A chamber in a farmhouse adjoining the castle.Enter Gloucester, Lear, Kent, Fool, and Edgar. Gloucester. Here is better than the open air; take it thankfully. I will piece out the comfort with what addition I can: I will not be long from you.Kent. All the power of his wits have given way to his impatience: […]

Gloucester’s castle.Enter Cornwall and Edmund. Cornwall. I will have my revenge ere I depart his house.Edmund. How, my lord, I may be censured, that nature thus gives way to loyalty, something fears me to think of.Cornwall. I now perceive, it was not altogether your brother’s evil disposition made him seek his death; but a provoking

The heath. Before a hovel.Enter Lear, Kent, and Fool. Kent. Here is the place, my lord; good my lord, enter:The tyranny of the open night’s too roughFor nature to endure. [Storm still.Lear. Let me alone.Kent. Good my lord, enter here.Lear. Wilt break my heart?Kent. I had rather break mine own. Good my lord, enter.Lear. Thou

Gloucester’s castle.Enter Gloucester and Edmund. Gloucester. Alack, alack, Edmund, I like not this unnatural dealing. When I desired their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house; charged me, on pain of their perpetual displeasure, neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain

Another part of the heath. Storm still.Enter Lear and Fool. Lear. Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!You cataracts and hurricanoes, spoutTill you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!Crack nature’s moulds, all

A heath.Storm still. Enter Kent and a Gentleman, meeting. Kent. Who’s there, besides foul weather?Gentleman. One minded like the weather, most unquietly.Kent. I know you. Where’s the king?Gentleman. Contending with the fretful element;Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea,Or swell the curled waters ’bove the main,That things might change or cease; tears his

Before Gloucester’s castle. Kent in the stocks.Enter Lear, Fool, and Gentleman.Lear. ’Tis strange that they should so depart from home,And not send back my messenger.Gentleman. As I learn’d,The night before there was no purpose in themOf this remove.Kent. Hail to thee, noble master!Lear. Ha! Makest thou this shame thy pastime?Kent. No, my lord.Fool. Ha, ha!

A wood.Enter Edgar. Edgar. I heard myself proclaim’d;And by the happy hollow of a treeEscaped the hunt. No port is free; no place,That guard, and most unusual vigilance,Does not attend my taking. Whiles I may ’scape,I will preserve myself; and am bethoughtTo take the basest and most poorest shapeThat ever penury, in contempt of man,Brought

Before Gloucester’s castle.Enter Kent and Oswald severally. Oswald. Good dawning to thee, friend: art of this house?Kent. Ay.Oswald. Where may we set our horses?Kent. I’ the mire.Oswald. Prithee, if thou lovest me, tell me.Kent. I love thee not.Oswald. Why, then, I care not for thee.Kent. If I had thee in Lipsbury pinfold, I would make

The Earl of Gloucester’s castle.Enter Edmund, and Curan meets him. Edmund. Save thee, Curan.Curan. And you, sir. I have been with your father, andgiven him notice that the Duke of Cornwall and Regan his duchess will be here with him this night.Edmund. How comes that?Curan. Nay, I know not. You have heard of the news

Court before the same.Enter Lear, Kent, and Fool. Lear. Go you before to Gloucester with these letters. Acquaint my daughter no further with any thing you know than comes from her demand out of the letter. If your diligence be not speedy, I shall be there afore you.Kent. I will not sleep, my lord, till

A hall in the same.Enter Kent, disguised. Kent. If but as well I other accents borrow,That can my speech defuse, my good intentMay carry through itself to that full issueFor which I razed my likeness. Now, banish’d Kent,If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn’d,So may it come, thy master, whom thou lovest,Shall find

The Duke of Albany’s palace.Enter Goneril, and Oswald, her steward. Goneril. Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool?Oswald. Yes, madam.Goneril. By day and night he wrongs me: every hourHe flashes into one gross crime or other,That sets us all at odds: I ’ll not endure it:His knights grow riotous, and himself

The Earl of Gloucester’s castle.Enter Edmund, with a letter. Edmund. Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy lawMy services are bound. Wherefore should IStand in the plague of custom, and permitThe curiosity of nations to deprive me.For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshinesLag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?When my dimensions are

King Lear’s palace.Enter Kent, Gloucester, and Edmund. Kent. I thought the king had more affected the Duke ofAlbany than Cornwall.Gloucester. It did always seem so to us: but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most; for equalities are so weighed, that curiosity in neither can