King Lear
| ACT III 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, | 5 | |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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: | 15 | |
| 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: | 20 | |
| 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 | 25 |
| head-piece. | ||
| The cod-piece that will house | ||
| Before the head has any, | ||
| The head and he shall louse; | ||
| So beggars marry many. | 30 | |
| 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 | 35 | |
| 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 | 40 |
| 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, | 45 | |
| 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, | 50 |
| 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 | 55 | |
| 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 | 60 | |
| 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– | 65 | |
| 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. | 70 |
| 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. | 75 | |
| 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,– | 80 | |
| 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: | 85 | |
| 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; | 90 | |
| 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; | 95 | |
| 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. | 100 | |
| [Exit] | ||
King Lear, Act 3, Scene 3