L. 3 E.
Lear.
Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! (wind) rage! (wind) blow! (rain)
You cataracts, and hurricanoes spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples,
(lightning)
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt—couriers to oak-cleaving thunder-bolts,
Singe my white head! (thunder) And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, all germins spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!
(storm)
Fool.
Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters' blessing;
here's a night pities neither wise men nor fools.
-- 46 --
Lear.
Rumble thy bellyfull! (lightning) Spit, fire! (rain) 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; then, let fall
Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man:—
(thunder)
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! 'tis foul!
(storm)
Fool.
He that has a house to put his head in, has a good
head-piece.
Enter Kent, R. U. E.
Lear.
No, I will be the pattern of all patience, I will
say nothing—nothing.
(kneels, C.)
(storm)
Kent.
Who's there?
Fool.
Marry, 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,
And make them keep their caves: (storm) 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.
(violent thunder—then, only lightning)
Lear.
Let the great gods,
That keep this dreadful pother 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 simuler of virtue
That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake,
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,
-- 47 --
More sinn'd against, than sinning.
(thunder, wind, and rain)
Kent. (R.)
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 hard than is the stone whereof 'tis rais'd;
Which even but now, demanding after you,
Denied me to come in,) return and force
Their scanted courtesy.
(thunder and rain)
Lear. (C.)
My wits begin to turn.—
Come on, my boy; (to Fool) How dost, my boy? Art cold?
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.
(leaning his arms on their shoulders)
Fool. (L., sings)
He that has a little tiny wit,—
(shivering)
With heigh, ho, the wind and the rain.—
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
For the rain it raineth every day.
Lear.
True, my good boy. Come, bring us to this hovel.
Exeunt Lear, supported by Kent and Fool, R.
William Macready [1857], King Lear. A Tragedy, in five acts, by William Shakespeare (Thomas Hailes Lacy [etc.], London) [word count] [S41000].
