BEDLAM BEGGARS.

While I may 'scape,

I will preserve myself: and am bethought
To take the basest and most poorest shape,
That every penury, in contempt of man,
Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth;
Blanket my loins; 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 numb'd and mortified bare arms
Pins, wooden pricks,t nails, sprigs of rosemary;
And with this horrible object, from low farms,
Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills,
Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers,
Enforce their charity.

THE FAULTS OF INFIRMITY PARDONABLE.

Fiery? the fiery duke?-Tell the hot duke, that-
No, but not yet:-may be, he is not well:
Infirmity doth still neglect all office,

Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves,
When nature, being oppress'd, commands the miud
To suffer with the body: I'll forbear:
And am fallen out with my more headier will,
To take the indisposed and sickly fit

For the sound man.

UNKINDNESS.

Thy sister's naught: O, Regan, she hath tied Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture here. [Points to his heart

OFFENCES MISTAKEN.

All's not offence, that indiscretion finds, And dotage terms so.

RISING PASSION.

I pr'ythee, daughter, do not make me mad; I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell: We'll no more meet, no more see one another:—

* Hair thus knotted was supposed to be the work of elves and fairies in the night.

+ Skewers.

+ Curses.

But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter;
Or, rather, a disease that's in my flesh,
Which I must needs call mine; thou art a boil,
A plague sore, an embossed* carbuncle,

In my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee;
Let shame come when it will, I do not call it:
I do not bid thunder-bearer shoot,

Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove.

THE NECESSARIES OF LIFE FEW.

O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous:
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beast's.

LEAR ON THE INGRATITUDE OF HIS DAUGHTERS.

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! O 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 of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep: O, fool, I shall go mad!

WILFUL MEN.

O, sir, to wilful men,

The injuries, that they themselves procure,
Must be their schoolmasters.

ACT III.

LEAR'S DISTRESS IN THE STORM.

Kent. Where's the king?

Gent. Contending with the fretful elemen Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,

* Swelling.

Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main,

That things might change, or cease: tears his white

hair;

Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,
Catch in their fury, and make nothing of:
Strives in this little world of man to out-scorn
The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain.

This night, wherein the cab-drawn bear would couch,

The lion and the belly pinched wolf

Keep their fur dry, unbonnetted he runs,
And bids what will take all.

LEAR'S EXCLAMATIONS IN THE TEMPEST.

Blow, wind and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts, and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought-executing† fires

Vaunt couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thun der,

Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!

Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

Rumble thy bellyfull! 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, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription;§ why then let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, firm, weak, and despis'd old man:--
But yet I call you servile ministers,
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'

*

Whose dugs are drawn dry by its young.

† Quick as thought. + Avaunt couriers. French. Obedience

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,
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 pothers 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 simular‡ man of virtue
That art incestuous: Caitiff, to pieces shake,
'T'hat under covert and convenient seeming§
Has 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.

Kent.
Alack, bareheaded!
Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;

Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest.

*

Lear. Thou think'st 'tis much,that this contentious

storm

Invades us to the skin: so 'tis to thee;

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 raging 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:-
No, I will weep no more.-In such a night

† Blustering noise.
||Favour

Scare or frighten.

+ Counterfeit.

§ Appearance.

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.

Good, my lord, enter here. Lear. Pr'ythee, go in thyself; seek thine own case; 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, 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.

*

Enter EDGAR, disguised as a Madman. Edg. Away! the foul fiend follows me!-Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind.— Humph! go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.

Lear. Hast thou given all to thy two daughters? And art thou come to this?

Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air Hang fated o'er men's faults, light on thy daughters! Kent. He hath no daughters, sir.

Lear. Death, traitor! nothing could have subdu'd

nature

To such a lowness, but his unkind daughters.→
Is it the fashion, that discarded fathers
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh'