Act 2, Scene 4

Before Gloster's Castle; Kent in the stocks.

[Enter Lear, Fool, and Gentleman.]
King Lear
1223 'Tis strange that they should so depart from home,
1224 And not send back my messenger.
Gentleman
1225 As I learn'd,
1226 The night before there was no purpose in them
1227 Of this remove.
Kent
1228 Hail to thee, noble master!
King Lear
1229 Ha!
1230 Mak'st thou this shame thy pastime?
Kent
1231 No, my lord.
Fool
1232 Ha, ha! he wears cruel garters. Horses are tied by the
1233 head; dogs and bears by the neck, monkeys by the loins, and
1234 men by the legs: when a man is over-lusty at legs, then he
1235 wears wooden nether-stocks.
King Lear
1236 What's he that hath so much thy place mistook
1237 To set thee here?
Kent
1238 It is both he and she,
1239 Your son and daughter.
King Lear
1240 No.
Kent
1241 Yes.
King Lear
1242 No, I say.
Kent
1243 I say, yea.
King Lear
1244 No, no; they would not.
Kent
1245 Yes, they have.
King Lear
1246 By Jupiter, I swear no.
Kent
1247 By Juno, I swear ay.
King Lear
1248 They durst not do't.
1249 They would not, could not do't; 'tis worse than murder,
1250 To do upon respect such violent outrage:
1251 Resolve me, with all modest haste, which way
1252 Thou mightst deserve or they impose this usage,
1253 Coming from us.
Kent
1254 My lord, when at their home
1255 I did commend your highness' letters to them,
1256 Ere I was risen from the place that show'd
1257 My duty kneeling, came there a reeking post,
1258 Stew'd in his haste, half breathless, panting forth
1259 From Goneril his mistress salutations;
1260 Deliver'd letters, spite of intermission,
1261 Which presently they read: on whose contents,
1262 They summon'd up their meiny, straight took horse;
1263 Commanded me to follow and attend
1264 The leisure of their answer; gave me cold looks:
1265 And meeting here the other messenger,
1266 Whose welcome I perceiv'd had poison'd mine,—
1267 Being the very fellow which of late
1268 Display'd so saucily against your highness,—
1269 Having more man than wit about me, drew:
1270 He rais'd the house with loud and coward cries.
1271 Your son and daughter found this trespass worth
1272 The shame which here it suffers.
Fool
1273 Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way.
1274 Fathers that wear rags
1275 Do make their children blind;
1276 But fathers that bear bags
1277 Shall see their children kind.
1278 Fortune, that arrant whore,
1279 Ne'er turns the key to th' poor.
1280 But for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours for thy
1281 daughters as thou canst tell in a year.
King Lear
1282 O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!
1283 Hysterica passio,—down, thou climbing sorrow,
1284 Thy element's below!—Where is this daughter?
Kent
1285 With the earl, sir, here within.
King Lear
1286 Follow me not;
1287 Stay here.
[Exit.]
Gentleman
1288 Made you no more offence but what you speak of?
Kent
1289 None.
1290 How chance the king comes with so small a number?
Fool
1291 An thou hadst been set i' the stocks for that question,
1292 thou hadst well deserved it.
Kent
1293 Why, fool?
Fool
1294 We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there's no
1295 labouring in the winter. All that follow their noses are led by
1296 their eyes but blind men; and there's not a nose among twenty
1297 but can smell him that's stinking. Let go thy hold when a great
1298 wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following
1299 it; but the great one that goes up the hill, let him draw thee
1300 after.
1301 When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again: I
1302 would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it.
1303 That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
1304 And follows but for form,
1305 Will pack when it begins to rain,
1306 And leave thee in the storm.
1307 But I will tarry; the fool will stay,
1308 And let the wise man fly:
1309 The knave turns fool that runs away;
1310 The fool no knave, perdy.
Kent
1311 Where learn'd you this, fool?
Fool
1312 Not i' the stocks, fool.
[Re-enter Lear, with Gloster.]
