Lear. How, how, Cordelia ! mend your speech a little, Lest it may mar your fortunes. Cord. You have begot me, bred me, Return those duties back as 22 Good my lord, loved me: I are right fit, Obey you, love you, and most honour you. Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters, To love my father all. Lear. But goes thy heart with this? Lear. So young, and so untender? Cord. So young, my lord, and true. Ay, good my lord. Lear. Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy dower : For, by the sacred radiance of the Sun, The mysteries of Hecate, and the night; By all the operation of the orbs From whom 23 we do exist, and cease to be; Propinquity and property of blood, And as a stranger to my heart and me Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian, Or he that makes his generation 24 messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved, 22 As is here a relative pronoun, referring to those duties; which or that. The word was used very loosely in the Poet's time. 23 The relatives who and which were used indiscriminately. 24 Probably meaning his children; perhaps simply his kind. 25 Sometime, here, is former or formerly. See vol. xiv. page 146, note 12, Kent. Lear. Peace, Kent! Good my liege, Come not between the dragon and his wrath : I loved her most, and thought to set my rest Her father's heart from her! - Call France: who stirs? Call Burgundy.- Cornwall and Albany, With my two daughters' dowers digest this third: That troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly course, By you to be sustain'd, shall our abode Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain [Giving the crown. Kent. Royal Lear, Whom I have ever honour'd as my King, Loved as my father, as my master follow'd, As my great patron thought on in my prayers, Lear. The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft. Kent. Let it fall rather, though the fork invade The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly, When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man? Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak, 26 As Kent has said nothing to provoke this snappish order, we are probably to suppose that Lear, knowing his man, anticipates a bold remonstrance from him, and, in his excited mood, flares up at the thought of such a thing. So he says to him a little after, "Out of my sight." 27 All the titles or marks of honour pertaining to royalty. When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound, When majesty falls to folly. Reverse thy doom, And in thy best consideration check This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgment,28 Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least; Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound Lear. Kent, on thy life, no more. Kent. My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thine enemies ;30 nor fear to lose it, Thy safety being the motive. Lear. Out of my sight! Kent. See better, Lear; and let me still remain The true blank of thine eye.31 Lear. Now, by Apollo, Kent. Now, by Apollo, King, Thou swear'st thy gods in vain. Lear. [Grasping his sword.] O vassal, miscreant ! Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift; Lear. Hear me, recreant ! On thine allegiance, hear me ! 28 "Let my life be answerable for my judgment," or, "I will stake my life on the truth of what I say." 29 Reverbs for reverberates; probably a word of the Poet's own coining. Here it has the sense of report or proclaim. 30 To wage is to wager, to stake or hazard. So," I never held my life but as a thing to be impawned or put in pledge against your enemies." 31 The blank is the mark at which men shoot. "See better," says Kent, "and let me be the mark to direct your sight, that you err not." Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow, To come between our sentence and our power, Kent. Fare thee well, King: since thus thou wilt appear, Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here. [To CORD.] The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid, That justly think'st, and hast most rightly said!— [To REG. and GON.] And your large speeches may your That good effects may spring from words of love. Thus Kent, O princes! bids you all adieu; He'll shape his own course in a country new. [Exit. Flourish. Re-enter GLOSTER, with FRANCE, BURGUNDY, and Attendants. Glos. Here's France and Burgundy, my noble lord. Lear. My Lord of Burgundy, We first address towards you, who with this King Hath rivall'd for our daughter: what, in the least, Or cease your quest 35 of love? 32 That is, "Take thy reward in or by a demonstration of our power." 33 Disease in its old sense of discomfort or what causes uneasiness. 34 Approve in the sense of make good, or prove true. Often so. 35 A quest is a seeking or pursuit: the expedition in which a knight was engaged is often so named in The Faerie Queene. Bur. Most royal Majesty, I crave no more than hath your Highness offer'd, Nor will you tender less. Lear. Right-noble Burgundy, When she was dear to us, we did hold her so; Bur. I know no answer. Lear. Will you, with those infirmities she owes,37 Unfriended, new-adopted to our hate, Dower'd with our curse, and stranger'd with our oath, Take her, or leave her? Bur. Pardon me, royal sir ; Election makes not up on such conditions. Lear. Then leave her, sir; for, by the power that made me, I tell you all her wealth.-[To FRANCE.] For you, great King, I would not from your love make such a stray, To match 38 you where I hate; therefore beseech you T'avert your liking a more worthier way Than on a wretch whom Nature is ashamed France. This is most strange, That she, who even but now was your best object, 36 With our displeasure added to it; as in the common phrase of piecing out a thing. Like, in the next line, was continually used where we should use please. It likes me is, in old language, the same as I like it. 37 Owes and owns are but different forms of the same word. 38 "Such a stray, as to match." So again in the next speech: "So monstrous, as to dismantle." The Poet omits as in such cases, when the verse is against it. |