuncle, I'd have thee
beaten for being old before thy time.
How's that?
Thou shouldst not have been old
until thou hadst been wise.
O let me not be mad,
not mad, sweet heaven!
Keep me in temper.
I would not be mad!
- Are the horses ready?
- Ready, my lord.
Come, boy.
Save thee, Curan.
And you, sir.
I have been with your father,
and given him notice that the Duke
of Cornwall and Regan his duchess
will be here with him this night.
How comes that?
Nay, I know not.
You have heard the news abroad?
I mean the whispered ones.
Not I. Pray you, what are they?
Have you heard of no likely wars toward,
'twixt the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany?
Not a word.
You may do, in time. Fare you well, sir.
The Duke be here tonight?
The better! Best!
This weaves itself perforce into my business.
My father hath set guard to take my brother,
and I have one thing
of a queasy question which I must act.
Briefness and fortune, work!
Brother, a word.
Descend, brother, I say!
My father watches.
O, sir, fly this place!
Intelligence is given where you are hid.
Have you not spoken
'gainst the Duke of Cornwall?
He's coming hither, now, i'the night,
i'the haste, and Regan with him.
Have you nothing said
upon his party 'gainst the Duke of Albany?
- Advise yourself.
- Not a word, I am sure on't.
I hear my father coming. Pardon me.
In cunning I must draw my sword upon you.
Yield! Come before my father!
Lights, ho, here!
Fly, brother.
Torches, torches!
So, farewell.
Some blood drawn on me would beget opinion
of my more fierce endeavour.
I have seen drunkards
do more than this in sport.
Stop, stop! Father, father! No help?
Now, Edmund, where's the villain?
- Here stood he in the dark.
- But where is he?
- Look, sir, I bleed.
- Where is the villain, Edmund?
Fled this way.
When by no means he could...
Pursue him, ho! Go after.
By no means what?
Persuade me to the murder
of your lordship.
Seeing how loathly opposite I stood
to his unnatural purpose,
he charges home my unprovided body,
latched mine arm.
But when he saw my best alarumed spirits
roused to the encounter,
full suddenly he fled.
Let him fly far.
Not in this land shall he remain uncaught,
and found, dispatch.
He that conceals him, death.
I threatened to discover him.
He replied, "Thou unpossessing bastard,
dost thou think,
"if I would stand against thee,
would the reposal
"of any trust, virtue, or worth in thee
make thy words faithed?"
Would he deny his letter, said he?
I never got him.
Hark, the Duke's trumpets!
I know not why he comes.
All ports I'll bar.
The villain shall not 'scape.
The Duke must grant me that.
Besides, his picture I will send
far and near,
that all the kingdom
may have due note of him.
And of my land,
loyal and natural boy,
I'll work the means to make thee capable.
How now, my noble friend?
I have heard strange news.
If it be true, all vengeance
comes too short
which can pursue the offender.
How dost, my lord?
O, madam, my old heart is cracked,
it's cracked.
What, did my father's godson
seek your life?
He whom my father named? Your Edgar?
Lady, lady, shame would have it hid!
Was he not companion with the riotous knights
that tended upon my father?
I know not, madam. Too bad, too bad!
Yes, madam, he was of that consort.
No marvel then though he were ill affected.
'Tis they have put him
on the old man's death,
to have the expense and waste
of his revenues.
I have this present evening from my sister
been well informed of them,
and with such cautions,
that if they come to sojourn at my house,
I'll not be there.
Nor I, assure thee, Regan.
Edmund, I hear that you have shown
your father a child-like office.
It was my duty, sir.
He did bewray his practise, and received
this hurt you see, striving to apprehend him.
- Is he pursued?
- Ay, my good lord.
If he be taken, he shall never more
be fear'd of doing harm.
For you, Edmund,
whose virtue and obedience doth
this instant so much commend itself,
you shall be ours.
Natures of such deep trust we shall
much need. You we first seize on.
I shall serve you, sir,
Truly, however else.
- For him I thank your grace.
- You know not why we came to visit you?
Thus out of season,
threading dark-eyed night,
occasions, noble Gloucester,
of some poise,
wherein we must have use of your advice.
Our father he hath writ, so hath our sister,
of differences,
which I best thought it fit
to answer from our home.
I serve you, madam.
Your graces are right welcome.
Good even to thee, friend.
Art of this house?
- Ay.
- Where may we set our horses?
In the mire.
- I prithee, if thou lovest me, tell me.
- I love thee not.
Why dost thou use me thus?
I know thee not.
- Fellow, I know thee.
- What dost thou know me for?
A knave, a rascal,
an eater of broken meats.
A base, proud, shallow, beggarly,
three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy,
worsted-stocking knave.
A whoreson, glass-gazing,
super-serviceable finical rogue,
one that would be a bawd,
in way of good service,
and art nothing but the composition
of knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.
Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou,
thus to rail on one that is neither
known to thee nor knows thee!
What a brazen-faced varlet art thou
to deny thou knowest me!
Is it two days ago since I tripped up
thy heels and beat thee before the King?
- Draw, you rogue!
- Away! I have nothing to do with thee.
Draw, you rascal!
You come with letters against the King.
Draw, you rogue,
or I'll so carbonado your shanks!
Help, ho! Murder!
Strike, you slave! Stand, rogue!
Stand, you neat slave! Strike!
Help, ho! Murder! Murder!
- How now! What's the matter? Part!
- With you, goodman boy, and you please.
Come, I'll flesh ye!
Come on, young master.
Weapons? Arms?
What's the matter here?
Keep peace, upon your lives!
He dies that strikes again.
What is the matter?
The messengers from our sister
and the King.
- What is your difference? Speak.
- I am scarce in breath, my lord.
No marvel, you have so bestirred
your valour.
You cowardly rascal, nature disclaims
in thee. A tailor made thee.
Thou art a strange fellow.
A tailor make a man?
A tailor, sir. A stone-cutter or painter
could not have made him so ill.
Speak yet. How grew your quarrel?
This ancient ruffian, sir, whose life
I have spared at suit of his grey beard...
Thou whoreson zed,
thou unnecessary letter!
My lord, if you will give me leave, I will
tread this unbolted villain into mortar,
and daub the wall of a jakes with him.
Peace, sirrah!
You beastly knave, know you no reverence?
A plague upon your epileptic visage!
Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain,
I'd drive ye cackling home to Camelot.
- What? Art thou mad, old fellow?
- How fell you out? Say that.
No contrary holds more antipathy
than I and such a knave.
Why dost thou call him knave?
What is his fault?
His countenance likes me not.
No more perchance does mine,
or his, or hers.
Sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain.
I have seen better faces in my time
than stands on any shoulders that I see
before me at this instant.
This is some fellow,
who, having been praised for bluntness,
doth affect a saucy roughness.
He cannot flatter, he!
An honest mind
and plain, he must speak truth!
And they will take it so.
If not, he's plain.
Sir, under the allowance
of your great aspect,
whose influence, like the wreath of
radiant fire on flickering Phoebus' front...
What mean'st by this?
To go out of my dialect,
which you discommend so much.
- I know, sir, I am no flatterer.
- What was the offence you gave him?
I never gave him any.
It pleased the King his master very late
to strike at me upon his misconstruction,
whilst he, conjunct
and flattering his displeasure,
tripped me behind, got praises of the King
for him attempting who was self-subdued,
and in the fleshment of this dread
exploit, drew on me here again.
None of these rogues and cowards
but Ajax is their fool.
Fetch forth the stocks!
You stubborn ancient knave,
you reverend braggart.
