King Lear

by William Shakespeare

Love, and be silent

Then poor Cordelia! And yet not so, since I am sure my love’s More ponderous than my tongue.

LEAR So young, and so untender? CORDELIA So young, my lord, and true.

(To Gonerill and Regan) And your large speeches may your deeds approve That good effects may spring from words of love. – Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu; He’ll shape his old course in a country new.

Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor, Most choice, forsaken, and most loved, despised, Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.

Kenosis

REGAN ’Tis the infirmity of his age. Yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.

REGAN We shall further think of it. GONERILL We must do something, and i’th’heat.

The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself.

GLOUCESTER These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the 110 prediction: there’s son against father; the King falls from bias of nature: there’s father against child. We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollow- ness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us dis- quietly to our graves – find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully – and the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! His offence, honesty! ’Tis strange.

you, sir, you! Come you hither, sir. Who am I, sir? OSWALD My lady’s father. LEAR ‘My lady’s father’, my lord’s knave! You whoreson 80 dog! You slave! You cur!

And yet I would not be thee, nuncle. Thou hast pared thy wit o’both sides and left nothing i’the middle.

Now thou art an 0 without a figure.

LEAR Does any here know me? This is not Lear. Does Lear walk thus, speak thus? Where are his eyes? Either his notion weakens, his discernings Are lethargied – Ha! Waking? ’Tis not so! Who is it that can tell me who I am?

my old heart is cracked; it’s cracked.

Camelot

Poor Turlygod! Poor Tom!’ That’s something yet; Edgar I nothing am.