Act 3, Scene 6

A Chamber in a Farmhouse adjoining the Castle.

[Enter Gloster, Lear, Kent, Fool, and Edgar.]
Gloucester
1928 Here is better than the open air; take it thankfully. I will
1929 piece out the comfort with what addition I can: I will not be
1930 long from you.
Kent
1931 All the power of his wits have given way to his impatience:—
1932 the gods reward your kindness!
[Exit Gloster.]
Edgar
1933 Frateretto calls me; and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake
1934 of darkness.—Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend.
Fool
1935 Pr'ythee, nuncle, tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a
1936 yeoman.
King Lear
1937 A king, a king!
Fool
1938 No, he's a yeoman that has a gentleman to his son; for he's a mad
1939 yeoman that sees his son a gentleman before him.
King Lear
1940 To have a thousand with red burning spits
1941 Come hissing in upon 'em,—
Edgar
1942 The foul fiend bites my back.
Fool
1943 He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health,
1944 a boy's love, or a whore's oath.
King Lear
1945 It shall be done; I will arraign them straight.—
[To Edgar.]
King Lear
1946 Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer—
[To the Fool.]
King Lear
1947 Thou, sapient sir, sit here. Now, you she-foxes!—
Edgar
1948 Look, where he stands and glares!—Want'st thou eyes at trial,
1949 madam?
1950 Come o'er the bourn, Bessy, to me,—
Fool
1951 Her boat hath a leak,
1952 And she must not speak
1953 Why she dares not come over to thee.
Edgar
1954 The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale.
1955 Hoppedance cries in Tom's belly for two white herring. Croak not,
1956 black angel; I have no food for thee.
Kent
1957 How do you, sir? Stand you not so amaz'd;
1958 Will you lie down and rest upon the cushions?
King Lear
1959 I'll see their trial first.—Bring in their evidence.
[To Edgar.]
King Lear
1960 Thou, robed man of justice, take thy place;—
[To the Fool.]
King Lear
1961 And thou, his yokefellow of equity,
1962 Bench by his side:—
[To Kent.]
King Lear
1963 you are o' the commission,
1964 Sit you too.
Edgar
1965 Let us deal justly.
1966 Sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd?
1967 Thy sheep be in the corn;
1968 And for one blast of thy minikin mouth
1969 Thy sheep shall take no harm.
1970 Purr! the cat is gray.
King Lear
1971 Arraign her first; 'tis Goneril. I here take my oath before
1972 this honourable assembly, she kicked the poor king her father.
Fool
1973 Come hither, mistress. Is your name Goneril?
King Lear
1974 She cannot deny it.
Fool
1975 Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool.
King Lear
1976 And here's another, whose warp'd looks proclaim
1977 What store her heart is made on.—Stop her there!
1978 Arms, arms! sword! fire!—Corruption in the place!—
1979 False justicer, why hast thou let her 'scape?
Edgar
1980 Bless thy five wits!
Kent
1981 O pity!—Sir, where is the patience now
1982 That you so oft have boasted to retain?
[Aside.]
Edgar
1983 My tears begin to take his part so much
1984 They'll mar my counterfeiting.
King Lear
1985 The little dogs and all,
1986 Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me.
Edgar
1987 Tom will throw his head at them.—Avaunt, you curs!
1988 Be thy mouth or black or white,
1989 Tooth that poisons if it bite;
1990 Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim,
1991 Hound or spaniel, brach or lym,
1992 Or bobtail tike or trundle-tail,—
1993 Tom will make them weep and wail;
1994 For, with throwing thus my head,
1995 Dogs leap the hatch, and all are fled.
1996 Do de, de, de. Sessa! Come, march to wakes and fairs and market-
1997 towns. Poor Tom, thy horn is dry.
King Lear
1998 Then let them anatomize Regan; see what breeds about her
1999 heart. Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard
2000 hearts?—
[To Edgar.]
King Lear
2001 You, sir, I entertain you for one of my
2002 hundred; only I do not like the fashion of your garments: you'll
2003 say they are Persian; but let them be changed.
Kent
2004 Now, good my lord, lie here and rest awhile.
King Lear
2005 Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains:
2006 So, so. We'll go to supper i' the morning.
Fool
2007 And I'll go to bed at noon.
[Re-enter Gloster.]
Gloucester
2008 Come hither, friend: where is the king my master?
Kent
2009 Here, sir; but trouble him not,—his wits are gone.
Gloucester
2010 Good friend, I pr'ythee, take him in thy arms;
2011 I have o'erheard a plot of death upon him;
2012 There is a litter ready; lay him in't
2013 And drive towards Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet
2014 Both welcome and protection. Take up thy master;
2015 If thou shouldst dally half an hour, his life,
2016 With thine, and all that offer to defend him,
2017 Stand in assured loss: take up, take up;
2018 And follow me, that will to some provision
2019 Give thee quick conduct.
Kent
2020 Oppressed nature sleeps:—
2021 This rest might yet have balm'd thy broken sinews,
2022 Which, if convenience will not allow,
2023 Stand in hard cure.—Come, help to bear thy master;
[To the Fool.]
Kent
2024 Thou must not stay behind.
Gloucester
2025 Come, come, away!
[Exeunt Kent, Gloster, and the Fool, bearing off Lear.]
Edgar
2026 When we our betters see bearing our woes,
2027 We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
2028 Who alone suffers suffers most i' the mind,
2029 Leaving free things and happy shows behind:
2030 But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip
2031 When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.
2032 How light and portable my pain seems now,
2033 When that which makes me bend makes the king bow;
2034 He childed as I fathered!—Tom, away!
2035 Mark the high noises; and thyself bewray,
2036 When false opinion, whose wrong thought defiles thee,
2037 In thy just proof repeals and reconciles thee.
2038 What will hap more to-night, safe 'scape the king!
2039 Lurk, lurk.
[Exit.]

