Click Above Here to be Transported to a WWW page that lists the characters of the play
Click Above Here to be Transported to a linked page that gives a brief summary of the action leading up to this scene.
The action of this scene takes place in the courtyard of the Earl of Gloucester's Castle.
This painting is a depiction of the scene. Click on the Image to be Transported to it's source page.
Oswald: Good Dawning to thee, friend. Art of this house?
Kent: Ay.
Oswald: Where may we set out horse?
Kent: I’ the mire.
Oswald: Prithee, if thou lovest me, tell me.
Kent: I love thee not.
Oswald: Why, then, I care not for thee.
Kent: If I had thee in Lipsbury pin fold, I would make thee care for me.
Oswald: Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not.
Kent: Fellow, I know thee.
Oswald: What dost thou know me for?
Kent: A knave; a rascal’ an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow beggarly, three suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave; a whoreson,
glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd
in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of thy addition.
Oswald: Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou, thus to rail on one that is neither known of thee
nor knows thee!
Kent: What a brazed-faced varlet art thou, to deny thou knowest me! Is it two day ago since I
tripped up thy heels and beat thee before the king? Draw, you rogue! For, though it be night, yet the
moon shines. I’ll make a sop of the moonshine of you. Draw, you whoreson cullionly
barber-monger, draw!
Oswald: Away! I have nothing to do with thee.
Kent: Draw, you rascal! You come with letters against the king, and take Vanity the puppet’s part
against the royalty of her father. Draw, you rogue, or I’ll so carbonado your shanks! Draw, you
rascal! Come your ways!
Oswald: Help, ho! murther! Help!
Kent: Strike, you slave! Stand, rogue! Stand, you neat slave! Strike!
Oswald: Help, ho! muther! murther!
Edmund: How now! What’s the matter?
Kent: With you, goodman boy, an you please! Come, I’ll flesh ye! Come, on, young master!
Gloucester: Weapons! Arms! What’s the matter here?
Cornwall: Keep peace, upon your lives! He dies that strikes again. What is the matter?
Regan: The messengers from our sister and the king.
Cornwall: What is your difference? Speak.
Oswald: I am scare in breath, my lord.
Kent: No marvel, you have so bestirred your valor. You cowardly rascal, nature disclaims in thee;
a tailor made thee.
Cornwall: Thou art a strange fellow. A tailor make a man.
Kent: Ay, a tailor, sir. A stone-cutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though he had
been but two hours at the trade.
Cornwall: Speak yet, how grew your quarrel?
Oswald: This ancient ruffian, sir, whose life I have spared at suit of his gray bread.
Kent: Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessry letter! My lord, if you will give me leave, I will tread
this unbolted villain into mortar, and daub the walls of a jakes with him. Spare my gray bead, you
wagtail?
Cornwall: Peace, sirrah! You beastly knave, know you no reverence?
Kent: Yes, sir, but anger hath a privilege.
Cornwall: Why art thou angry?
Kent: That such a slave as this should wear a sword,
Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these,
Like rats, oft bite the holy cords a-twain
Which are too intrinse t’ unloose; smooth every passion
That in natures of their lords rebel;
Bring oil to fire, sbow to their colder moods;
Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters,
Knowing nought, like dogs, but following.
A plague upon your epileptic visage!
Smile you my speeches, as I were a fool?
Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain
I’ld drive ye cackling home to Camelot.
Cornwall: What, art thou mad, old fellow?
Gloucester: How fell you out? say that.
Kent: No contraries hold more antipathy than I and such a knave.
Cornwall: Why dost thou call him knave? What’s his offense?
Kent: His countenance likes me not.
Cornwall: No more, perchance, does mine, nor his, nor hers.
Kent: Sir, ‘tis my occupation to be plain. I have seen better faces in my time
Than stands on any shoulder that I see before me at this instant.
Cornwall: This is some fellow,
Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, and constrains the grab
Quite from his nature. He cannot flatter, he,
An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth!
An they will take it, so; if not, he’s plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness
Harbor more craft and more corrupter ends
Than twenty silly ducking observants
That stretch their duties nicely.
Kent: Sir, in good sooth, in sincere verity,
Under the allowance of your allowance of your great aspect,
Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire
On flickering Phoebus’ front,
Cornwall: What mean’st by this?
Kent: To go out of my dialect, which you discommend so much.
I know, sir, I am no flatterer. He that beguiled you in plain accent
was a plain knave; which for my part I will not be, though I should win you displeasure to entreat
me to ‘t.
Cornwall: What was the offense you gave him?
Oswald: I never gave him any:
It pleased the king his master very late
To strike at me, upon his misconstruction,
When he, conjunct, and flattering his displeasure,
Tripped me behind; being down, insulted, railed,
And put upon him such a deal of man,
That worthied him, got praises of the king
For him attempting who was self-subdued;
And, in the fleshment of this dread exploit,
Drew on me here again.
Kent: None of these rogues and cowards
But Ajax is their fool.
Cornwall: Fetch forth the stocks!
You stubborn miscreant knave, you reverent braggart,
We’ll teach you.
Kent: Sir, I am too old to learn.
Call not your stocks for me. I serve the king;
On whose employment I was sent to you:
You shall do small respect, show too bold malice
Against the grace and person of my master,
Stocking his messenger.
Cornwall: Fetch forth the stocks! As I have life and honor.
There shall he sit till noon.
Regan: Till noon? Till night, my lord, and all night too!
Kent: Why, madam, if I were your father’s dog, You should not use me so.
Regan: Sir, being his knave, I will.
Cornwall: This is a fellow of the self-same color Our sister speaks of. Come, bring away the
stocks!
Gloucester: Let me beseech your grace not to do so.
(His fault is much, and the good king his master
will check him for’t. Your purposed low correction
Is such as basest and contemned’st wretches
For pilferings and most common trespasses
Are punished with), the king must take it ill,
That he, so slightly valued in his messenger,
Should have him thus restrained.
Cornwall: I’ll answer that.
Regan: My sister may receive it much more worse,
To have her gentleman abused, assaulted,
For following her affairs. Put in his legs.
Come, my good lord, away.
Gloucester: I am sorry for thee, friend: ‘tis the duke’s pleasure,
Whose disposition, all the world well knows,
Will not be rubbed nor stopped: I’ll entreat for thee.
Kent: Pray, do not sir. I have watched and traveled hard;
Some time I shall sleep out, the rest I’ll whistle.
A good man’s fortune may grow out at heels:
Give you good morrow!
Gloucester: The duke’s to blame in this; ‘t will be ill-taken.
Kent: Good king, that must approve the common saw,
Thou out of heaven’s benediction comest
To the warm sun!
Approach, thou beacon to this under globe,
That by thy comfortable beams I may
Peruse this letter! Nothing almost sees miracles
But miser. I know ‘tis from Cordelia,
Who hath most fortunately been informed
Of my obscured course; "and shall find time
From this enormous state, seeking to give
Losses their remedies." All wary and o’er-watched,
Take vantage, heavy eyes, not to behold
This shameful lodging.
Fortune, good night; smile once more; turn thy wheel!
Click Above Here to be Transported to a linked page that lists some King Lear and William Shakespeare World Wide Web sites.
If you would Like to comment on our Page, Please Write us: