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Dramatis Personae
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/ Home / Library / Complete Shakespeare / King Lear / Act III Scene II
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King Lear: Act 3 Scene 2
Scene II Another part of the heath. Storm still.
- [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]
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