King Lear
1313 Deny to speak with me? They are sick? they are weary?
1314 They have travell'd all the night? Mere fetches;
1315 The images of revolt and flying off.
1316 Fetch me a better answer.
Gloucester
1317 My dear lord,
1318 You know the fiery quality of the duke;
1319 How unremovable and fix'd he is
1320 In his own course.
King Lear
1321 Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!—
1322 Fiery? What quality? why, Gloster, Gloster,
1323 I'd speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.
Gloucester
1324 Well, my good lord, I have inform'd them so.
King Lear
1325 Inform'd them! Dost thou understand me, man?
Gloucester
1326 Ay, my good lord.
King Lear
1327 The King would speak with Cornwall; the dear father
1328 Would with his daughter speak, commands her service:
1329 Are they inform'd of this?—My breath and blood!—
1330 Fiery? the fiery duke?—Tell the hot duke that—
1331 No, but not yet: may be he is not well:
1332 Infirmity doth still neglect all office
1333 Whereto our health is bound: we are not ourselves
1334 When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind
1335 To suffer with the body: I'll forbear;
1336 And am fallen out with my more headier will,
1337 To take the indispos'd and sickly fit
1338 For the sound man.—Death on my state! Wherefore
[Looking on Kent.]
King Lear
1339 Should he sit here? This act persuades me
1340 That this remotion of the duke and her
1341 Is practice only. Give me my servant forth.
1342 Go tell the duke and's wife I'd speak with them,
1343 Now, presently: bid them come forth and hear me,
1344 Or at their chamber door I'll beat the drum
1345 Till it cry 'Sleep to death.'
Gloucester
1346 I would have all well betwixt you.
[Exit.]
King Lear
1347 O me, my heart, my rising heart!—but down!
Fool
1348 Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she
1349 put 'em i' the paste alive; she knapped 'em o' the coxcombs with
1350 a stick and cried 'Down, wantons, down!' 'Twas her brother that,
1351 in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.
[Enter Cornwall, Regan, Gloster, and Servants.]
King Lear
1352 Good-morrow to you both.
Cornwall
1353 Hail to your grace!
[Kent is set at liberty.]
Regan
1354 I am glad to see your highness.
King Lear
1355 Regan, I think you are; I know what reason
1356 I have to think so: if thou shouldst not be glad,
1357 I would divorce me from thy mother's tomb,
1358 Sepulchring an adultress.—
[To Kent]
King Lear
1359 O, are you free?
1360 Some other time for that.—Beloved Regan,
1361 Thy sister's naught: O Regan, she hath tied
1362 Sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here,—
[Points to his heart.]
King Lear
1363 I can scarce speak to thee; thou'lt not believe
1364 With how deprav'd a quality—O Regan!
Regan
1365 I pray you, sir, take patience: I have hope
1366 You less know how to value her desert
1367 Than she to scant her duty.
King Lear
1368 Say, how is that?
Regan
1369 I cannot think my sister in the least
1370 Would fail her obligation: if, sir, perchance
1371 She have restrain'd the riots of your followers,
1372 'Tis on such ground, and to such wholesome end,
1373 As clears her from all blame.
King Lear
1374 My curses on her!
Regan
1375 O, sir, you are old;
1376 Nature in you stands on the very verge
1377 Of her confine: you should be rul'd and led
1378 By some discretion, that discerns your state
1379 Better than you yourself. Therefore, I pray you,
1380 That to our sister you do make return;
1381 Say you have wrong'd her, sir.
King Lear
1382 Ask her forgiveness?
1383 Do you but mark how this becomes the house:
1384 'Dear daughter, I confess that I am old;
[Kneeling.]
King Lear
1385 Age is unnecessary: on my knees I beg
1386 That you'll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food.'
Regan
1387 Good sir, no more! These are unsightly tricks:
1388 Return you to my sister.
[Rising.]