- We'll teach you.
- Sir, I am too old to learn.
Call not your stocks for me. I serve the King.
Fetch forth the stocks! As I have life
and honour, there shall you sit till noon.
Till noon? Till night, my lord,
and all night too.
Why, madam, if I were your father's dog,
you should not use me so.
Sir, being his knave, I will.
This is a fellow of the self-same colour
our sister speaks of.
Come, bring away the stocks!
Let me beseech your grace not to do so.
His fault is much and the good King,
his master, will check him for't.
Your purposed low correction
is such as pilferings,
common trespasses are punished with.
- The King must take it ill.
- I'll answer that.
My sister may receive it much more worse,
to have her gentleman abused, assaulted,
for following her affairs.
Put in his legs.
Come, my lord, away.
I am sorry for thee, friend.
'Tis the Duke's pleasure,
whose disposition all the world well knows
will not be rubbed nor stopped.
I'll entreat for thee.
Pray, do not, sir.
I have watched and travelled hard.
Some time I shall sleep
out, the rest I'll whistle.
A good man's fortune may grow out at heels.
Give you good morrow!
The Duke's to blame in this.
'Twill be ill taken.
Approach, thou beacon to this under globe,
that by thy comfortable beams
I may peruse this letter.
'Tis from Cordelia,
who hath most fortunately been informed
of my obscured course
and "shall find time
from this enormous state,
"seeking to give losses their remedies."
All weary and o'erwatched,
take vantage, heavy eyes,
not to behold this shameful lodging.
Fortune, good night.
Smile once more.
Turn thy wheel.
I heard myself proclaimed,
and by the happy hollow of a tree
escaped the hunt.
No port is free,
no place that guard and most unusual
vigilance does not attend my taking.
Whiles I may 'scape,
I will preserve myself...
and am bethought
to take the basest, most poorest shape
that ever penury, in contempt of man,
brought near to beast.
My face I'll grime with filth.
Blanket my loins,
and elf all my hair in knots...
and with presented nakedness outface
the winds and persecutions of the sky.
The country gives me proof and precedent
of Bedlam beggars,
who, with roaring voices,
strike in their numbed
and mortified bare arms
pins, wooden pricks, nails,
and sprigs of rosemary.
And with this horrible object,
from low farms, poor pelting villages,
sheepcotes and mills,
sometime with lunatic bans
and sometime with prayers,
enforce their charity.
Poor Turlygod! Poor Tom!
That's something yet.
Edgar I nothing am!
'Tis strange that they
should so depart from home.
Hail to thee, noble master!
- Makest thou this shame thy pastime?
- No, my lord.
Ha ha! He wears cruel garters.
When a man is over-lusty at legs,
then he wears wooden nether-stocks.
What's he that hath so much thy place mistook
to set thee here?
It is both he and she,
your son and daughter.
- No.
- Yes.
- No, I say.
- I say, yea.
- No, no, they would not.
- Yes, they have.
- By Jupiter, I swear, no!
- By Juno, I swear, ay!
They durst not do't.
Could not, would not do't.
My lord, when at their home
I did commend your highness' letter to them,
ere I was risen came there a reeking post,
stewed in his haste, half breathless,
panting forth from Goneril,
his mistress, salutations.
Delivered letters,
which presently they read.
Gave me cold looks, straight took horse.
Commanded me to follow and attend
the leisure of their answer.
Meeting here the other messenger, whose
welcome I perceived had poisoned mine,
being the very fellow that of late
displayed so saucily against your highness,
having more man than wit about me, drew.
He raised the house with loud
and coward cries.
Your son and daughter found this trespass
worth the shame which here it suffers.
Winter's not gone yet
if the wild-geese fly that way.
O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!
Where is this daughter?
- With the Earl, sir, here within.
- Follow me not. You stay there.
Made you no more offence
but what you speak of?
None. How chance it the King
comes with so small a number?
And thou had been set i' the stocks for
that question, thou hadst well deserved it.
Why, fool?
All that follow their noses are led
by their eyes except blind men,
and there's not a nose amongst twenty
but can smell him that's stinking.
Deny to speak with me?
They are sick.
They are weary.
They have travelled all the night?
Fetch me a better answer.
My dear lord,
you know the fiery quality of the duke.
Vengeance, plague, death, confusion!
Fiery? What quality?
Why, Gloucester, Gloucester, I'd speak
with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.
Well, my good lord, I have informed them so.
Informed them? Dost thou understand me, man?
- Ay, my good lord.
- The King would speak with Cornwall.
The dear father would with his daughter
speak... commands, tends service.
Are they informed of this?
My breath and blood! Fiery?
Go! Tell the Duke and his wife
I'd speak with them now, presently!
Bid them come forth and hear me!
Or at their chamber door I'll beat the drum
till it cry sleep to death!
I would have all well betwixt you.
O... me...
My heart...
My rising heart!
But down!
Cry to it, nuncle,
as the cockney did to the eels
when she put them in the pastry alive.
She knapped 'em on the coxcomb with a stick,
and cried, "Down, wantons, down!"
Who comes here?
Good morrow to you both.
- Hail to your grace!
- I am glad to see your highness.
Regan! I think you are.
O, are you free?
Some other time for that.
Beloved Regan, thy sister's naught.
O Regan, she hath tied sharp-toothed
unkindness like a vulture here.
I can scarce speak to thee.
Thou wouldst not believe
with how depraved a quality... O Regan!
I pray you, sir, take patience.
I have hope you less know how to value
her desert than she to scant her duty.
Say, how is that?
I cannot think my sister in the least
would fail her obligation.
If, sir, perchance, she have restrained
the riots of your followers...
- My curses on her.
- O, sir, you are old.
Hmm?
Nature in you stands on the very verge
of her confine.
You should be ruled and led
by some discretion
that discerns your state
better than you yourself.
Therefore I pray you that to our sister you
do make return. Say you have wronged her.
Ask her forgiveness? Ha ha ha!
Do you but mark how this becomes the house?
"Dear daughter, I confess that I am old.
Age is unnecessary.
"On my knee I beg that you'll vouchsafe me
raiment, bed, and food."
Sir, no more! These are unsightly tricks.
Return you to my sister.
Never! Regan, she hath abated me
of half my train...
looked black upon me,
struck me with her looks.
All the stored vengeances of heaven fall
on her ingrateful top!
Strike her young bones, you taking airs,
with lameness!
- Fie, sir, fie!
- You nimble lightnings,
dart your blinding flames
into her scornful eyes!
O the blest gods! So will you wish on me
when the rash mood is on.
No, Regan...
Thou shalt never have my curse.
Thy tender-hearted nature
shall not give thee o'er to harshness.
Her eyes are fierce,
but thine do comfort, and not burn.
Thy half of the kingdom thou hast not forgot,
wherein I thee endow'd.
Good sir, to the purpose.
Who put my man in the stocks?
- What trumpet's that?
- I know't. My sister's.
This approves her letter
that she would soon be here.
Who stocked my servant?
Regan, I have good hope
thou didst not know of it.
Who comes here?
O heavens,
if you do love old men,
if yourselves be old,
make it your cause!
Send down and take my part!
Art not ashamed to look upon this beard? Eh?
Regan!
Regan...
will you take her by the hand?
Why not by the hand, sir?
How have I offended?
All's not offence that indiscretion finds...
and dotage terms so.
O sides, you are too tough!
Will you yet hold?
How came my man in the stocks?
I set him there, sir, but his own disorders
deserved much less advancement!
You? Did you?
I pray you, father,
being weak, seem so.
