| [Enter KING LEAR and Fool] | |
| KING 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! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once, 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. |
| KING 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, 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 despised 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! |
| Fool | He that has a house to put's 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. |
| KING LEAR | No, I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing. |
| [Enter KENT] | |
| 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, 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. |
| KING 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 perjured, and thou simular man of virtue That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake, That under covert and convenient seeming Hast practised 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, 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 'tis raised; Which even but now, demanding after you, Denied me to come in--return, and force Their scanted courtesy. |
| KING 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? 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. |
| Fool | [Singing] |
| He that has and a little tiny wit-- With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,-- Must make content with his fortunes fit, For the rain it raineth every day. |
|
| KING LEAR | True, my good boy. Come, bring us to this hovel. |
| [Exeunt KING 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; 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; 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 Come to great confusion: Then comes the time, who lives to see't, That going shall be used with feet. This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time. |
| [Exit] |