King Lear
1389 Never, Regan:
1390 She hath abated me of half my train;
1391 Look'd black upon me; struck me with her tongue,
1392 Most serpent-like, upon the very heart:—
1393 All the stor'd vengeances of heaven fall
1394 On her ingrateful top! Strike her young bones,
1395 You taking airs, with lameness!
Cornwall
1396 Fie, sir, fie!
King Lear
1397 You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames
1398 Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty,
1399 You fen-suck'd fogs, drawn by the powerful sun,
1400 To fall and blast her pride!
Regan
1401 O the blest gods!
1402 So will you wish on me when the rash mood is on.
King Lear
1403 No, Regan, thou shalt never have my curse:
1404 Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give
1405 Thee o'er to harshness: her eyes are fierce; but thine
1406 Do comfort, and not burn. 'Tis not in thee
1407 To grudge my pleasures, to cut off my train,
1408 To bandy hasty words, to scant my sizes,
1409 And, in conclusion, to oppose the bolt
1410 Against my coming in: thou better know'st
1411 The offices of nature, bond of childhood,
1412 Effects of courtesy, dues of gratitude;
1413 Thy half o' the kingdom hast thou not forgot,
1414 Wherein I thee endow'd.
Regan
1415 Good sir, to the purpose.
King Lear
1416 Who put my man i' the stocks?
[Tucket within.]
Cornwall
1417 What trumpet's that?
Regan
1418 I know't—my sister's: this approves her letter,
1419 That she would soon be here.
[Enter Oswald.]
Regan
1420 Is your lady come?
King Lear
1421 This is a slave, whose easy-borrowed pride
1422 Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows.—
1423 Out, varlet, from my sight!
Cornwall
1424 What means your grace?
King Lear
1425 Who stock'd my servant? Regan, I have good hope
1426 Thou didst not know on't.—Who comes here? O heavens!
[Enter Goneril.]
King Lear
1427 If you do love old men, if your sweet sway
1428 Allow obedience, if yourselves are old,
1429 Make it your cause; send down, and take my part!—
[To Goneril.]
King Lear
1430 Art not asham'd to look upon this beard?—
1431 O Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand?
Goneril
1432 Why not by the hand, sir? How have I offended?
1433 All's not offence that indiscretion finds
1434 And dotage terms so.
King Lear
1435 O sides, you are too tough!
1436 Will you yet hold?—How came my man i' the stocks?
Cornwall
1437 I set him there, sir: but his own disorders
1438 Deserv'd much less advancement.
King Lear
1439 You? did you?
Regan
1440 I pray you, father, being weak, seem so.
1441 If, till the expiration of your month,
1442 You will return and sojourn with my sister,
1443 Dismissing half your train, come then to me:
1444 I am now from home, and out of that provision
1445 Which shall be needful for your entertainment.
King Lear
1446 Return to her, and fifty men dismiss'd?
1447 No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose
1448 To wage against the enmity o' the air;
1449 To be a comrade with the wolf and owl,—
1450 Necessity's sharp pinch!—Return with her?
1451 Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took
1452 Our youngest born, I could as well be brought
1453 To knee his throne, and, squire-like, pension beg
1454 To keep base life afoot.—Return with her?
1455 Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter
1456 To this detested groom.
[Pointing to Oswald.]
Goneril
1457 At your choice, sir.
King Lear
1458 I pr'ythee, daughter, do not make me mad:
1459 I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell:
1460 We'll no more meet, no more see one another:—
1461 But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter;
1462 Or rather a disease that's in my flesh,
1463 Which I must needs call mine: thou art a boil,
1464 A plague sore, an embossed carbuncle
1465 In my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee;
1466 Let shame come when it will, I do not call it:
1467 I do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot
1468 Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove:
1469 Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure:
