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King Lear: Act III, Scene 2

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King Lear
Act III, Scene 2

Another part of the heath.

King Lear and the fool

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!

King Lear and the fool

Pamela Colman Smith, circa 1890

  1. Storm still. Enter Lear and Fool.

Lear

1 - 9
  1. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
  2. You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
  3. Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
  4. You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
  5. Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
  6. Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
  7. Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world!
  8. Crack nature’s moulds, all germains spill at once
  9. That makes ingrateful man!

Fool

10 - 13
  1. O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than
  2. this rain-water out o’ door. Good nuncle, in, ask thy
  3. daughters blessing. Here’s a night pities neither wise men
  4. nor fools.

Lear

14 - 24
  1. Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain!
  2. Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
  3. I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
  4. I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children;
  5. You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
  6. Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
  7. A poor, infirm, weak, and despis’d old man;
  8. But yet I call you servile ministers,
  9. That will with two pernicious daughters join
  10. Your high-engender’d battles ’gainst a head
  11. So old and white as this. O, ho! ’Tis foul.

Fool

25 - 35
  1. He that has a house to put ’s head in has a good head-piece.
  2. The codpiece that will house
  3.                              Before the head has any,
  4. The head and he shall louse:
  5.                              So beggars marry many.
  6. The man that makes his toe
  7.                            What he his heart should make,
  8. Shall of a corn cry woe,
  9.                          And turn his sleep to wake.
  10. For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a
  11. glass.
  1. Enter Kent disguised as Caius.
Lear and the Fool

Lear and the Fool

Ary Scheffer, 1834

Lear

36 - 37
  1. No, I will be the pattern of all patience, I will say
  2. nothing.

Kent

38
  1. Who’s there?

Fool

39 - 40
  1. Marry, here’s grace and a codpiece—that’s a wise man and a
  2. fool.

Kent

41 - 48
  1. Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night
  2. Love not such nights as these. The wrathful skies
  3. Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,
  4. And make them keep their caves. Since I was man,
  5. Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
  6. Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
  7. Remember to have heard. Man’s nature cannot carry
  8. Th’ affliction nor the fear.

Lear

49 - 60
  1.                              Let the great gods,
  2. That keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads,
  3. Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch
  4. That hast within thee undivulged crimes
  5. Unwhipt of justice! Hide thee, thou bloody hand;
  6. Thou perjur’d, and thou simular of virtue
  7. That art incestuous! Caitiff, to pieces shake,
  8. That under covert and convenient seeming
  9. Has practic’d on man’s life! Close pent-up guilts,
  10. Rive your concealing continents, and cry
  11. These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
  12. More sinn’d against than sinning.

Kent

61 - 68
  1.                                   Alack, bare-headed?
  2. Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel,
  3. Some friendship will it lend you ’gainst the tempest.
  4. Repose you there, while I to this hard house
  5. (More harder than the stones whereof ’tis rais’d,
  6. Which even but now, demanding after you,
  7. Denied me to come in) return, and force
  8. Their scanted courtesy.
King Lear and the Fool in the Storm

King Lear and the Fool in the Storm

William Dyce, circa 1851

Lear

69 - 75
  1.                         My wits begin to turn.
  2. Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
  3. I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
  4. The art of our necessities is strange
  5. And can make vild things precious. Come, your hovel.
  6. Poor Fool and knave, I have one part in my heart
  7. That’s sorry yet for thee.

Fool

76 - 79
  1. Sings.
  2. “He that has and a little tiny wit—
  3. With heigh-ho, the wind and the rain—
  4. Must make content with his fortunes fit,
  5. Though the rain it raineth every day.”

Lear

80
  1. True, boy. Come bring us to this hovel.
  1. Exit with Kent.

Fool

81 - 97
  1. This is a brave night to cool a courtezan. I’ll speak a
  2. prophecy ere I go:
  3. When priests are more in word than matter;
  4. When brewers mar their malt with water;
  5. When nobles are their tailors’ tutors;
  6. No heretics burn’d, but wenches’ suitors;
  7. Then shall the realm of Albion
  8. Come to great confusion.
  9. When every case in law is right;
  10. No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;
  11. When slanders do not live in tongues;
  12. Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;
  13. When usurers tell their gold i’ th’ field,
  14. And bawds and whores do churches build;
  15. Then comes the time, who lives to see’t,
  16. That going shall be us’d with feet.
  17. This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time.
  1. Exit.

Byam Shaw, 1901

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