If till the expiration of your month
you will return and sojourn with my sister,
dismissing half your train, come then to me.
Return to her, and fifty men dismissed? No!
Rather I abjure all roofs,
and choose
to wage against the enmity of the air,
to be a comrade with the wolf and owl.
Necessity's sharp pinch.
- At your choice, sir.
- I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad!
I will not trouble you.
Farewell.
We'll no more meet, no more see one another.
And yet thou art my bloods,
my flesh, my daughter...
Or rather a disease that's in my flesh!
A boil in my corrupted blood!
Mend when thou canst, be better
at thy leisure. I can be patient.
I can stay with Regan,
I and my hundred knights.
Not altogether so.
I looked not for you yet,
nor am provided for your fit welcome.
Give ear, sir, to my sister.
For those that mingle reason
with your passion
must be content to think you old, and so...
- But she knows what she does.
- Is this well spoken?
I dare avouch it, sir. What, fifty followers?
Is it not well? What should you need of more?
Yea, or so many, sith that both charge
and danger speak 'gainst so great a number?
How, in one house, should many people
under two commands hold amity?
- 'Tis hard, almost impossible.
- Why might not you, my lord,
receive attendance from those
that she calls servants, or from mine?
Why not, my lord? If then they chanced
to slack ye, we could control them.
If you will come to me,
for now I spy a danger,
I entreat you to bring but five-and-twenty.
To no more will I give place or notice.
- I gave you all!
- And in good time you gave it.
Made you my guardians, my depositaries,
but kept a reservation to be followed
with such a number!
What, must I come to you
with five-and-twenty?
- Regan, said you so?
- And speak't again, my lord.
No more with me.
Not to be worst
stands in some rank of praise.
I'll go with thee.
Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty,
and thou art twice her love.
Hear me, my lord.
What need you five-and-twenty,
ten, or five
to follow in a house where twice so many
have a command to tend you?
- What need one?
- O, reason not the need!
Our basest beggars
are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs?
Man's life's as cheap as beast's.
Thou art a lady.
If only to go warm were gorgeous.
Why, nature needs not
what thou gorgeous wear'st,
which scarce will keep thee warm.
But for true need...
O heavens,
give me that patience,
patience I need!
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
as full of grief as age,
wretched in both.
If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts
against their father,
fool me not so much to bear it tamely.
Touch me with noble anger,
and let not women's weapons, water drops,
stain my man's cheeks.
No, you unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both
that all the world shall...
I will do such things!
What they are yet I know not,
but they shall be the terrors of the earth.
You think I'll weep?
No, I'll not weep.
I have full cause for weeping,
but this heart shall break
into a hundred thousand flaws
or ere I'll weep!
O fool, I shall go mad!
Let us withdraw.
'Twill be a storm.
This house is little. The old man and
his people cannot be well bestowed.
'Tis his own blame. Hath put himself
from rest and must needs taste his folly.
For his particular, I'll receive him gladly,
but not one follower.
So am I purposed.
- The King is in high rage.
- Where is he going?
He calls to horse. Will I know not whither.
'Tis best to give him way.
He leads himself.
My lord, entreat him by no means to stay.
Alack, the night comes on
and the bleak winds do sorely ruffle.
For many miles about there's scarce a bush.
O, sir, to wilful men
the injuries that they themselves procure
must be their schoolmasters.
Shut up your doors.
He is attended with a desperate train,
and what they may incense him to, being apt
to have his ear abused, wisdom bids fear.
Shut up your doors, my lord.
'Tis a wild night.
My Regan counsels well.
Come out of the storm.
Who's there besides foul weather?
One minded like the weather, most unquietly.
- I know you. Where's the King?
- Contending against the fretful elements.
- Who is with him?
- None but the fool,
who labours to out-jest
his heart-struck injuries.
Sir, I do know you,
and dare, upon the warrant of my note
commend a dear thing to you.
There is division, for though as yet the face
of it be covered with mutual cunning,
'twixt Albany and Cornwall, who both
have servants who would seem no less,
which are to France the spies and
speculations intelligent of our state.
From France there comes a power
into this scattered kingdom. Now, sir, to you.
If on my credit you dare build so far,
go, make your speed to Dover,
you shall find those that will thank you,
making just report
of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow
the King hath cause to make complaint.
- I will speak further with you.
- No, do not.
For confirmation that I am
much more than my out-wall,
if you shall see Cordelia, as fear not
but you shall, show her this ring,
and she will tell you who that fellow is
that yet you do not know.
- Give me your hand.
- I will go seek the King.
Fie on this storm!
Blow, winds...
and crack your cheeks!
Rage!
Blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes,
spout till you have drenched our steeples,
drowned the cocks.
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
singe my white head.
And thou all-shaking thunder,
smite flat the thick rotundity o'the world,
crack Nature's moulds,
all germens spill at once
that make ingrateful man.
O nuncle, in.
Ask thy daughters' blessing.
This is a night pities
neither wise man nor fool.
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,
called you children.
You owe me no subscription.
Then let fall your horrible pleasure.
Here I stand, your slave,
a poor, infirm, weak
and despised old man.
And yet I call you servile ministers
that will, with two pernicious daughters,
join your high-engendered battles
'gainst a head as old and white as this.
O, ho! 'Tis foul!
He that has a house to put his 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 #
For there was never yet fair woman
but she made mouths in a glass.
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? Things that
love night love not such nights as these.
Let the great gods,
that keep this dreadful pudder o'er our heads
find out their enemies.
Now tremble, thou wretch
that hast within thee
undivulged crimes, unwhipped of justice.
Hide thee thou bloody hand,
thou perjured,
and thou art simular of virtue
that art incestuous.
Close pent-up guilts,
rive your concealing continents
and cry these dreadful summoners grace.
I am a man more sinned against than sinning.
Alack, bare-headed!
Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel.
Some friendship will it lend you
'gainst the tempest. Repose you there.
My wits begin to turn.
Come on, my boy.
How dost thou, boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself.
Where is this straw, my fellow?
The art of our necessities is strange
and can make vile things precious.
Come, your hovel. Poor knave and fool.
There's one part of my heart
that's sorry yet for thee.
# He that has and a little tiny wit
# With heigh-ho, heigh-ho
# The wind and the rain
must make content with his... #
Alack, alack, Edmund.
I like not this unnatural dealing.
When I desired their leave
that I might pity him,
they took from me
the use of mine own house,
charged me on pain of their perpetual
displeasure neither to speak of him,
entreat for him, or in any way sustain him.
- Most savage and unnatural!
- Go to. Say you nothing.
There is division between the dukes,
and a worse matter than that.
I have received a letter this night.
'Tis dangerous to be spoken.
He will lock the letter in my closet.
These injuries the King now bears
will be revenged home.
There is part of a power already footed.
We must incline to the King.
I will look him, and privily relieve him.
Go you, maintain talk with the Duke,
that my charity be not of him perceived.
If I die for it, as no less is threatened me,
the King my old master must be relieved.
There is strange things toward, Edmund.
Pray you... be careful.
This courtesy forbid thee
shall the Duke instantly know,
and of that letter too.
This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me
that which my father loses...
no less than all.
The younger rises when the old doth fall.
Here is the place, my lord.
Good my lord, enter.
The tyranny of the open night's too rough
for nature to endure.
- Let me alone.
- Good my lord, enter here.
- Wilt break my heart?
- I had rather break my own.
- Good my lord, enter.
- In, boy. Go first.
Nay, get thee in.
I'll pray and then I'll sleep.
