King Lear Page #14

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Jesters do oft prove prophets.

Holla, holla! That eye that told you so

looked but asquint.

Lady...

I am not well, else I should answer

from a full-flowing stomach.

General, take thou my soldiers,

prisoners, patrimony.

Dispose of them, of me. The walls are thine.

Witness the world

that I create thee here

my lord and master.

- Mean you to enjoy him?

- The let-alone lies not in your good will.

- Nor in thine, lord.

- Half-blooded fellow, yes.

Let the drum strike, and prove my title thine.

Stay yet, hear reason.

Edmund, I arrest thee on capital treason,

and, in thine attaint, this gilded serpent.

For your claim, fair sister,

I bar it in the interest of my wife.

'Tis she is sub-contracted to this lord.

If you will marry, make your loves to me.

My lady is bespoke.

An interlude!

Thou art arm'd, Gloucester.

Let the trumpet sound.

If none appear to prove upon thy person

thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons,

I will myself approve it.

- Sick...

- If not, I'll ne'er trust medicine.

What in the world he is

that names me traitor, villain-like he lies.

Call by the trumpet. He that dares approach,

on you, on him? Who not?

- I will maintain my truth and honour firmly.

- A herald!

- My sickness grows upon me.

- She is not well. Convey her to my tent.

Come hither, herald.

Let the trumpet sound, and read out this.

"If any man of quality or degree

within the lists of the army

"will maintain upon Edmund,

supposed Earl of Gloucester,

"that he is a manifold traitor,

"let him appear by the third sound

of the trumpet."

Again!

Again!

Ask him his purposes, why he appears

upon this call o' the trumpet.

What are you?

Your name, your quality, and why

you answer this present summons?

Know, my name is lost,

by treason's tooth bare-gnawn

and canker-bit.

Yet am I noble as the adversary

I come to cope.

Which is that adversary?

What's he that speaks

for Edmund, Earl of Gloucester?

Himself. What sayest thou to him?

Thou art a traitor...

false to thy gods,

thy brother, and thy father.

Say thou "no", thou liest.

Back do I toss these treasons to thy head.

This sword of mine

shall give them instant way

where they shall rest for ever.

Trumpets, speak!

No!

This is practise, Gloucester.

By the laws of war thou wast not bound

to answer an unknown opposite.

Thou art not vanquished,

but cozen'd and beguiled.

Thou, worse than any name,

read thine own evil.

No tearing, lady! I perceive you know it.

What, if I do? The laws are mine, not thine.

Who can arraign me for't?

Most monstrous! O!

Knowest thou this paper?

Ask me not what I know.

After her. She's desperate. Govern her.

What you have charged me with,

that have I done,

and more, much more.

The time will bring it out.

'Tis past, and so am I. But what art thou?

I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund.

My name is Edgar...

and thy father's son.

The gods are just,

and of our pleasant vices

make instruments to plague us.

'Tis true.

The wheel has come full circle.

I am here.

Where have you hid yourself? How have

you known the miseries of your father?

By nursing them, my lord.

List a brief tale.

The bloody proclamation to escape

that followed me so near

taught me to shift into a madman's rags,

and in this habit met I my father

with his bleeding rings,

their precious stones new lost.

I became his guide, led him,

begged for him, saved him from despair.

Never... O fault!

...revealed myself unto him until

some half-hour past, when I was armed.

I asked his blessing,

and first to last told him my pilgrimage,

but his flawed heart,

alack, too weak the conflict to support,

'twixt two extremes of passion,

joy and grief,

burst...

smilingly.

This tale of yours hath moved me,

and shall perchance do good.

If there be more, more woeful, hold it in.

Whilst I was big in clamour

came there in a man,

who once had seen me in my worst estate,

and finding who it was who so endured,

fastened on my neck

and bellowed out as he'd burst heaven,

threw him on my father,

told the most piteous tale of Lear and him

that ever ear received.

- But who was this?

- Kent, sir, the banished Kent.

- Help, help! O, help!

- What means that bloody knife?

'Tis hot, it smokes!

It came even from the heart of...

O, she's dead!

- Who dead? Speak, man.

- Your lady, sir, your lady!

And her sister by her is poisoned.

She confesses it.

I was contracted to them both.

All three now marry in an instant.

Here comes Kent.

Produce their bodies,

be they alive or dead.

Is this he?

I am come to bid my king and master

aye good night. Is he not here?

Speak, Edmund. Where's the King

and where's Cordelia?

See'st thou this object, Kent?

Alack, why thus?

Yet Edmund was beloved.

I pant for life.

Some good I mean to do

despite of mine own nature.

Quickly send!

Be brief in it, to the prison,

for my writ is on the life

of Lear and on Cordelia.

- Nay, send in time!

- Run, run! Go, run!

- Who has the office?

- Send thy token of reprieve.

Take my sword!

The captain, give it the captain.

The gods defend them.

Howl!

Howl!

Howl!

Howl...

O, you are men of stone!

Had I your tongues and eyes,

I'd use them

so that heaven's vault should crack.

She's gone for ever.

I know when one is dead,

and when one lives.

She's dead as earth.

Lend me a looking-glass.

If that her breaths do

mist or stain the stone,

why, then she lives.

- Is this the promised end?

- Or image of that horror?

- Fall, and cease!

- This feather stirs, she lives!

If it be so, it is a chance that does redeem

all sorrows that ever I have felt.

- O my good master!

- Prithee, away.

- 'Tis noble Kent, your friend.

- A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!

I might have saved her.

Now she's gone for ever.

Cordelia...

Cordelia...

Stay a little...

What is't thou sayest?

Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low,

an excellent thing in woman.

I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee.

- 'Tis true, my lords, he did.

- Did I not, fellow?

I have seen the day,

with my good biting falchion

I would have made them skip.

I am old now

and these same crosses spoil me.

Who are you? Mine eyes are not of the best,

I tell you straight.

If Fortune brag of two she loved and hated,

one of them we behold.

This is a dull sight.

Are you not Kent?

The same, your servant Kent.

Where is your servant Caius?

Oh, he's a good fellow,

I tell you straight.

He'll strike, and quickly too.

He's dead and rotten.

- No, my good lord. I am the very man...

- I'll see that straight.

That, from your first of difference and decay

have followed your sad steps.

- You are welcome hither.

- No man else.

All's cheerless, dark, and deadly.

Your eldest daughters

have fordone themselves,

and desperately are dead.

Ay, so I think.

He knows not what he says,

but vain it is that we present us to him.

Very bootless.

Edmund, my lord, is dead.

What comforts to this...

great decay may come shall be applied.

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