William Shakespeare, King Lear

 

William Shakespeare, King Lear, Arden 1997

 

Edmund: 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? (1.2.1-10) [curiosity – fastidiousness, over-refinement]

 

Edmund: This is the excellent foppery of the world, that

when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our

own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters the sun,

the moon and the stars, as if we were villains on

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

diving thrusting on. An admirable evasion of

whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the

charge of a star. My father compounded with my

mother under the drag’s tail and my nativity was

under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and

lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am had the

maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my

bastardizing.

                                 Enter Edgar

Pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy.

My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom

o’Bedlam. —O, these eclipses do portend these

divisions. Fa, sol, la, mi. (1.2.118-37) [whoremaster – given to lechery; Fut – abbreviating ‘Christ’s foot’ – Tom o’Bedlam – a name commonly taken by a beggar who claimed to have come from Bedlam; divisions – discords, and in music, variations on or accompaniment to a theme; Fa…mi – Edmund sings, as if unaware of Edgar’s approach, in order the fourth, fifth, sixth and third notes of the scale of C major, a discordant motto, Hunter suggests, appropriate to the character of Edmund]

 

Kent: That which ordinary men are fit for I am qualified in,

and the best of me is diligence. (1.4.34-5)

 

Fool: Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech.

Lear: Do.

Fool: 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.

Kent: This is nothing, fool.

Fool: Then ‘tis like the breath of an unfee’d, you

gave my nothing for’t. [to Lear] Can you make no use of

nothing, nuncle? (1.4.113-29)

 

Kent: Like rats oft bite the holy cords atwain

Which are too intricate t’unloose; … (2.2.72-3)

 

Fool: When a wise man gives thee better counsel give me

mine again; I would have none but knaves follow it,

since a fool gives it. (2.2.264-6)

 

Lear: 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. Why then, let fall

Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,

A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man. (3.2.14-20)

 

 

Lear: 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 similar of virtue

That art incestuous. Caitiff, to pieces shake, (3.2.49-55)

 

Fool: He that has and a little tiny wit,

With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain,

Must make content with his fortunes fit,

Though the rain it raineth every day. (3.2.74-7)

 

Edgar: When we our betters see bearing our woes,

We scarcely think our miseries our foes.

Who alone suffers, suffers most i’the mind,

Leaving free things and happy shows behind.

But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip,

When grief hath mates and bearing fellowship. (3.6.99-104)

 

Goneril: Pluck out his eyes!

Cornwall: Leave him to my displeasure. … (3.7.5-6)

 

Regan [to a Servant]: Go, thrust him out at gates and let him smell

His way to Dover. … (3.7.92-3)

 

Old Man: Alack, sir, you cannot see your way.

Gloucester: I have no way, and therefore want no eyes:

I stumbled when I saw. … (4.1.19-21)

 

Gloucester: As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,

They kill us for their sport. (4.1.38-9)

 

Gloucester: …Dost thou know Dover?

Edgar: Ay, master.

Gloucester: There is a cliff whose high and bending head

Looks fearfully in the confined deep:

Bring me but to the very brim of it,

And I’ll repair the misery thou dost bear

With something rich about me. From that place

I shall no leading need. (4.1.74-82)

)

Kent: O, then, it moved her?

Gentleman: Not to a rag; patience and sorrow strove

Who should express her goodliest. You have seen

Sunshine and rain at once, her smiles and tears

Were like a better way. Those happy smilets

That played on her ripe lip seemed not to know

What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence

As pearls from diamonds dropped. In brief,

Sorrow would be a rarity most beloved

If all could so become it. (4.3.15-24)

 

Cordelia: Alack, ‘tis he. Why, he was met even now

As mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud,

Crowned with rand fumiter, and furrow-weeds,

With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,

Darnel and all the idle weeds that grow

In our sustaining corn. … (4.4.1-6)

 

Gloucester (He kneels.) O you mighty gods,

This world I do renounce and in your sights

Shake patiently my great affliction off. (4.6.34-6)

 

Edgar: Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air,

So many fathom down precipitating,

Thoud’st shivered like an egg; but thou dost breathe,

Hast heavy substance, bleed’st not, speak’st, art sound.

Ten masts at each make not the altitude

Which thou hast perpendicularly fell.

Thy life’s a miracle. Speak yet again.

Gloucester: But have I fallen, or no?

Edgar: From the dread summit of this chalky bourn. (4.6.49-57)

 

Lear: Ha! Goneril with a white beard? They flattered

me like a dog and told me I had the white hairs in my

beard ere the black ones were there. To say ‘ay’ and ‘no’

to everything that I said ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to was no good

divinity. When the rain came to wet me one and the

wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not

peace at my bidding, there I found ‘em, there I smelt

‘em out. Go to, they are not men o’their words: they

told me I was everything; ‘tis a lie, I am not ague-proof. (4.6.96-104)

 

Lear: Give ma an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to

sweeten my imagination. There’s money for thee.

Gloucester: O, let me kiss that hand!

Lear: Le me wipe it first, it smells of mortality.

Gloucester: O ruined piece of nature, this great world

Shall so wear out to naught. Dost thou know me?

Lear: I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou

squiny at me? (4.6.126-33) [civet – perfume; squiny – squint]

 

Cordelia: …He wakes; speak to him.

Gentleman: Madam, so you; ‘tis fittest.

Cordelia: How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

Lear: 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.

Cordelia: Sir, do you know me?

Lear: You are a spirit, I know; where did you die? (4.7.42-50)

 

Lear: Pray, 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,

Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant

What place this is and all the skill I have

Remembers not these garments; nor I know not

Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me,

For, as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia. (4.7.59-69)

 

Lear: Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,

The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee? [Embraces her]

He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,

And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes;

The good years shall devour the, flesh and fell,

Ere they shall make us weep!

We’ll see ‘em starved first: come. (5.3.20-6)

 

Lear: 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? O thou’lt come no more

Never, never, never, never, never.

[to Edgar] Pray you undo this button. Thank you, sir.

O, o, o, o.

Do you see this? Look on her: look, her lips,

Look there, look there! He dies. (5.3.304-9)