Poor naked wretches,
whereso'er you are,
that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
how shall your houseless heads,
your unfed sides,
your looped and windowed 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,
that thou mayst shake the superflux to them
and show the heavens more just.
Fathom and a half,
fathom and a half!
- Help me, help me!
- Give me thy hand. Who's there?
A spirit, a spirit!
He says his name is Poor Tom.
What art thou that dost grumble there
i'the straw? Come forth.
Away!
The foul fiend follows me!
Through the sharp hawthorn
blows the cold wind.
Go to thy bed and warm thee.
Didst thou give all to thy daughters
and art come to this?
Who gives any thing to Poor Tom,
whom the foul fiend hath led
through fire and through flame,
through ford and whirlpool,
o'er bog and quagmire,
that hath laid knives under his pillow
and made him proud of heart, to ride on
a bay trotting-horse on a four-inch bridge?
Bless thy five wits! Tom's a-cold.
Bless thee from whirlwinds,
star-blasting and taking!
Do poor Tom some charity,
whom the foul fiend vexes.
There could I have him now,
and there again, and there!
What, has his daughters
brought him to this pass?
Couldst thou save nothing?
Wouldst thou give them all?
Nay, he reserved a blanket,
else we'd all been shamed.
Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air
hang fated o'er men's faults,
light on thy daughters!
- He hath no daughters, sir.
- Peace, traitor!
Nothing could have subdued nature
to such a lowness but his unkind daughters.
Is it the fashion for discarded fathers,
to have thus little mercy on their flesh?
Judicious punishment! 'Twas this flesh begot
those pelican daughters.
Pillicock sat on Pillicock Hill.
Alow, alow, loo, loo!
This cold night will turn us all
to fools and madmen.
Take heed o' the foul fiend!
Obey thy parents! Swear not!
Keep thy word's justice!
Commit not with man's sworn spouse.
Tom's a-cold.
What hast thou been?
A serving-man,
proud in heart and mind,
served the lust of my mistress' heart,
and did the act of darkness with her.
Keep thy foot out of brothels,
thy hand out of plackets,
thy pen from lenders' books,
and defy the foul fiend.
Still through the hawthorn
blows the cold wind...
Thou wert better in a grave
than to have answered
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,
the sheep no wool...
The cat no perfume.
There's three of us are sophisticated!
Thou art the... thing itself!
Unaccommodated man is no more
but such a poor, bare, forked...
animal as thou art.
Off, off, you lendings!
Unbutton here.
Prithee, nuncle, be contented!
'Tis a naughty night to swim in!
Look! There comes a fire walking.
Who's there?
This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet.
Aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!
- What is't you seek?
- What are you there? Your names?
Poor Tom, who eats the swimming frog,
the toad, the tadpole,
the wall-newt and the water.
What, hath your grace no better company?
The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
Modo he's called, and Mahu.
Our flesh and blood, my lord, is grown so vile
that it doth hate what gets it.
Poor Tom's a-cold.
Go in with me. My duty cannot suffer
to obey in all your daughters' hard commands.
Though their injunction be to bar my doors,
yet have I ventured to come and seek you out,
and bring you where
both fire and food is ready.
First let me speak a word
with this philosopher.
What is the cause... of thunder?
Good my lord, take his offer,
go into the house.
I'll speak a word with this same
learned Theban. What is your study?
How to prevent the fiend,
and to kill vermin.
Let me ask you one word...
in private.
His wits begin to unsettle.
Canst thou blame him?
His daughters seek his death.
I tell you, friend,
I am almost mad myself.
I had a son, now outlawed from my blood.
He sought my life, but lately, very late.
I loved him, friend,
no father his son dearer.
True to tell thee,
the grief hath crazed my wits.
What a night's this!
I do beseech your grace!
I cry you mercy, sir.
Good philosopher, your company.
Tom's a-cold.
In, fellow, there, into the hovel.
Keep thee warm.
- Come, let's in all.
- This way, my lord.
With him!
I will keep still with my philosopher.
- Good my lord, soothe him.
- Take him you on.
Sirrah, come on. Go along with us.
Come, good Athenian.
No words, no words! Hush!
Child Rowland to the dark tower came.
His word was still "Fie, foh, fum,
I smell the blood of a British man."
I will have my revenge
ere I depart his house.
This is the paper he spoke of,
which approves him
an intelligent party to the advantages
of France.
O heavens! That this treason were not,
or not I the detector!
How, my lord, I may be censured,
that nature thus gives way to loyalty,
something fears me to think of.
If the matter of this paper be certain,
you have mighty business in hand.
True or false, it hath made thee
Earl of Gloucester.
Seek out where thy father is,
that he may be ready for our apprehension.
I will persever in my course of loyalty,
though the conflict be sore
between that and my blood.
I will lay trust upon thee.
Thou shalt find a dearer father in my love.
Here is better than the open air.
Take it thankfully.
Frateretto calls me, and tells me
Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness.
I will piece out the comfort
with what addition I can.
- I will not be long from you.
- The gods reward your kindness!
Prithee, nuncle...
prithee.
Tell me whether a madman
be a yeoman or a gentleman?
A king, a king!
No! He's a yeoman
with a gentleman to his son.
To have a thousand with red burning spits
come hissing in upon 'em!
It shall be done.
I will arraign them straight.
Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer.
Thou, sapient sir, sit there.
- Now, you she-foxes!
- Look, where she stands and glares!
Want'st thou eyes at trial, madam?
# Come o'er the burn
Bessy come, to me
# Come o'er the burn
Bessy, to me #
# And she must not speak
# Why she dare not come over burn to thee #
Hoppendance cries in Tom's belly
for two white herring.
Croak not, black angel!
I have no food for thee.
- How do you, sir?
- Stand you not so amazed.
Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?
I'll see their trial first.
You are o' the commission.
Sit you too.
Let us deal justly.
Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?
- Pur, the cat is grey.
- Arraign her first. 'Tis Goneril!
I here take my oath before
this honourable assembly.
She kicked the poor King her father.
Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?
She cannot deny it.
Cry you mercy. I took you for a joint-stool.
Here's another, whose warped looks
proclaim what stone her heart is made of.
Stop her! There!
Sword, fire! Corruption in the place!
Thou false justicer,
why didst thou let her escape?
Bless thy five wits!
O pity! Sir, where is the patience now
that thou so oft have boasted to retain?
The little dogs and all?
Tray, Blanch, and Sweet-heart?
- See, they bark at me.
- Tom will throw his head at them.
Avaunt, you curs!
Poor Tom, thy horn is dry.
Then anatomize Regan,
see what breeds about her heart.
Is there any cause in nature
that makes these... hard... hearts?
You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred.
I do not like the fashion
of your garments.
You will say they are Persian
attire, but let them be changed.
Now, good my lord,
lie down and rest awhile.
Make no noise.
Make no noise.
Will you draw the curtains?
So...
So.
I'll go to supper in the morning.
And I'll go to bed at noon.
- Where is the King my master?
- Here, sir.
Good friend, I prithee,
take him in your arms.
Trouble him not. His wits are gone.
I have o'erheard a plot of death upon him.
There is a litter ready.
Lay him in't and drive towards Dover, friend,
where thou shalt meet both welcome
and protection. Take up thy master.
Oppressed nature sleeps.
This rest might yet have balmed
thy broken sinews,
which, if convenience will not allow,
stand in hard cure.
Come, come! Help to bear thy master.
Thou must not stay behind.
Who alone suffers,
suffers most i' the mind.
How light and portable my pain seems now,
when that which makes me bend
makes the King bow.
What more will hap tonight,
safe 'scape the King?
