Original Text |
Translated Text |
| Source: Folger Shakespeare Library |
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Storm still. Enter Lear and Fool. LEAR
Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the
cocks.
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires, 5
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head. And thou, all-shaking
thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world.
Crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once 10
That makes ingrateful man. | This scene opens with an iconic image: Lear, a white-haired man, stands on a heath in the middle of a thunderstorm yelling at the sky. It's the image used on many a book cover. |
FOOL O nuncle, court holy water in a dry house is
better than this rainwater out o’ door. Good nuncle,
in. Ask thy daughters’ blessing. Here’s a night
pities neither wise men nor fools. 15 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 20
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 25
So old and white as this. O, ho, ’tis foul! FOOL He that has a house to put ’s head in has a good
headpiece.
The codpiece that will house
Before the head has any, 30
The head and he shall louse;
So beggars marry many.
The man that makes his toe
What he his heart should make,
Shall of a corn cry woe, 35
And turn his sleep to wake.
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. 40 | The Fool begs Lear to go back to his daughters for shelter, but the King refuses; he would rather face the relentless elements than his ungrateful children. He never gave the weather his kingdom, so he can't fault nature for mistreating him. His kids on the other hand... |
Enter Kent in disguise. 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 45
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 50
Th’ affliction nor the fear. | Kent shows up, still disguised, and tells Lear he has to find shelter. This is the worst storm Kent's ever seen. Ever. |
LEAR Let the great gods
That keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulgèd crimes 55
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 practiced on man’s life. Close pent-up guilts, 60
Rive your concealing continents and cry
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinned against than sinning. | Lear keeps yelling into the wind. He calls for the storm to reveal all the crimes people have committed, kind of like the way strong winds strip away tree limbs and soil. He wants the storm to uncover everyone who's been unvirtuous, and he says if that happens it will be clear that he's been more of a victim here than a perpetrator. |
KENT Alack,
bareheaded? 65
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, 70
Denied me to come in—return and force
Their scanted courtesy. | Finally, Kent manages to maneuver him towards a hovel that will provide some shelter against the rain. He says that while Lear rests in the hovel, he'll go back and demand shelter from Lear's daughters again—even though they're so hard-headed they wouldn't even answer the door last time he knocked. |
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? 75
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. 80 | Lear admits that he's beginning to lose it, but he has enough clarity of mind left to head for the hovel and to comfort his shivering Fool. |
FOOL sings
"He that has and a little tiny wit,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
Must make content with his fortunes fit,
Though the rain it raineth every day." LEAR
True, my good boy.—Come, bring us to this hovel. 85 Lear and Kent exit. | The Fool sings a little ditty (which is the same song Feste sings at the end of Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, btw) and Lear and Kent seek shelter. |
FOOL This is a brave night to cool a courtesan. I’ll
speak a prophecy ere I go:
When priests are more in word than matter,
When brewers mar their malt with water,
When nobles are their tailors’ tutors, 90
No heretics burned but wenches’ suitors,
When every case in law is right,
No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;
When slanders do not live in tongues,
Nor cutpurses come not to throngs, 95
When usurers tell their gold i’ th’ field,
And bawds and whores do churches build,
Then shall the realm of Albion
Come to great confusion;
Then comes the time, who lives to see ’t, 100
That going shall be used with feet.
This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before
his time. He exits. | The Fool delivers a witty speech predicting that the British Empire will come to an end when priests are corrupt, beer-makers water down their beverages, when pickpockets stop preying on large crowds, and when pimps and prostitutes build churches. In other words, these things happen all the time so, Britain has already fallen into decay. Get it? The Fool also predicts that, in the future, Merlin (the legendary wizard in King Arthur's court), will make this very same prophecy. (Note: Lear is set in ancient, pre-Christian Britain, long before King Arthur's reign in the sixth century, so Shakespeare's making a little joke about time here.) |