Reading mode

Word definitions on hover

Notes

TLN 1933classical allusion
“Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness”
Edgar, in his Poor Tom disguise, claims the devil Frateretto has told him that the Roman emperor Nero is fishing in the lake of Hell. Nero was notorious in antiquity for debauchery and for murdering his own mother; placing him in the underworld as a perpetual angler is a grotesque comic image from popular demonic lore.
TLN 1935cultural context
“whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman”
In Elizabethan and Jacobean England, 'gentleman' and 'yeoman' named distinct social ranks. A gentleman held a coat of arms and did not work with his hands; a yeoman was a freeholder of land, prosperous but below the gentry. The Fool's joke is that a yeoman whose son has risen to gentleman status is already mad with social ambition before he reaches the ward — a bitter joke about parents who strip themselves for children who then look down on them.
TLN 1945archaic vocab
“I will arraign them straight”
'Arraign' means to bring a prisoner formally before a court to answer a charge. 'Straight' here means 'immediately' (not 'in a straight line'). Lear proceeds to stage a mock trial of his daughters, appointing the disguised Edgar as 'most learned justicer' (judge) and the Fool as his 'yokefellow of equity' (equal partner in justice). The whole passage enacts a fantasy court in which Lear can punish Goneril and Regan for their cruelty.
TLN 1955historical topical
“Hoppedance cries in Tom's belly for two white herring”
Hoppedance is the name of one of the demons that Edgar claims possesses him as Poor Tom. Shakespeare took this name directly from Samuel Harsnett's A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603), a Church of England pamphlet that exposed a series of fake exorcisms performed by Jesuit priests. The demons' names were real names from Harsnett's list of fraudulent possessing spirits.
historical Harsnett's Declaration and Poor Tom's devils
TLN 1975archaic vocab
“I took you for a joint-stool”
A 'joint-stool' was a plain wooden stool made by a joiner — the cheapest, most basic piece of household furniture, contrasted with carved or upholstered chairs. 'Cry you mercy, I took you for a joint-stool' was already proverbial in Shakespeare's time as a mock-apology for ignoring someone: the Fool pretends to have not seen Goneril because he mistook her for a piece of furniture. The joke works in the mock-trial because there is no Goneril there — only empty air — and the Fool is playing along with Lear's delusion while undercutting it.
TLN 1983parallel passage
“My tears begin to take his part so much / They'll mar my counterfeiting”
Edgar, aside, admits that his pity for the mad Lear is making him cry, and real tears will ruin his disguise as the deranged beggar Poor Tom. 'Counterfeiting' means feigning or performing a false identity. This is Edgar's first moment of genuine feeling breaking through his act, and it echoes Hamlet's 'What's Hecuba to him?' speech about the Player who weeps for a fiction: here a character who is performing madness weeps real tears for a king who has gone truly mad.
TLN 1998archaic vocab
“let them anatomize Regan; see what breeds about her heart”
'Anatomize' means to dissect a body in order to examine its internal structure — the word was used for both actual post-mortem dissection and, figuratively, for any thorough examination. Lear literally wants to cut Regan open to discover what physiological substance produces cruelty: 'Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?' The line asks whether evil has a bodily explanation, and the answer the play implies is that it does not.
TLN 2002cultural context
“you'll say they are Persian; but let them be changed”
Lear, still in his fantasy that Edgar is one of his hundred knights, notices Edgar's rags but imagines them as 'Persian' dress — the richest, most exotic attire imaginable to an English audience, evoking oriental luxury and embroidered splendour. His instruction to 'let them be changed' shows him still giving royal orders even in madness. The gap between Edgar's near-naked beggar's state and 'Persian' garments is an image of Lear's shattered grasp on reality.
TLN 2034rhetorical device
“He childed as I fathered”
Edgar's compressed line 'He childed as I fathered' is an antithetical parallel: Lear has been wronged by his children just as Edgar has been wronged by his father (Gloucester, deceived by Edmund into believing Edgar a traitor). The verbal symmetry — a new coinage 'childed' matched to 'fathered' — makes a single formula for both men's tragedies. 'Mark the high noises' in the next line means watch the great men's quarrels: keep your ear on how the powerful are tearing each other apart.