Lurk, lurk.
Come! Come away.
Agh!
This is a brave night to cool a courtesan.
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 burned, but wenches' suitors,
then shall the realm of Albion
come to great confusion.
When every case in law is right,
no squire in debt nor no poor knight,
when usurers share their gold i' the field,
and bawds and whores do churches build,
then comes the time, who lives to see't,
that going shall be used with feet...
Agh!
The army of France has landed.
How now, where's the King?
My lord of Gloucester
hath convey'd him hence.
Some five or six and thirty of his knights
are gone with him towards Dover,
where they boast to have well-armed friends.
Where is that traitor Gloucester?
Pinion him like a thief!
Hang him instantly!
Post speedily to my lord your husband.
Show him this letter.
Edmund, keep you our sister company.
The revenges we are bound to take
upon your traitorous father
are not fit for your beholding.
Farewell, dear sister.
Farewell, my lord of Gloucester.
- Farewell, sweet lord, and sister.
- Get horses for your mistress.
Edmund, farewell.
Who's there? The traitor!
Ingrateful fox!
- 'Tis he!
- Bind fast his corky arms.
What means your graces?
Good my friends, consider...
- Bind him, I say.
- Hard.
Hard!
O filthy traitor!
Unmerciful lady as you are, I am none.
To this chair bind him.
Villain, thou shalt find.
By the kind gods, 'tis most ignobly done
to pluck me by the beard.
So white... and such a traitor!
Naughty lady, these hairs
which thou dost ravish from my chin
will quicken, and accuse thee.
- What will you do?
- Come, sir,
what letters had you late from France?
Be simple answered,
for we know the truth.
And what confederacy have you
with the traitors late footed in the kingdom?
To whose hands have you sent
the lunatic King? Speak!
I have a letter guessingly set down,
that came from one that's of a neutral heart,
not from one opposed.
Cunning.
And false.
- Where hast thou sent the King?
- To Dover.
Wherefore to Dover?
Wast thou not charged at peril?
- Wherefore to Dover? Let him answer that.
- I am tied to the stake. I must stand the...
Wherefore to Dover?
Because I would not see thy cruel nails
pluck out his dear old eyes,
nor thy fierce sister
in his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs.
But I shall see
the winged vengeance o'ertake such children.
See't shalt thou never.
Fellows, hold the chair.
Upon these eyes of thine
I'll set my foot.
- One side will mock another, the other too.
- If you see Vengeance...
No! Hold your hand, my lord!
I have served you ever since I was a child,
but better service have I never done you
than now to bid you hold.
How now, you dog!
If you did wear a beard upon your chin
I would shake it on this quarrel.
- 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...
Lest it see more, prevent it.
Out, vile jelly!
- Where is thy lustre now?
- All dark and comfortless.
Where is my son Edmund?
Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature
to quit this horrid act.
Out, treacherous villain!
Thou call'st on him that hates thee.
It was he that made the overture of thy
treasons to us, who is too good to pity thee.
O my follies! Then Edgar was abused.
Go thrust him out at gates,
and let him smell his way to Dover.
- How is't, my lord? My lord, how look you?
- I have received a wound.
Turn out that eyeless villain!
Throw that slave on the dunghill!
I bleed apace.
Untimely comes this hurt.
Give me your arm.
Let's follow the old earl, and get the Bedlam
to lead him where he would.
Go thou. I'll fetch some flax and whites
of eggs to apply to his bleeding face.
Now, heaven, help him!
The lamentable change is from the best.
The worst returns to laughter.
- But who comes here?
- O, my good lord,
we have been your tenants and
your father's tenants these fourscore years.
Away! Get thee away! Good friend, be gone.
Thy comfort can do me no good at all.
Thee they may hurt.
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'd say I had eyes again.
World, world, oh, world!
That thy strange mutations make us
hate thee, life would not yield to age!
How now? Who's there?
'Tis poor mad Tom.
Fellow, where goest?
- Is it the beggar-man?
- Ay, 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.
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport.
- Bless thee, master!
- Is that the naked fellow?
- Ay, my lord.
- Then, prithee get thee away.
If for my sake thou shouldst
o'ertake us hence
a mile or twain on the road toward Dover,
do it for ancient love,
and bring some covering for this naked soul,
who I'll entreat to lead me.
Alack, sir, he is mad.
'Tis the time's plague
when madmen lead the blind.
I'll bring him the best 'parel that I have.
Come on't what will.
Sirrah!
- Naked fellow!
- Poor Tom's a-cold.
Bless thy sweet eyes...
they bleed.
Knowest thou the way to Dover?
Both stile and gate,
horse-way and foot-path.
- Here...
- So bless thee, master!
Here, take this purse. That I am wretched
makes thee the happier.
Heavens, deal so still!
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man
that slaves your ordinance,
that will not see because he doth not feel,
feel your power quickly!
So distribution should undo excess
and each man have enough.
- Dost thou know Dover?
- Ay, master.
There is a cliff whose high and bending head
looks fearfully in the confined deep.
Bring me but to the very brim of it.
From that place
I shall no leading need.
Give me thy arm.
Poor Tom shall lead thee.
Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once:
as Obidicut, Hobbididence, Mahu, Modo...
Welcome, my lord.
I marvel our mild husband
not met us on the way.
- Now, where's your master?
- Madam, 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, "'The worse."
Of Gloucester's treachery,
and of the loyal service of his son,
when I informed him, then he called me sot
and told me I had turn'd the wrong side out.
Then shall you go no further.
It is the cowish terror of his spirit
that dares not undertake.
He'll not feel wrongs
which tie him to an answer.
Our wishes on the way
may prove effects.
Back, Edmund, to my brother.
Hasten his musters and conduct his powers.
This trusty servant shall pass between us.
Ere long you are like to hear,
if you dare venture in your own behalf,
a mistress' command.
Wear this. Spare speech.
Decline your head.
This kiss, if it durst speak,
would stretch thy spirits up into the air.
- Conceive, and fare thee well.
- Yours in the ranks of death.
My most dear Gloucester!
O, the difference of man and a man!
To thee a woman's services are due.
A fool usurps my body.
- Madam, here comes my lord.
- I have been worth the whistling.
O Goneril, you are not worth the dust
which the rude wind blows in your face.
- I fear your disposition.
- No more. The text is foolish.
What have you done? Tigers, not daughters,
what have you performed?
A father, and a gracious aged man,
most barbarous, most degenerate,
have you madded.
If that the heavens do not
their visible spirits
send quickly down
to tame these vile offences, it will come.
Humanity must perforce prey on itself
like monsters of the deep.
Milk-livered man, that bears a cheek
for blows, a head for wrongs!
Where's thy drum? France spreads
his banners in our noiseless land,
whilst thou, a moral fool,
sits still and cries,
"Alack, why does he so?"
See thyself, devil!
Proper deformity seems not in the fiend
so horrid as in woman.
- O vain fool!
- Thou changed, self-covered thing!
Were't my fitness
to let these hands obey my blood,
they are apt enough to dislocate and tear
thy flesh and bones.
Marry, thy manhood! Mew!
- What news?
- My good lord, the Duke of Cornwall's dead,
slain by his servant, going to put out
the other eye of Gloucester.
- Gloucester's eyes?
- A servant that he bred,
bending his sword to his great master
who, thereat enraged,
flew on him, and amongst us felled him dead,
but not without that harmful stroke,
which since hath plucked him after.
This shows you are above,
you justicers,
that these our nether crimes
so speedily can venge!
But... O poor Gloucester!
