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When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality,
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake?

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ASTROLOGY RIDICULED.

This is the excellent foppery of the world! that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity: fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers*, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail; and my nativity was under ursa major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous.-Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled at my bastardizing.

FILIAL INGRATITUDE.

Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend,

More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child, Than the sea-monster!

* Traitors.

Great Bear, the constellation so named.

A FATHER'S CURSE ON HIS CHILD.

Hear, nature, hear;

Dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose, if
Thou didst intend to make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!

Dry up in her the organs of increase ;
And from her derogate* body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatur'd torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles on her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains, and benefits,
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!

ACT II.

FLATTERING SYCOPHANTS.

That such a slave as this should wear a sword, Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as Like rats, oft bite the holy cords atwain [these, Which are too intrinset t'unloose! smooth every That in the natures of their lords rebels; [passion Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods; Reneges, affirm, and turn their halcyon[] beaks With every gale and vary of their masters, As knowing nought, like dogs, but following.

* Degraded. + Falling. +Perplexed. § Disowned.

The bird called the king-fisher, which, when dried and hung up by a thread, is supposed to turn his bill to the point from whence the wind blows.

PLAIN BLUNT MEN.

This is some fellow,

Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb,
Quite from his nature: He cannot flatter, he!
An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth:
And they will take it, so; if not, he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plain-
Harbour more craft, and more corrupter ends, [ness
Than twenty silly* ducking observants,
That stretch their duties nicely.

BEDLAM BEGGARS.

While I may scape,

I will preserve myself: and am bethought
To take the basest and most poorest shape,
That ever penury, in contempt of man,

Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth;
Blanket my loins; elf all my hair in knots;
And with presented nakedness outface
The winds, and persecutions of the sky.
The country gives me proof and precedent
Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;
And with this horrible object, from low farms,
Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills,
Sometime with lunatic bands§, sometime with
Enforce their charity.
[prayers,

* Simple or rustic.

+Hair thus knotted was supposed + Skewers.

to be the work of elves and fairies in the night. § Curses.

THE FAULTS OF INFIRMITY PARDONABLE.

Fiery? the fiery duke?-Tell the hot duke, No, but not yet:-may be, he is not well: [thatInfirmity doth still neglect all office,

Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves,
When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind
To suffer with the body: I'll forbear:
And am fallen out with my more headier will,
To take the indispos'd and sickly fit
For the sound man.

UNKINDNESS.

Thy sister's naught: O, Regan, she hath tied Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here. [Points to his Heart.

OFFENCES MISTAKEN.

All's not offence, that indiscretion finds, And dotage terms so.

RISING PASSION.

I pr'ythee, daughter, do not make me mad; I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell:

We'll no more meet, no more see one another :—
But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter;
Or, rather, a disease that's in my flesh,

Which I must needs call mine: thou art a boil,
A plague-sore, an embossed* carbuncle,

In my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee;
Let shame come when it will, I do not call it :
I do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot,
Nor tell tales of thee to high judging Jove.

* Swelling.

THE NECESSARIES OF LIFE FEW.

O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous :

Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beast's.

LEAR ON THE INGRATITUDE OF HIS DAUGHTERS.

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both! If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bare it tamely; touch me with noble anger! O, let not women's weapons, water-drops, Stain my man's cheeks!-No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both,

That all the world shall-I will do such things,—
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think, I'll weep;
No, I'll not weep:-

I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep:-O, fool, I shall go mad!

WILFUL MEN.

O, sir, to wilful men,

The injuries, that they themselves procure,
Must be their schoolmasters.

АСТ III.

LEAR'S DISTRESS IN THE STORM.

Kent. Where's the king?

Gent. Contending with the fretful element:

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