1470 I can be patient; I can stay with Regan,
1471 I and my hundred knights.
Regan
1472 Not altogether so:
1473 I look'd not for you yet, nor am provided
1474 For your fit welcome. Give ear, sir, to my sister;
1475 For those that mingle reason with your passion
1476 Must be content to think you old, and so—
1477 But she knows what she does.
King Lear
1478 Is this well spoken?
Regan
1479 I dare avouch it, sir: what, fifty followers?
1480 Is it not well? What should you need of more?
1481 Yea, or so many, sith that both charge and danger
1482 Speak 'gainst so great a number? How in one house
1483 Should many people, under two commands,
1484 Hold amity? 'Tis hard; almost impossible.
Goneril
1485 Why might not you, my lord, receive attendance
1486 From those that she calls servants, or from mine?
Regan
1487 Why not, my lord? If then they chanc'd to slack you,
1488 We could control them. If you will come to me,—
1489 For now I spy a danger,—I entreat you
1490 To bring but five-and-twenty: to no more
1491 Will I give place or notice.
King Lear
1492 I gave you all,—
Regan
1493 And in good time you gave it.
King Lear
1494 Made you my guardians, my depositaries;
1495 But kept a reservation to be follow'd
1496 With such a number. What, must I come to you
1497 With five-and-twenty, Regan? said you so?
Regan
1498 And speak't again my lord; no more with me.
King Lear
1499 Those wicked creatures yet do look well-favour'd
1500 When others are more wicked; not being the worst
1501 Stands in some rank of praise.—
[To Goneril.]
King Lear
1502 I'll go with thee:
1503 Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty,
1504 And thou art twice her love.
Goneril
1505 Hear, me, my lord:
1506 What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five,
1507 To follow in a house where twice so many
1508 Have a command to tend you?
Regan
1509 What need one?
King Lear
1510 O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
1511 Are in the poorest thing superfluous:
1512 Allow not nature more than nature needs,
1513 Man's life is cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;
1514 If only to go warm were gorgeous,
1515 Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st
1516 Which scarcely keeps thee warm.—But, for true need,—
1517 You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!
1518 You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
1519 As full of grief as age; wretched in both!
1520 If it be you that stirs these daughters' hearts
1521 Against their father, fool me not so much
1522 To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
1523 And let not women's weapons, water-drops,
1524 Stain my man's cheeks!—No, you unnatural hags,
1525 I will have such revenges on you both
1526 That all the world shall,—I will do such things,—
1527 What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be
1528 The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep;
1529 No, I'll not weep:—
1530 I have full cause of weeping; but this heart
1531 Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
1532 Or ere I'll weep.—O fool, I shall go mad!
[Exeunt Lear, Gloster, Kent, and Fool. Storm heard at a distance.]
Cornwall
1533 Let us withdraw; 'twill be a storm.
Regan
1534 This house is little: the old man and his people
1535 Cannot be well bestow'd.
Goneril
1536 'Tis his own blame; hath put himself from rest
1537 And must needs taste his folly.
Regan
1538 For his particular, I'll receive him gladly,
1539 But not one follower.
Goneril
1540 So am I purpos'd.
1541 Where is my lord of Gloster?
Cornwall
1542 Followed the old man forth:—he is return'd.
[Re-enter Gloster.]
Gloucester
1543 The king is in high rage.
Cornwall
1544 Whither is he going?
Gloucester
1545 He calls to horse; but will I know not whither.
Cornwall
1546 'Tis best to give him way; he leads himself.
Goneril
1547 My lord, entreat him by no means to stay.
Gloucester
1548 Alack, the night comes on, and the high winds
1549 Do sorely ruffle; for many miles about
1550 There's scarce a bush.
Regan
1551 O, sir, to wilful men
1552 The injuries that they themselves procure
1553 Must be their schoolmasters. Shut up your doors:
1554 He is attended with a desperate train;
1555 And what they may incense him to, being apt
1556 To have his ear abus'd, wisdom bids fear.
Cornwall
1557 Shut up your doors, my lord; 'tis a wild night:
1558 My Regan counsels well: come out o' the storm.
[Exeunt.]

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Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1232wordplay
“he wears cruel garters. Horses are tied by the”
The Fool puns on 'cruel' (the word also meant a thin crewel wool yarn used for garters) and 'wooden nether-stocks' (stocks, the punishment device, punning on 'stockings'). A man put in the stocks has his legs fastened, as animals are tied by head, neck, or loins — so he wears the cruelest garters of all.
