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King Lear: Act IV, Scene 4

King Lear
Act IV, Scene 4

The French camp near Dover. A tent.

  1. Enter, with Drum and Colors, Cordelia, Doctor, and Soldiers.

Cordelia

1 - 11
  1. Alack, ’tis he! Why, he was met even now
  2. As mad as the vex’d sea, singing aloud,
  3. Crown’d with rank fumitor and furrow-weeds,
  4. With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flow’rs,
  5. Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
  6. In our sustaining corn. A century send forth;
  7. Search every acre in the high-grown field,
  8. And bring him to our eye.
  9. Exit an Officer.
  10.                           What can man’s wisdom
  11. In the restoring his bereaved sense?
  12. He that helps him take all my outward worth.

Doctor

12 - 16
  1. There is means, madam.
  2. Our foster-nurse of nature is repose,
  3. The which he lacks; that to provoke in him
  4. Are many simples operative, whose power
  5. Will close the eye of anguish.

Cordelia

17 - 22
  1.                                All blest secrets,
  2. All you unpublish’d virtues of the earth,
  3. Spring with my tears; be aidant and remediate
  4. In the good man’s distress! Seek, seek for him,
  5. Lest his ungovern’d rage dissolve the life
  6. That wants the means to lead it.
  1. Enter French Messenger.

French Messenger

23 - 24
  1.                                  News, madam!
  2. The British pow’rs are marching hitherward.

Cordelia

25 - 32
  1. ’Tis known before; our preparation stands
  2. In expectation of them. O dear father,
  3. It is thy business that I go about;
  4. Therefore great France
  5. My mourning and importun’d tears hath pitied.
  6. No blown ambition doth our arms incite,
  7. But love, dear love, and our ag’d father’s right.
  8. Soon may I hear and see him!
  1. Exeunt.
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