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Another Part of the Heath. Storm still. | |
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Enter LEAR and Fool. | |
| Lear. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! | |
| You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout | |
| Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! | 5 |
| You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, | |
| Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, | |
| Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, | |
| Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! | |
| Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once | 10 |
| That make ingrateful man! | |
| Fool. O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters’ blessing; here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool. | |
| Lear. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain! | |
| Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: | |
| I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; | 15 |
| I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children, | |
| You owe me no subscription: then, let fall | |
| Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, | |
| A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man. | |
| But yet I call you servile ministers, | 20 |
| That have with two pernicious daughters join’d | |
| Your high-engender’d battles ’gainst a head | |
| So old and white as this. O! O! ’tis foul. | |
Fool. 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. |
| The man that makes his toe |
| What he his heart should make, |
| Shall of a corn cry woe, |
| And turn his sleep to wake. |
| |
| For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass. | 25 |
| |
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. | 30 |
| 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, | |
| And make them keep their caves. Since I was man | |
| Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, | 35 |
| Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never | |
| Remember to have heard; man’s nature cannot carry | |
| The affliction nor the fear. | |
| Lear. Let the great gods, | |
| That keep this dreadful pother o’er our heads, | 40 |
| 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 simular of virtue | |
| That art incestuous; caitiff, to pieces shake, | 45 |
| That under covert and convenient seeming | |
| Hast practis’d on man’s life; close pent-up guilts, | |
| Rive your concealing continents, and cry | |
| These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man | |
| More sinn’d against than sinning. | 50 |
| Kent. 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 stone whereof ’tis rais’d,— | 55 |
| 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? | 60 |
| I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow? | |
| The art of our necessities is strange, | |
| That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel. | |
| Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart | |
| That’s sorry yet for thee. | 65 |
Fool. | He that has a little tiny wit, |
| With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, |
| Must make content with his fortunes fit, |
| Though the rain it raineth every day. |
| |
| Lear. True, my good boy. Come, bring us to this hovel. [Exeunt LEAR and KENT. | |
| Fool. This is a brave night to cool a courtezan. | |
| I’ll speak a prophecy ere I go: | |
| When priests are more in word than matter; | 70 |
| When brewers mar their malt with water; | |
| When nobles are their tailors’ tutors; | |
| No heretics burn’d, but wenches’ suitors; | |
| When every case in law is right; | |
| No squire in debt, nor no poor knight; | 75 |
| When slanders do not live in tongues; | |
| Nor cutpurses come not to throngs; | |
| When usurers tell their gold i’ the field; | |
| And bawds and whores do churches build; | |
| Then shall the realm of Albion | 80 |
| Come to great confusion: | |
| Then comes the time, who lives to see ’t, | |
| That going shall be us’d with feet. | |
| This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time. [Exit. | |
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