Lost he his other eye?
Both, both, my lord.
This letter, madam, craves a speedy answer.
'Tis from your sister.
One way I like this well.
But being widowed,
and my Gloucester with her,
may all the building in my fancy
pluck upon my hateful life.
Another way, the news is not so tart.
I'll read, and answer.
Where was his son
when they did take his eyes?
- Come with thy lady hither.
- He is not here.
- No, my good lord. I met him back again.
- Knows he the wickedness?
Ay, my good lord.
'Twas he informed against him,
and quit the house on purpose, that their
punishment might have the freer course.
Come hither, friend.
Tell me what more thou know'st.
Alack... 'tis he!
Why, he was met even now
as mad as the vexed sea,
singing aloud,
crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
with hardokes, hemlock,
nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
darnel, and all the idle weeds
that grow in our sustaining corn.
What can man's wisdom
in the restoring his bereaved sense?
There is means, madam. Our foster-nurse
of nature is repose, the which he lacks.
A century send forth.
Search every acre of the high-grown field,
and bring him to our eye.
- But are my brother's powers set forth?
- Ay, madam.
- Himself in person there?
- Madam, with much ado.
Your sister is the better soldier.
- Lord Edmund spake not with your lord at home?
- No, madam.
What might import my sister's letter to him?
- I know not, lady.
- Faith, he is posted hence on serious matter.
It was great ignorance, Gloucester's eyes
being out, to let him live.
Where he arrives
he moves all hearts against us.
Edmund, I think, is gone,
in pity of his misery,
to dispatch his nighted life.
I must needs after him, madam, with my letter.
Why should she write to Edmund? Might not
you transport her purposes by word?
Belike some things, I know not what.
I'll love thee...
- Much... Let me unseal the letter.
- Madam, I had rather...
I know your lady does not love her husband.
I am sure of that.
I know you are of her bosom.
- I, madam?
- I speak in understanding.
Y'are, I know't.
Therefore I do advise you, take this note.
My lord is dead.
Edmund and I have... talked,
and more convenient is he for my hand
than for your lady's.
And so, fare you well.
If you do chance to hear of that blind traitor,
preferment falls on him that cuts him off.
Would I could meet him, madam!
- I should show what party I do follow.
- Fare thee well.
When shall I come to the
top of that same hill?
You do climb up it now. Look how we labour.
- Methinks the ground is even.
- Horrible steep.
- Hark, do you hear the sea?
- No, truly.
Why, then, your other senses
grow imperfect by your eyes' anguish.
- So may it be, indeed.
- Come on, sir.
Here's the place.
Stand still.
How fearful and dizzy 'tis,
to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs
that wing the midway air
show scarce so gross as beetles.
Half way down hangs...
one that gathers samphire,
dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.
The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,
appear like mice.
And yon tall anchoring bark,
diminished to her cock,
her cock, a buoy almost too small for sight.
The murmuring surge,
that on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,
cannot be heard so high.
Set me where you stand.
Give me your hand.
You are now within a foot
of the extreme verge.
Here, my friend, is a jewel
well worth a poor man's taking.
Go thou farther off. Bid me farewell
and let me hear thee going.
- Now fare ye well, good sir.
- With all my heart.
Why I do trifle thus with his despair
is done to cure it.
O you mighty gods!
This world I do renounce,
and in your sights
shake patiently my great affliction off.
If I could bear it longer
and not fall to quarrel
with thy great opposeless wills,
my snuff and loathed part of nature
should burn itself out.
If Edgar live, O bless him!
Now, fellow, fare thee well.
Gone, sir. Farewell.
Ho, you sir! Friend! Hear you, sir?
Speak!
Yet he revives.
- What are you, sir?
- Away, and let me die.
Hadst thou been aught but gossamer,
feathers, air,
so many fathoms down precipitating,
thou'dst shivered like an egg.
Ten masts at each make not the altitude
which thou hast perpendicularly fell.
Thy life's a miracle.
- Speak yet again.
- Yet have I fallen or no?
From the dread summit of this chalky bourn.
- Do but look up.
- Alack, I have no eyes.
Is wretchedness deprived that benefit,
to end itself by death?
Up. So. How is't?
Feel you your legs?
You stand.
- Too well, too well.
- This is above all strangeness.
Upon the crown o' the cliff,
what thing was that
which parted from you?
- A poor unfortunate beggar.
- As I stood here below,
methought his eyes
were two full moons.
He had a thousand noses,
horns welked and waved
like the enridged sea.
It was some fiend.
Therefore, thou happy father,
think that the clearest gods,
who make them honours
of men's impossibilities,
have here preserved thee.
I do remember now.
Henceforth I'll bear affliction
till it do cry out itself,
"Enough, enough," and die.
They cannot touch me for coining.
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!
No... no... A mouse!
Peace...
peace.
This piece of toasted cheese will do't.
There's my gauntlet.
I'll prove it on a giant.
O, well flown, bird!
In the clout, in the clout!
- Hewgh! Give the word.
- Sweet marjoram?
- Pass.
- I know that voice.
Goneril, with a white beard!
They flattered me like a dog.
To say "ay" and "no" to every thing I said!
When the rain came to wet me once,
and the wind to make me chatter,
and the thunder
would not peace at my bidding,
there I found 'em,
there I smelt them out.
Go to, they are not men of their words.
They told me I was everything.
'Tis a lie.
I am not ague-proof.
The trick of that voice
I well remember. 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?
Thou shalt not die.
Die for adultery? No.
The wren goes to't, the small gilded fly
does lecher in my sight.
Let copulation thrive,
for Gloucester's bastard son
was kinder to his father than my daughters
got between the lawful sheets.
To't, luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.
Behold yond simpering dame...
that minces virtue,
shakes the head
to hear of pleasure's name.
The fitchew, nor the soiled horse
goes to't with a more riotous appetite.
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
beneath... is all the fiends'.
There's hell, there's darkness,
there's the sulphurous pit,
there's burning, scalding...
consummation!
Fie, fie, fie!
Pah... Pah!
Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary.
Sweeten my imagination.
There's money for ye.
- O, let me kiss that hand!
- Let me wipe it first.
It smells of mortality.
O ruined piece of nature!
This great world will so wear out to naught.
- Dost thou know me?
- I remember thine eyes well enough.
Dost thou squiny at me? Read thou this
challenge you. Mark but the penning of it.
Were all the letters suns, I could not see.
- Read.
- What, with the case of eyes?
O, ho, are you there with me now? No eyes
in your head, nor no money in your purse?
Your eyes are in a heavy case,
your purse in a light.
- Yet you see how this world goes.
- I see it feelingly.
What, art mad?
A man may see
how this world goes with no eyes.
Look with your 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?
Thou hast seen a farmer's dog
bark at a beggar?
- Ay, sir.
- And the creature run from the cur?
There thou mightst behold
the great image of authority,
a dog's obeyed in office.
Through tattered clothes
small vices do appear.
Robes and furred gowns hide all.
None does offend.
None, I said, none!
Take that of me, my friend,
that have the power to
seal the accusers' lips.
Get thee glass eyes.
And like a scurvy politician seem
to see the things thou dost not.
Now, now! Now, now!
Pull off my boots.
Harder, harder! So.
I know thee well enough.
Thy name is Gloucester.
Thou must be patient.
We came crying hither.
Thou knowest the first time
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.
This is a good block.
It were a delicate stratagem to shoe
a troop of horse with felt. I'll put't in proof.
When I have stolen upon
these sons-in-laws, then...
Kill! Kill!
Kill! Kill!
- Kill!