TLN 1246classical allusion
“By Jupiter, I swear no”
Lear swears by Jupiter (the Roman king of the gods), and Kent immediately counters with Juno (Jupiter's queen). The exchange is typical of the play's pagan ancient-British setting: these characters do not swear by the Christian God but by the Olympian gods of classical antiquity.
classical Jupiter, king of the gods
TLN 1257archaic vocab
“came there a reeking post, Stew'd in his haste”
A 'post' is a courier or messenger who rides fast between fixed relay stations ('posts'); 'reeking' means steaming with sweat, and 'stew'd' means soaked as if stewed in liquid. Kent describes Goneril's letter-carrier arriving drenched in sweat from hard riding.
TLN 1262archaic vocab
“They summon'd up their meiny”
'Meiny' (also spelled 'menie' or 'meinie') means a household retinue or train of followers and servants. Kent says Cornwall and Regan immediately called their household together and rode out — showing the calculated haste of their departure.
TLN 1273rhetorical device
“Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way”
The Fool uses a proverbial saying — wild geese flying south signal winter is not over — to mean that trouble has not passed yet. He then drives the point home in a rhyming couplet: fathers with full purses ('bags') get kindness from their children; fathers dressed in rags are ignored. Lear has given away his wealth and is now experiencing the predictable result.
TLN 1278classical allusion
“Fortune, that arrant whore, Ne'er turns the key to th' poor”
The Fool invokes the classical figure of Fortune as a prostitute who gives her favours only to the powerful and rich, never to the poor. 'Turns the key' means opens the door — Fortune never lets the poor man in. This directly mirrors Lear's situation: he is losing his followers as his power drains away.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 1280wordplay
“thou shalt have as many dolours for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year”
The Fool puns on 'dolours' (griefs, sorrows) and 'dollars' (Spanish silver coins, widely circulating in Elizabethan England). 'Tell' means both 'count' and 'endure' — so Lear will count as many griefs from his daughters as he could count coins in a year. The joke turns his coming anguish into a grim currency.
TLN 1282historical topical
“O, how this mother swells up toward my heart! Hysterica passio”
'Hysterica passio' is the Latin name for a medical condition called 'the mother' or 'suffocation of the mother' — a fit of choking or smothering sensation thought to rise from the womb (Latin: uterus) upward to the heart and throat. Lear feels it as a physical rising sensation of grief and rage that threatens to choke him, and he commands it back down.
TLN 1294cultural context
“We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there's no labouring in the winter”
The Fool refers to Aesop's fable of the ant and the grasshopper: the ant stores food in summer because it knows winter is coming and there will be nothing to gather. The Fool tells Kent that even an ant could have predicted that following a king stripped of power in the political 'winter' of his fortunes would lead to nothing. A wise servant follows the rising great, not the falling ones.
classical Fortune and her wheel
TLN 1310archaic vocab
“The fool no knave, perdy”
'Perdy' is a mild oath, a corruption of the French 'par Dieu' (by God). It functions here as a reassuring affirmation — the Fool insists he at least is no knave, even if those who follow his counsel are. It is a common Elizabethan exclamation, mild enough for a fool to use.
TLN 1314archaic vocab
“Mere fetches; The images of revolt and flying off”
'Fetches' means tricks, pretexts, or evasions. Lear dismisses the excuses he has just been given — that Cornwall and Regan are sick, tired from travel, that it is not their custom to refuse him — as nothing but manufactured excuses ('fetches') that signal outright rebellion ('revolt and flying off').
TLN 1332syntax grammar
“Infirmity doth still neglect all office Whereto our health is bound: we are not ourselves When nature, being oppress'd”
Lear reasons that sickness makes people neglect their duties ('office') just as health obliges them to perform those duties. He is briefly stepping back from his rage to give Cornwall the benefit of the doubt — perhaps the duke is genuinely ill. The royal 'we' throughout this speech ('we are not ourselves') signals that Lear is still thinking in terms of his royal authority even as that authority slips.
TLN 1340archaic vocab
“this remotion of the duke and her Is practice only”
'Remotion' means removal or deliberate withdrawal from his presence. 'Practice' means deliberate scheming or plot. Lear sees Kent still in the stocks and concludes: their claimed excuses are only a plot ('practice') to keep him waiting and to humiliate him.
