King Lear Page #11

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- Conceive, and fare thee well.

- Yours in the ranks of death.

My most dear Gloucester!

O, the difference of man and a man!

To thee a woman's services are due.

A fool usurps my body.

- Madam, here comes my lord.

- I have been worth the whistling.

O Goneril, you are not worth the dust

which the rude wind blows in your face.

- I fear your disposition.

- No more. The text is foolish.

What have you done? Tigers, not daughters,

what have you performed?

A father, and a gracious aged man,

most barbarous, most degenerate,

have you madded.

If that the heavens do not

their visible spirits

send quickly down

to tame these vile offences, it will come.

Humanity must perforce prey on itself

like monsters of the deep.

Milk-livered man, that bears a cheek

for blows, a head for wrongs!

Where's thy drum? France spreads

his banners in our noiseless land,

whilst thou, a moral fool,

sits still and cries,

"Alack, why does he so?"

See thyself, devil!

Proper deformity seems not in the fiend

so horrid as in woman.

- O vain fool!

- Thou changed, self-covered thing!

Were't my fitness

to let these hands obey my blood,

they are apt enough to dislocate and tear

thy flesh and bones.

Marry, thy manhood! Mew!

- What news?

- My good lord, the Duke of Cornwall's dead,

slain by his servant, going to put out

the other eye of Gloucester.

- Gloucester's eyes?

- A servant that he bred,

bending his sword to his great master

who, thereat enraged,

flew on him, and amongst us felled him dead,

but not without that harmful stroke,

which since hath plucked him after.

This shows you are above,

you justicers,

that these our nether crimes

so speedily can venge!

But... O poor Gloucester!

Lost he his other eye?

Both, both, my lord.

This letter, madam, craves a speedy answer.

'Tis from your sister.

One way I like this well.

But being widowed,

and my Gloucester with her,

may all the building in my fancy

pluck upon my hateful life.

Another way, the news is not so tart.

I'll read, and answer.

Where was his son

when they did take his eyes?

- Come with thy lady hither.

- He is not here.

- No, my good lord. I met him back again.

- Knows he the wickedness?

Ay, my good lord.

'Twas he informed against him,

and quit the house on purpose, that their

punishment might have the freer course.

Come hither, friend.

Tell me what more thou know'st.

Alack... 'tis he!

Why, he was met even now

as mad as the vexed sea,

singing aloud,

crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,

with hardokes, hemlock,

nettles, cuckoo-flowers,

darnel, and all the idle weeds

that grow in our sustaining corn.

What can man's wisdom

in the restoring his bereaved sense?

There is means, madam. Our foster-nurse

of nature is repose, the which he lacks.

A century send forth.

Search every acre of the high-grown field,

and bring him to our eye.

- But are my brother's powers set forth?

- Ay, madam.

- Himself in person there?

- Madam, with much ado.

Your sister is the better soldier.

- Lord Edmund spake not with your lord at home?

- No, madam.

What might import my sister's letter to him?

- I know not, lady.

- Faith, he is posted hence on serious matter.

It was great ignorance, Gloucester's eyes

being out, to let him live.

Where he arrives

he moves all hearts against us.

Edmund, I think, is gone,

in pity of his misery,

to dispatch his nighted life.

I must needs after him, madam, with my letter.

Why should she write to Edmund? Might not

you transport her purposes by word?

Belike some things, I know not what.

I'll love thee...

- Much... Let me unseal the letter.

- Madam, I had rather...

I know your lady does not love her husband.

I am sure of that.

I know you are of her bosom.

- I, madam?

- I speak in understanding.

Y'are, I know't.

Therefore I do advise you, take this note.

My lord is dead.

Edmund and I have... talked,

and more convenient is he for my hand

than for your lady's.

And so, fare you well.

If you do chance to hear of that blind traitor,

preferment falls on him that cuts him off.

Would I could meet him, madam!

- I should show what party I do follow.

- Fare thee well.

When shall I come to the

top of that same hill?

You do climb up it now. Look how we labour.

- Methinks the ground is even.

- Horrible steep.

- Hark, do you hear the sea?

- No, truly.

Why, then, your other senses

grow imperfect by your eyes' anguish.

- So may it be, indeed.

- Come on, sir.

Here's the place.

Stand still.

How fearful and dizzy 'tis,

to cast one's eyes so low!

The crows and choughs

that wing the midway air

show scarce so gross as beetles.

Half way down hangs...

one that gathers samphire,

dreadful trade!

Methinks he seems no bigger than his head.

The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,

appear like mice.

And yon tall anchoring bark,

diminished to her cock,

her cock, a buoy almost too small for sight.

The murmuring surge,

that on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,

cannot be heard so high.

Set me where you stand.

Give me your hand.

You are now within a foot

of the extreme verge.

Here, my friend, is a jewel

well worth a poor man's taking.

Go thou farther off. Bid me farewell

and let me hear thee going.

- Now fare ye well, good sir.

- With all my heart.

Why I do trifle thus with his despair

is done to cure it.

O you mighty gods!

This world I do renounce,

and in your sights

shake patiently my great affliction off.

If I could bear it longer

and not fall to quarrel

with thy great opposeless wills,

my snuff and loathed part of nature

should burn itself out.

If Edgar live, O bless him!

Now, fellow, fare thee well.

Gone, sir. Farewell.

Ho, you sir! Friend! Hear you, sir?

Speak!

Yet he revives.

- What are you, sir?

- Away, and let me die.

Hadst thou been aught but gossamer,

feathers, air,

so many fathoms down precipitating,

thou'dst shivered like an egg.

Ten masts at each make not the altitude

which thou hast perpendicularly fell.

Thy life's a miracle.

- Speak yet again.

- Yet have I fallen or no?

From the dread summit of this chalky bourn.

- Do but look up.

- Alack, I have no eyes.

Is wretchedness deprived that benefit,

to end itself by death?

Up. So. How is't?

Feel you your legs?

You stand.

- Too well, too well.

- This is above all strangeness.

Upon the crown o' the cliff,

what thing was that

which parted from you?

- A poor unfortunate beggar.

- As I stood here below,

methought his eyes

were two full moons.

He had a thousand noses,

horns welked and waved

like the enridged sea.

It was some fiend.

Therefore, thou happy father,

think that the clearest gods,

who make them honours

of men's impossibilities,

have here preserved thee.

I do remember now.

Henceforth I'll bear affliction

till it do cry out itself,

"Enough, enough," and die.

They cannot touch me for coining.

I am the King himself.

Nature's above art in that respect.

There's your press money.

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