Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,

That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 't is foul!

Fool. He that has a house to put 's head in has a good headpiece.2

3

The cod-piece that will house,

Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse;
So beggars marry many.*
The man that makes his toe
What he his heart should make,
Shall of a corn cry woe,

And turn his sleep to wake 5

for there was

6

mouths in a glass.

never yet fair woman, but she made

Enter KENT.

Lear. No, I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

Kent. Who's there?

Fool. Marry, here's grace,' and a cod-piece; that 's a wise man, and a fool.

Kent. Alas, Sir! are you here? things that love night, Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,

1. That will join, for joining, in 5. That is, that you join.

2. Headpiece, helmet, and also, understanding.

3. Codpiece, a small bag anciently an appendage to men's breeches. This word is here used in antithesis to head-piece.

4. i. e. many beggars marry without having a house to put their heads in. The meaning of these four lines is, The head takes precedence of less noble parts of the body; if this natural order of things is reversed, the whole body will come to ruin and heggary.

If a man degrades, what should be his heart to be his toe, the consequence will be that he will be the more sensitive to the corn growing on his heart, than if it were only on his toe, and it will deprive him of sleep.

6. To make mouths, to make gri

And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,
Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
Remember to have heard: man's nature cannot carry
Th' affliction, nor the fear.1

Lear.

Let the great gods,

That keep this dreadful pother2. o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,

Unwhipp'd of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand;
Thou perjur'd, and thou simular3 of virtue
That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake,*
That under covert and convenient seeming 5
Hast practis'd on man's life: close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace."
More sinn'd against, than sinning.

Kent.

6

7 I am a mau,

Alack, bare-headed!

Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;

Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest:
Repose you there, while I to this hard house,
(More harder than the stones whereof 't is rais'd,
Which even but now, demanding after you,
Denied me to come in) return, and force

Their scanted courtesy.

Lear.

My wits begin to turn.

Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?9
The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious.

1. No human being can bear such affliction and such terror. 2. Pother, tumult.

3. Perjur'd, for perjurer, perjured man; simular, for simulator, feit.

4. i. e. shake to pieces with trembling.

Come, your hovel.

8. But now, just now, a short time

ago.

9. The word fellow is of very various application: here it means comcounter-panion, comrade; it also signifies an equal, one of the same kind; it may be used familiarly, expressive of fondness, esteem, or of contempt; a member of a college or society is called a fellow; it is also much used compounded with other words, as schoolfellow, bed-fellow, fellow-student, fellow-creature, &c.

5. Convenient seeming, decorous appearance.

6. Continent, that which contains. 7. To cry grace is to beg for pardon and forgiveness.

Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
That 's sorry yet for thee..

Fool.

hovel.

Lear.

He that has a little tiny wit,

With heigh, ho, the wind and the rain,
Must make content with his fortunes fit;1,
Though the rain it raineth every day.
True, my good boy.

Fool. This is a brave night
I'll speak a prophecy ere I go:

[Sings.

Come, bring us to this [Exeunt LEAR and KENT. to cool a courtezan.

When priests are more in word than matter;
When brewers mar their malt with water;
When nobles are their tailors' tutors;2
No heretics burn'd, but wenches' suitors:3
When every case in law is right;
No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;
When slanders do not live in tongues,
Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;4
When usurers tell their gold i' the field;
And bawds and whores do churches build;
Then shall the realm of Albion

Come to great confusion:

Then comes the time, who lives to see 't,
That going shall be us'd with feet.5

This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.

Gloster.

SCENE III.

A Room in GLOSTER'S Castle.

Enter GLOSTER and EDMUND.

[Exit.

Alack, alack! Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing. When I desired their leave that I might pity

1. Must make content fit with his fortunes. i. e. If a man has but a small portion of good sense, he will endeavour to be contented, whatever his fortunes may be.

2. Tutor is perhaps used here in the sense of guardian; not only the education and morals of the ward, or pupil, being under the care of the guardian, but also the property: the inference is plain.

3. To burn, besides its common mean- |

ing, signifies to be inflamed with lustful desires. When no heretics are burned (or, burn) but become suitors to modest maidens.

4. When thieves do not frequent crowds.

5. i. e. when we shall be used to walk upon feet.

6. Merlin was a British writer of the fifteenth century, to whom extravagant prophecies are ascribed.

him, they took from me the use of mine own house;1 charged me, on pain of their perpetual displeasure, neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain him. Edmund. Most savage, and unnatural!

Gloster. Go to; say you nothing. There is division between the dukes, and a worse matter than that. I have received a letter this night; 't is dangerous to be spoken; - I have locked the letter in my closet. These injuries the king now bears will be revenged home; 2 there is part of a power already footed: 3 we must incline to the king. I will seek him, and privily relieve him: go you, and maintain talk with the duke, that my charity be not of him perceived. If he ask for me, I am ill, and gone to bed. If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king, my old master, must be relieved. There is some strange thing toward, Edmund; pray you, be careful.

4

[Exit. Edmund. This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke

Instantly know; and of that letter too.

5

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.

[Exit.

SCENE IV.

A Part of the Heath, with a Hovel.

Enter LEAR, KENT, and Fool.

Kent. Here is the place, my lord; good my lord, enter: The tyranny of the open night 's too rough

For nature to endure.

[Storm still.

Wilt break my heart?

4. There is some unusual event coming, or near. See note 1, page 30.

5. i. e. although thou forbiddest, notwithstanding thy prohibition.

6. This will appear a good service, and must bring to me, &c.

7. Let me alone is not to be understood that he wishes to be left alone, but signifies: let me go my own way, 'do not interfere with me.

Kent. I'd rather break mine ow'n. Good my lord, enter. Lear. Thou think'st 't is much, that this contentious Invades us to the skin: so 't is to thee;

[storm

But where the greater malady is fix'd,

The lesser is scarce felt. Thou 'dst shun a bear;

But if thy flight lay toward the roaring sea,

Thou 'dst meet the bear 'i the mouth. When the mind 's

free,

The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling else,
Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!
Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand
For lifting food to 't? But I will punish home.1
No, I will weep no more. In such a night
To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure:
In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,
O! that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.

Kent,

2

Good my lord, enter here.

Lear. Prythee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease: This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in: In, boy; go first. [To the Fool.] You houseless poverty, Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

[Fool goes in.

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides,

Your loop'd and window'd raggedness,3 defend you
From seasons such as these? O! I have ta'en
Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou may'st shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

Edgar. [Within.] Fathom and half, fathom and half!* Poor Tom! [The Fool runs out from the hovel.

1. See notes 2, page 31, and 2, page 57.

2. i. e. If I allow my thoughts to dwell upon that subject, I shall go mad.

3. Your ragged clothes full of holes.

4. A fathom is six feet, or as far as a man can measure by stretching out both arms; the depth of the sea is measured by fathoms. Edgar speaks as if he were a seaman sounding the depth of the sea.