King Lear
Act III, Scene 6
A chamber in a farmhouse adjoining the castle.
Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend
Johann Heinrich Ramberg, 1829
- Enter Kent disguised as Caius and Gloucester.
Gloucester
1 - 3- 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
4 - 5- All the pow’r of his wits have given way to his impatience.
- The gods reward your kindness!
- Exit Gloucester.
- Enter Lear, Edgar, and Fool.
Edgar
6 - 7- Frateretto calls me, and tells me Nero is an angler in the
- lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend.
Fool
8 - 9- Prithee, nuncle, tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or
- a yeoman?
Lear
10- A king, a king!
Fool
11 - 12- No, he’s a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son; for he’s
- a mad yeoman that sees his son a gentleman before him.
Lear
13 - 14- To have a thousand with red burning spits
- Come hizzing in upon ’em—
Edgar
15- The foul fiend bites my back.
Fool
16 - 17- He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s
- health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.
Lear
18 - 20- It shall be done, I will arraign them straight.
- To Edgar.
- Come sit thou here, most learned justicer;
- To the Fool.
- Thou, sapient sir, sit here. Now, you she-foxes—
Edgar
21 - 23- Look where he stands and glares! Want’st thou eyes at trial,
- madam?
- Sings.
- “Come o’er the bourn, Bessy, to me”—
Fool
24 - 26- Sings.
- Her boat hath a leak,
- And she must not speak
- Why she dares not come over to thee.
Edgar
27 - 29- The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a
- nightingale. Hoppedance cries in Tom’s belly for two white
- herring. Croak not, black angel, I have no food for thee.
Kent
30 - 31- How do you, sir? Stand you not so amaz’d.
- Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?
Lear
32 - 37- I’ll see their trial first, bring in their evidence.
- To Edgar.
- Thou robed man of justice, take thy place,
- To the Fool.
- And thou, his yoke-fellow of equity,
- Bench by his side.
- To Kent.
- You are o’ th’ commission,
- Sit you too.
Edgar
38 - 43- Let us deal justly.
- Sings.
- Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?
- Thy sheep be in the corn,
- And for one blast of thy minikin mouth,
- Thy sheep shall take no harm.
- Purr the cat is grey.
Lear
44 - 46- Arraign her first, ’tis Goneril. I here take my oath before
- this honorable assembly, she kick’d the poor king her
- father.
Fool
47- Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?
Lear
48- She cannot deny it.
Fool
49- Cry you mercy, I took you for a join-stool.
Lear
50 - 53- And here’s another, whose warp’d looks proclaim
- What store her heart is made an. Stop her there!
- Arms, arms, sword, fire! Corruption in the place!
- False justicer, why hast thou let her scape?
Edgar
54- Bless thy five wits!
Kent
55 - 56- O pity! Sir, where is the patience now
- That you so oft have boasted to retain?
Edgar
57 - 58- Aside.
- My tears begin to take his part so much,
- They mar my counterfeiting.
Lear
59 - 60- The little dogs and all,
- Trey, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.
Edgar
61 - 71- Tom will throw his head at them. Avaunt, you curs!
- Be thy mouth or black or white,
- Tooth that poisons if it bite;
- Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim,
- Hound or spaniel, brach or lym,
- Or bobtail tike or trundle-tail,
- Tom will make him weep and wail,
- For with throwing thus my head,
- Dogs leapt the hatch, and all are fled.
- Do de, de, de. Sessa! Come, march to wakes and fairs and
- market towns. Poor Tom, thy horn is dry.
Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?
The Hireling Shepherd
William Holman Hunt, 1851
Lear
72 - 77- Then let them anatomize Regan; see what breeds about her
- heart. Is there any cause in nature that make these hard
- hearts?
- To Edgar.
- You, sir, I entertain for one of my hundred; only I do not
- like the fashion of your garments. You will say they are
- Persian, but let them be chang’d.
Kent
78- Now, good my lord, lie here and rest awhile.
Lear
79 - 80- Make no noise, make no noise, draw the curtains. So, so;
- we’ll go to supper i’ th’ morning.
Fool
81- And I’ll go to bed at noon.
- Enter Gloucester.
Gloucester
82- Come hither, friend; where is the King my master?
Kent
83- Here, sir, but trouble him not—his wits are gone.
Gloucester
84 - 93- Good friend, I prithee take him in thy arms;
- I have o’erheard a plot of death upon him.
- There is a litter ready, lay him in’t,
- And drive toward Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet
- Both welcome and protection. Take up thy master;
- If thou shouldst dally half an hour, his life,
- With thine and all that offer to defend him,
- Stand in assured loss. Take up, take up,
- And follow me, that will to some provision
- Give thee quick conduct.
Kent
94 - 99- Oppressed nature sleeps.
- This rest might yet have balm’d thy broken sinews,
- Which, if convenience will not allow,
- Stand in hard cure.
- To the Fool.
- Come help to bear thy master;
- Thou must not stay behind.
Gloucester
100- Come, come, away.
- Exeunt all but Edgar.
Edgar
101 - 114- When we our betters see bearing our woes,
- We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
- Who alone suffers, suffers most i’ th’ mind,
- Leaving free things and happy shows behind,
- But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip,
- When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.
- How light and portable my pain seems now,
- When that which makes me bend makes the King bow:
- He childed as I fathered! Tom, away!
- Mark the high noises, and thyself bewray
- When false opinion, whose wrong thoughts defile thee,
- In thy just proof repeals and reconciles thee.
- What will hap more tonight, safe scape the King!
- Lurk, lurk.
- Exit.
Byam Shaw, 1901