- Ah, here he is. Lay hand upon him.
Sir, your most dear daughter...
No rescue? Am I a prisoner?
Use me well. You shall have ransom.
Let me have surgeons.
I am cut to the brains.
- You shall have any thing.
- No seconds? All myself?
I will die bravely.
Like a smug bridegroom.
I will be jovial.
I am a king, my masters, know you that?
You are a royal one.
We obey you.
Then there's life in't.
And you get it,
you shall get it by running!
- Do you hear aught, sir, of a battle toward?
- Most sure and certain.
But, by your favour,
how near's the other army?
- Near and on speedy foot.
- I thank you, sir. That's all.
You ever-gentle gods,
take my breath from me.
Let not my worser spirit tempt me again
to die before you please!
Well pray you, father.
I'll lead you to some biding.
Oh, hearty thanks!
The bounty and the benison of heaven!
A proclaimed prize!
Most happy!
Thou old, unhappy traitor,
briefly thyself remember.
The weapon is out
that must destroy thee.
Now let thy friendly hand
put strength enough to't.
Wherefore, bold peasant,
darest thou support a published traitor?
- Away! Let go his arm.
- 'Chill not let go without further 'cagion.
Let go, slave...
or thou diest!
Nay! You come not near the old man.
Keep out, che vor ye, or I 'ce try whether
your costard or my ballow be the harder.
- 'Chill be plain with you.
- Out, dunghill!
'Chill pick your teeth, sir,
no matter for your foins!
Slave, thou hast slain me.
Villain...
Take my purse.
If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body
and give the letters which thou find'st
about me to Edmund, Earl of Gloucester.
O, untimely death! Death...
- A serviceable villain.
- What, is he dead?
He's dead. I am only sorry he had
no other deathsman.
Let us see.
"Edmund,
"Let our reciprocal vows be remembered.
You have many opportunities to cut him off.
"There is nothing done, if he return
the conqueror. Then am I the prisoner,
"and his bed my gaol,
"from the loathed warmth whereof deliver me
and supply the place for your labour.
"Your wife, so I would say, Goneril."
A plot upon her virtuous husband's life...
and the exchange... my brother!
The King is mad.
How stiff is my vile sense
that I stand up
and have ingenious feelings
of my huge sorrows!
Better I were distract.
So should my thoughts
be severed from my griefs.
Give me thy hand.
Come, father.
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 o'er-paid.
- These weeds are memories of worser hours.
- Yet to be known shortens my made intent.
My boon I make it, that you know me not
till time and I think meet.
Then be't so, my good lord.
So please your majesty, that we may wake
the King? He hath slept long.
Be govern'd by your knowledge, and proceed.
Is he array'd?
Ay, madam. In the heaviness of sleep
we put fresh garments on him.
Be by, good madam,
when we do awake him.
Please you, draw near.
Come the music there!
O my dear father!
Let this kiss repair those violent harms
that my two sisters
have in thy reverence made!
Kind and dear princess!
Had you not been their father,
these white flakes did challenge pity of them.
Was this a face to be opposed
against the jarring winds?
Mine enemy's dog, though he hath bit me,
should have stood that night against my fire.
He wakes! Speak to him.
Madam, do you. 'Tis fittest.
How does my royal lord?
How fares your majesty?
You do me wrong to take me out o'the grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss,
but I am bound upon a wheel of fire,
that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.
- Sir...
- Hmm?
Do you know me?
You are a spirit, I know.
Where did you die?
- Still, still far wide!
- He's scarce awake. Let him alone awhile.
Where have I been? Where am I?
Fair daylight?
I am mightily abused.
I know not what to say.
I will not swear these are my hands.
Let's see.
I felt that pin-prick.
I would I were assured of my condition.
O look upon me, sir,
and raise your hands in benediction o'er me.
No, sir, you must not kneel.
I pray you, do not mock me.
I am a very foolish, fond old man,
fourscore and upward,
not an hour more nor less,
and, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you,
and know this man,
but I am doubtful, and I am mainly ignorant
of what place this is.
And all the skill I have
remembers not these garments.
Do not laugh at me,
for, as I am a man,
I think this lady to be my child Cordelia.
And so I am, I am.
Be your tears wet? Yes, faith!
I pray you, weep not.
I know you do not love me,
for your sisters have,
as I remember, done me wrong.
You have some cause. They have none.
No cause, no cause.
- Am I in France?
- In your own kingdom, sir.
- Do not abuse me.
- Be comforted, good madam.
The great rage, you see, is killed in him.
Desire him to go in.
Will't please your highness walk?
You must bear with me.
I pray you now,
forget... and forgive.
I am old and foolish.
'Tis time to look about. The powers
of the kingdom approach apace.
The arbitrement is like to be bloody.
Fare you well, sir.
My point and period will be throughly wrought,
or well or ill, as this day's battle's fought.
Know of the Duke if his last purpose hold?
He's full of alteration and self-reproving.
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, but then speak the truth.
- Do you not love my sister?
- In honoured love.
But have you never found my brother's way
to the forfended place?
That thought abuses you.
I am doubtful that you have been conjunct
and bosomed with her,
as far as we call hers.
No, by mine honour, madam.
I never shall endure her.
Dear my lord...
be not familiar with her.
Fear not.
I had rather lose the battle
than that sister should loosen him and me.
Our very loving sister, well be-met.
Sir.
This I heard.
The King is come to his daughter, with others
whom the rigour of our state forced to cry out.
Where I could not be honest,
I never yet was valiant.
For this business, it touches us
as France invades our land,
not bolds the King, with others, whom, I fear,
most just and heavy causes make oppose.
Sir, you speak nobly.
- Why is this reasoned?
- Combine together 'gainst the enemy.
For these domestic and particular broils
are not the question here.
Let's then determine
with the ancient of war on our proceeding.
I shall attend you presently at your tent.
Sister, you'll go with us.
No.
'Tis most convenient. Pray go with us.
I know the riddle.
I will go.
If e'er your grace had speech
with one so poor, hear me one word.
I'll overtake you. Speak.
Before you fight the battle, ope this letter.
If you have victory, let the trumpet sound
for him that brought it.
Wretched though I seem,
I can produce a champion
that will prove what is avouched here.
- Fortune love you.
- Stay till I have read the letter.
I was forbid it.
When time shall serve,
let but the herald cry
and I'll appear again.
Why, fare you well.
I will o'erlook thy paper.
- Your haste is urged upon you.
- We will greet the time.
To both these sisters have I sworn my love,
each jealous of the other,
as the stung are of the adder.
Which of them shall I take?
Both?
One?
Or neither?
Neither can be enjoyed if both remain alive.
Now, we'll use his countenance
for the battle, which being done,
let her who would be rid of him
devise his speedy taking off.
As for the mercy which he intends
to Lear and to Cordelia,
the battle done and they within our power,
shall never see his pardon.
Here, father,
take the shadow of this tree
for your good host.
If ever I return, I will bring you comfort.
Grace go with you, sir!
Pray that the right may thrive.
Away, old man!
Give me thy hand. Away!
King Lear hath lost,
he and his daughter ta'en.
- Give me thy hand. Come on.
- No farther, sir. A man may rot even here.
What, in ill thoughts again?
Men must endure their going hence...
even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all.
Give me thy hand, come on!
That's true too.
Good guard, until their greater pleasures
first be known that are to censure them.
We are not the first who with best meaning,
have incurred the worst.
For thee, oppressed King,
I am cast down.
Myself could else out-frown
false Fortune's frown.
Shall we not see these daughters
and these sisters?
