Lear

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!

Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,

That makes ingrateful man!

Fool

O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house is better than this rain-water out o' door. Good nuncle, in, ask thy daughters blessing: here's a night pities neither wise men nor fools.

Lear

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:

I tax not you, you elements with unkindness;

I never gave you kingdom, called you children,

You owe me no subscription: then let fall

Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave,

A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:

But yet I call you servile ministers,

That will with two pernicious daughters join

Your high-engendered battles 'gainst a head

So old and white as this. O, ho! 'tis foul!

Fool

He that has a house to put's head in has a good head-piece. For there was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

Lear

No, I will be the pattern of all patience;

I will say nothing. Enter KENT.

Kent

Who's there?

Fool

Marry, here's grace and a codpiece; that's a wise man and a fool.

Kent

Alas, sir, are you here? things that love night

Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies

Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,

And make them keep their caves: since I was man,

Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,

Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never

Remember to have heard: man's nature cannot carry

The affliction nor the fear.

Lear

Let the great gods,

That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,

Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,

That hast within thee undivulged crimes,

Unwhipped of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand;

Thou perjured, and thou simular of virtue

That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake,

That under covert and convenient seeming

Has practised on man's life: close pent-up guilts,

Rive your concealing continents, and cry

These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man

More sinned against than sinning.

Kent

Alack, bareheaded!

Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;

Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest:

Repose you there; while I to this hard house —

More harder than the stones whereof 'tis raised;

Which even but now, demanding after you,

Denied me to come in — return, and force

Their scanted courtesy.

Lear

My wits begin to turn.

Come on, my boy: how dost, my boy? art cold?

I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?

The art of our necessities is strange,

And can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.

Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart

That's sorry yet for thee.

Fool

Lear

True, boy. Come, bring us to this hovel. Exeunt Lear and Kent.

Fool

This is a brave night to cool a courtezan. I'll speak a prophecy ere I go: This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.