King Lear
Act IV, Scene 4
The French camp near Dover. A tent.
Byam Shaw, 1901
- Enter, with Drum and Colors, Cordelia, Doctor, and Soldiers.
Cordelia
1 - 11- Alack, ’tis he! Why, he was met even now
- As mad as the vex’d sea, singing aloud,
- Crown’d with rank fumitor and furrow-weeds,
- With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flow’rs,
- Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
- In our sustaining corn. A century send forth;
- Search every acre in the high-grown field,
- And bring him to our eye.
- Exit an Officer.
- What can man’s wisdom
- In the restoring his bereaved sense?
- He that helps him take all my outward worth.
Doctor
12 - 16- There is means, madam.
- Our foster-nurse of nature is repose,
- The which he lacks; that to provoke in him
- Are many simples operative, whose power
- Will close the eye of anguish.
Cordelia
17 - 22- All blest secrets,
- All you unpublish’d virtues of the earth,
- Spring with my tears; be aidant and remediate
- In the good man’s distress! Seek, seek for him,
- Lest his ungovern’d rage dissolve the life
- That wants the means to lead it.
- Enter French Messenger.
French Messenger
23 - 24- News, madam!
- The British pow’rs are marching hitherward.
Cordelia
25 - 32- ’Tis known before; our preparation stands
- In expectation of them. O dear father,
- It is thy business that I go about;
- Therefore great France
- My mourning and importun’d tears hath pitied.
- No blown ambition doth our arms incite,
- But love, dear love, and our ag’d father’s right.
- Soon may I hear and see him!
- Exeunt.
From: The Flowers of Shakspeare
Viola, 1883