TLN 1348cultural context
“Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put 'em i' the paste alive”
The Fool tells Lear that crying 'down!' to his swelling heart is as useless as the cook ('cockney' = a soft, city-bred woman here) who shouted at eels to lie still in the pie-crust while she was kneading them in alive. Just as live eels will not stay down no matter how you hit them, Lear's grief will not be ordered back by an act of will. The Fool's companion joke — a man who buttered his horse's hay out of 'pure kindness' — adds a second image of misguided well-meaning.
TLN 1357rhetorical device
“I would divorce me from thy mother's tomb, Sepulchring an adultress”
Lear threatens to disown the memory of his dead queen — to 'divorce' himself from her grave — if Regan is not genuinely glad to see him, because her ingratitude would prove she is a bastard (her mother an adultress). The threat is legally and emotionally grotesque: one cannot divorce a corpse. It measures Lear's desperation to believe Regan is loyal by imagining a violent alternative.
TLN 1376rhetorical device
“Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confine: you should be rul'd and led By some discretion”
Regan tells Lear that his human nature ('Nature in you') stands at the very edge ('verge') of its proper boundary — meaning he is at the extreme limit of old age, about to pass beyond the bounds of reason or capacity. She is telling him, bluntly, that he is too old to govern himself and should submit to others' judgment. The line is one of the play's most pointed arguments for stripping Lear of authority.
TLN 1385rhetorical device
“Age is unnecessary: on my knees I beg That you'll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food”
Lear performs a bitter mock-submission, kneeling and begging for the barest necessities — clothing, shelter, and food — as Regan asked. It is savage irony: a king should not kneel to his child; and reducing his needs to 'raiment, bed, and food' reduces him to the status of a beggar. 'Age is unnecessary' is the play's sharpest statement of what Regan's position means: old people have no further use.
TLN 1394archaic vocab
“Strike her young bones, You taking airs, with lameness”
'Taking' means infectious, blighting, or striking (as in a pestilential 'taking' disease). Lear calls on diseased, blighting airs to infect Goneril's bones with lameness. In Elizabethan medicine 'fen-suck'd fogs' and bad air ('miasma') were believed to carry disease and blast crops or bodies they touched.
TLN 1397rhetorical device
“You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames Into her scornful eyes! Infect her beauty, You fen-suck'd fogs”
Lear apostrophizes the natural elements directly — lightnings, fogs — as agents of divine justice. This is an apostrophe (address to an absent or non-human entity) and an imprecation (formal curse). Lear is calling on the powers of the sky in the same way he will call on 'the gods' a few lines later. The escalating series — lightning to blind, fog to blast beauty — mirrors his accelerating loss of self-control.
TLN 1404archaic vocab
“Thy tender-hefted nature shall not give”
'Tender-hefted' means housed or set in a tender frame — a nature gently held (hefted = held in the hand, as a tool or weapon is held by its haft). Lear is saying Regan's nature is too soft and gentle to deliver such cruelty to him. The word is one of Shakespeare's coinages, built from 'heft' (handle or grip of a tool) and 'tender.'
TLN 1421cultural context
“This is a slave, whose easy-borrowed pride Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows”
Lear dismisses Oswald as a man whose arrogance ('pride') is not his own but is borrowed cheaply from the favour ('grace') of the mistress he serves. In Elizabethan social thinking, a servant's dignity was entirely derived from his master's or mistress's status; Oswald's 'pride' in serving Goneril and snubbing Lear is therefore 'easy-borrowed' — not earned and not truly his. The line also notes that Goneril's favour is 'fickle,' which will strip Oswald of even that borrowed dignity.