No, no, no, no!
Come, let's away to prison.
We two alone shall sing
like birds i' the cage.
And when you ask me blessing
I'll kneel down
and ask of you forgiveness.
And 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 take upon us the mystery of things
as if we were God's spies.
Take them away.
Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
the gods themselves throw incense.
Have I caught thee?
He that parts us,
bring a brand from heaven
and fire us hence like foxes.
Wipe thine eyes.
Come.
Come hither, captain.
Hark. Take thou this note.
Go follow them to the prison.
One step have I advanced thee.
If thou dost as this instructs thee,
thou dost make thy way to noble fortunes.
To be tender-minded
does not become a sword.
I'll do't, my lord.
I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats.
If it be man's work, I'll do't.
Sir, you have shown today your valiant strain,
and Fortune led you well.
You have the captives who were
the opposites of this day's strife.
I do require them of you.
I thought it fit to send
the old and miserable King
to some retention and appointed guard.
With him I sent the Queen and they are ready
tomorrow or at further space
to appear where you shall hold your session.
Sir, by your patience,
I hold you but a subject of this war,
not as a brother.
That's as we list to grace him.
Methinks our pleasure might have
been demanded ere you had spoke so far.
He led our powers,
bore the commission of my place and person,
the which immediacy may well stand up
and call itself your brother.
Not so hot!
In his own grace he doth exalt himself
more than in your addition.
In my rights, by me invested,
he compeers the best.
That were the most were he to husband you.
Jesters do oft prove prophets.
Holla, holla! That eye that told you so
looked but asquint.
Lady...
I am not well, else I should answer
from a full-flowing stomach.
General, take thou my soldiers,
prisoners, patrimony.
Dispose of them, of me. The walls are thine.
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.
- Half-blooded fellow, yes.
Let the drum strike, and prove my title thine.
Stay yet, hear reason.
Edmund, I arrest thee on capital treason,
and, in thine attaint, this gilded serpent.
For your claim, fair sister,
I bar it in the interest of my wife.
'Tis she is sub-contracted to this lord.
If you will marry, make your loves to me.
My lady is bespoke.
An interlude!
Thou art arm'd, Gloucester.
Let the trumpet sound.
If none appear to prove upon thy person
thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons,
I will myself approve it.
- Sick...
- If not, I'll ne'er trust medicine.
What in the world he is
that names me traitor, villain-like he lies.
Call by the trumpet. He that dares approach,
on you, on him? Who not?
- I will maintain my truth and honour firmly.
- A herald!
- My sickness grows upon me.
- She is not well. Convey her to my tent.
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 Gloucester,
"that he is a manifold traitor,
"let him appear by the third sound
of the trumpet."
Again!
Again!
Ask him his purposes, why he appears
upon this call o' 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?
What's he that speaks
for Edmund, Earl of Gloucester?
Himself. What sayest thou to him?
Thou art a traitor...
false to thy gods,
thy brother, and thy father.
Say thou "no", thou liest.
Back do I toss these treasons to thy head.
This sword of mine
shall give them instant way
where they shall rest for ever.
Trumpets, speak!
No!
This is practise, Gloucester.
By the laws of war thou wast not bound
to answer an unknown opposite.
Thou art not vanquished,
but cozen'd and beguiled.
Thou, worse than any name,
read thine own evil.
No tearing, lady! I perceive you know it.
What, if I do? The laws are mine, not thine.
Who can arraign me for't?
Most monstrous! O!
Knowest thou this paper?
Ask me not what I know.
After her. She's desperate. Govern her.
What you have charged me with,
that have I done,
and more, much more.
The time will bring it out.
'Tis past, and so am I. But what art thou?
I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund.
My name is Edgar...
and thy father's son.
The gods are just,
and of our pleasant vices
make instruments to plague us.
'Tis true.
The wheel has come full circle.
I am here.
Where have you hid yourself? How have
you known the miseries of your father?
By nursing them, my lord.
List a brief tale.
The bloody proclamation to escape
that followed me so near
taught me to shift into a madman's rags,
and in this habit met I my father
with his bleeding rings,
their precious stones new lost.
I became his guide, led him,
begged for him, saved him from despair.
Never... O fault!
...revealed myself unto him until
some half-hour past, when I was armed.
I asked his blessing,
and first to last told him my pilgrimage,
but his flawed heart,
alack, too weak the conflict to support,
'twixt two extremes of passion,
joy and grief,
burst...
smilingly.
This tale of yours hath moved me,
and shall perchance do good.
If there be more, more woeful, hold it in.
Whilst I was big in clamour
came there in a man,
who once had seen me in my worst estate,
and finding who it was who so endured,
fastened on my neck
and bellowed out as he'd burst heaven,
threw him on my father,
told the most piteous tale of Lear and him
that ever ear received.
- But who was this?
- Kent, sir, the banished Kent.
- Help, help! O, help!
- What means that bloody knife?
'Tis hot, it smokes!
It came even from the heart of...
O, she's dead!
- Who dead? Speak, man.
- Your lady, sir, your lady!
And her sister by her is poisoned.
She confesses it.
I was contracted to them both.
All three now marry in an instant.
Here comes Kent.
Produce their bodies,
be they alive or dead.
Is this he?
I am come to bid my king and master
aye good night. Is he not here?
Speak, Edmund. Where's the King
and where's Cordelia?
See'st thou this object, Kent?
Alack, why thus?
Yet Edmund was beloved.
I pant for life.
Some good I mean to do
despite of mine own nature.
Quickly send!
Be brief in it, to the prison,
for my writ is on the life
of Lear and on Cordelia.
- Nay, send in time!
- Run, run! Go, run!
- Who has the office?
- Send thy token of reprieve.
Take my sword!
The captain, give it the captain.
The gods defend them.
Howl!
Howl!
Howl!
Howl...
O, you are men of stone!
Had I your tongues and eyes,
I'd 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.
Lend me a looking-glass.
If that her breaths do
mist or stain the stone,
why, then she lives.
- 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 that does redeem
all sorrows that ever I have felt.
- O my good master!
- Prithee, away.
- 'Tis noble Kent, your friend.
- 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 sayest?
Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low,
an excellent thing in woman.
I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee.
- 'Tis true, my lords, he did.
- Did I not, fellow?
I have seen the day,
with my good biting falchion
I would have made them skip.
I am old now
and these same crosses spoil me.
Who are you? Mine eyes are not of the best,
I tell you straight.
If Fortune brag of two she loved and hated,
one of them we behold.
This is a dull sight.
Are you not Kent?
The same, your servant Kent.
Where is your servant Caius?
Oh, he's a good fellow,
I tell you straight.
He'll strike, and quickly too.
He's dead and rotten.
- No, my good lord. I am the very man...
- I'll see that straight.
That, from your first of difference and decay
have followed your sad steps.
- You are welcome hither.
- No man else.
All's cheerless, dark, and deadly.
Your eldest daughters
have fordone themselves,
and desperately are dead.
Ay, so I think.
He knows not what he says,
but vain it is that we present us to him.
Very bootless.
Edmund, my lord, is dead.
What comforts to this...
great decay may come shall be applied.
For us we will resign,
during the life of this old majesty,
to him our absolute power.
All friends shall taste
the wages of their virtue,
and all foes the cup of their deservings.
See, see!
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'It 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 there...
- He faints! My lord, my lord!
- Break, heart, I prithee, break!
- 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.
He is gone, indeed.
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 weight of this sad time...
we must obey.
Speak what we feel,
not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most.
We that are young
shall never see so much,
nor live so long.