When my dimensions are as well compact, 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 Dry up in her the organs of increase ; 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 BEDLAM BEGGARS. While I may scape, I will preserve myself: and am bethought Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth; * 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, 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 :— Which I must needs call mine: thou art a boil, In my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee; * Swelling. THE NECESSARIES OF LIFE FEW. O, reason not the need: our basest beggars Allow not nature more than nature needs, 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,— I have full cause of weeping; but this heart WILFUL MEN. O, sir, to wilful men, The injuries, that they themselves procure, АСТ III. LEAR'S DISTRESS IN THE STORM. Kent. Where's the king? Gent. Contending with the fretful element: |