TLN 1427rhetorical device
“If you do love old men, if your sweet sway Allow obedience, if yourselves are old, Make it your cause”
Lear addresses the heavens directly, arguing his case in the form of a legal appeal to 'the gods' as judges. He lists three conditions — if the gods honour old age, if they allow obedience, if they too will someday be old — as grounds for divine intervention on his behalf. The speech shifts the action from the political to the cosmic, positioning filial ingratitude as a violation of the divine order itself.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)
TLN 1447rhetorical device
“I abjure all roofs, and choose To wage against the enmity o' the air; To be a comrade with the wolf and owl”
Lear swears off all sheltered accommodation ('abjure all roofs') and declares he will make war against the hostile weather ('wage against the enmity o' the air') and live like a wild animal. The wolf and the owl both suggest night-time, predatory, and solitary existence. This is not yet madness but a vow that anticipates his actual exposure on the heath in Act 3.
TLN 1455archaic vocab
“Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter To this detested groom”
A 'sumpter' is a pack-horse or baggage-animal — a beast of burden that carries luggage. Lear says he would sooner be a slave-horse to Oswald ('this detested groom') than return to Goneril. 'Groom' here means a low-ranking male servant, not a bridegroom — a deliberate insult to Oswald's status. The image of a king as a pack-horse underlines the depth of the humiliation he refuses.
TLN 1462cultural context
“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”
Lear shifts from calling Goneril his 'flesh and blood' to comparing her to three festering wounds inside his body: a generic disease, a boil (an infected lump), and an 'embossed carbuncle' (a swollen, rounded abscess). 'Embossed' means swollen outward, rounded like a boss on a shield. All three images are of corruption inside living tissue — she is not a separate enemy but a rottenness within him he cannot cut out.
TLN 1467classical allusion
“I do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove”
Jupiter ('Jove') was the Roman king of the gods, whose weapon was the thunderbolt — hence 'thunder-bearer.' Lear says he will not call on Jove to punish Goneril, casting the god as a supreme judge who could be petitioned, as a mortal might appeal to a higher court. The self-restraint is notable: Lear has just been cursing Goneril with lightning; now he ostentatiously holds himself back.
classical Jupiter, king of the gods
TLN 1494archaic vocab
“Made you my guardians, my depositaries; But kept a reservation to be follow'd”
'Depositaries' (or depositories) are trustees — people to whom property is entrusted for safekeeping. 'Reservation' means a specified right or condition held back in a legal transfer. Lear reminds Regan that when he gave his daughters the kingdom he retained ('reserved') the right to keep his hundred knights. He is making a legal argument: he fulfilled the gift but kept one specified condition, which they are now violating.
TLN 1510rhetorical device
“O, reason not the need: our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous”
Lear argues that you cannot reduce human dignity to bare physical necessity. Even the poorest beggar has at least one thing he possesses beyond sheer animal need. If you strip away everything that exceeds strict necessity, then a lady's gorgeous clothing (which provides no extra warmth over a plain garment) has no justification either — yet Regan wears it. The argument is that 'need' means more than biological survival; it includes dignity, status, and the social marks of humanity.
historical The king's two bodies
TLN 1523cultural context
“let not women's weapons, water-drops, Stain my man's cheeks”
Lear calls tears 'women's weapons,' reflecting the period's equation of emotional weeping with femininity and weakness. He begs the gods not to let him weep, because tears would 'stain' his masculine identity — a man's face should not carry the marks of what was considered a woman's mode of grief. The cruelty of the scene is that Lear is crying or about to cry even as he denies it.
TLN 1530archaic vocab
“this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws Or ere I'll weep”
'Flaws' here means fragments, splinters, or cracks. Lear would rather his heart literally shatter into a hundred thousand pieces than weep. 'Or ere' means 'before.' The speech ends with the admission he cannot hold back: 'O fool, I shall go mad!' — the first explicit statement in the play that his mind is beginning to give way.
TLN 1551rhetorical device
“O, sir, to wilful men The injuries that they themselves procure Must be their schoolmasters”
After Lear storms out into the coming storm, Regan uses a sententious moral saying ('wilful men must learn from the harms they bring on themselves') to justify shutting the doors against him. The sentence has the form of a proverb or moral maxim, which gives it an air of wisdom while excusing her cruelty as his own fault. It is one of the play's clearest examples of cold policy dressed in the language of moral correction.