Act 3, Scene 7

A Room in Gloster's Castle.

[Enter Cornwall, Regan, Goneril, Edmund, and Servants.]
Cornwall
2040 Post speedily to my lord your husband, show him this letter:—
2041 the army of France is landed.—Seek out the traitor Gloster.
[Exeunt some of the Servants.]
Regan
2042 Hang him instantly.
Goneril
2043 Pluck out his eyes.
Cornwall
2044 Leave him to my displeasure.—Edmund, keep you our sister
2045 company: the revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous
2046 father are not fit for your beholding. Advise the duke where you
2047 are going, to a most festinate preparation: we are bound to the
2048 like. Our posts shall be swift and intelligent betwixt us.
2049 Farewell, dear sister:—farewell, my lord of Gloster.
[Enter Oswald.]
Cornwall
2050 How now! Where's the king?
Oswald
2051 My lord of Gloster hath convey'd him hence:
2052 Some five or six and thirty of his knights,
2053 Hot questrists after him, met him at gate;
2054 Who, with some other of the lord's dependants,
2055 Are gone with him towards Dover: where they boast
2056 To have well-armed friends.
Cornwall
2057 Get horses for your mistress.
Goneril
2058 Farewell, sweet lord, and sister.
Cornwall
2059 Edmund, farewell.
[Exeunt Goneril, Edmund, and Oswald.]
Cornwall
2060 Go seek the traitor Gloster,
2061 Pinion him like a thief, bring him before us.
[Exeunt other Servants.]
Cornwall
2062 Though well we may not pass upon his life
2063 Without the form of justice, yet our power
2064 Shall do a courtesy to our wrath, which men
2065 May blame, but not control.—Who's there? the traitor?
[Re-enter servants, with Gloster.]
Regan
2066 Ingrateful fox! 'tis he.
Cornwall
2067 Bind fast his corky arms.
Gloucester
2068 What mean your graces?—Good my friends, consider
2069 You are my guests: do me no foul play, friends.
Cornwall
2070 Bind him, I say.
[Servants bind him.]
Regan
2071 Hard, hard.—O filthy traitor!
Gloucester
2072 Unmerciful lady as you are, I'm none.
Cornwall
2073 To this chair bind him.—Villain, thou shalt find,—
[Regan plucks his beard.]
Gloucester
2074 By the kind gods, 'tis most ignobly done
2075 To pluck me by the beard.
Regan
2076 So white, and such a traitor!
Gloucester
2077 Naughty lady,
2078 These hairs which thou dost ravish from my chin
2079 Will quicken, and accuse thee: I am your host:
2080 With robber's hands my hospitable favours
2081 You should not ruffle thus. What will you do?
Cornwall
2082 Come, sir, what letters had you late from France?
Regan
2083 Be simple-answer'd, for we know the truth.
Cornwall
2084 And what confederacy have you with the traitors
2085 Late footed in the kingdom?
Regan
2086 To whose hands have you sent the lunatic king?
2087 Speak.
Gloucester
2088 I have a letter guessingly set down,
2089 Which came from one that's of a neutral heart,
2090 And not from one oppos'd.
Cornwall
2091 Cunning.
Regan
2092 And false.
Cornwall
2093 Where hast thou sent the king?
Gloucester
2094 To Dover.
Regan
2095 Wherefore to Dover? Wast thou not charg'd at peril,—
Cornwall
2096 Wherefore to Dover? Let him first answer that.
Gloucester
2097 I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.
Regan
2098 Wherefore to Dover, sir?
Gloucester
2099 Because I would not see thy cruel nails
2100 Pluck out his poor old eyes; nor thy fierce sister
2101 In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs.
2102 The sea, with such a storm as his bare head
2103 In hell-black night endur'd, would have buoy'd up,
2104 And quench'd the stelled fires; yet, poor old heart,
2105 He holp the heavens to rain.
2106 If wolves had at thy gate howl'd that stern time,
2107 Thou shouldst have said, 'Good porter, turn the key.'
2108 All cruels else subscrib'd:—but I shall see
2109 The winged vengeance overtake such children.
Cornwall
2110 See't shalt thou never.—Fellows, hold the chair.
2111 Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot.
[Gloster is held down in his chair, while Cornwall plucks out one of his eyes and sets his foot on it.]
Gloucester
2112 He that will think to live till he be old,
2113 Give me some help!—O cruel!—O ye gods!
Regan
2114 One side will mock another; the other too!
Cornwall
2115 If you see vengeance,—
First Servant
2116 Hold your hand, my lord:
2117 I have serv'd you ever since I was a child;
2118 But better service have I never done you
2119 Than now to bid you hold.
Regan
2120 How now, you dog!
First Servant
2121 If you did wear a beard upon your chin,
2122 I'd shake it on this quarrel. What do you mean?
Cornwall
2123 My villain!
[Draws, and runs at him.]
First Servant
2124 Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger.
[Draws. They fight. Cornwall is wounded.]
Regan
2125 Give me thy sword
[to another servant.]
Regan
2126 —A peasant stand up thus?
[Snatches a sword, comes behind, and stabs him.]
First Servant
2127 O, I am slain!—My lord, you have one eye left
2128 To see some mischief on thim. O!
[Dies.]
Cornwall
2129 Lest it see more, prevent it.—Out, vile jelly!
2130 Where is thy lustre now?
[Tears out Gloster's other eye and throws it on the ground.]
Gloucester
2131 All dark and comfortless.—Where's my son Edmund?
2132 Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature
2133 To quit this horrid act.
Regan
2134 Out, treacherous villain!
2135 Thou call'st on him that hates thee: it was he
2136 That made the overture of thy treasons to us;
2137 Who is too good to pity thee.
Gloucester
2138 O my follies! Then Edgar was abus'd.—
2139 Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him!
Regan
2140 Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell
2141 His way to Dover.—How is't, my lord? How look you?
Cornwall
2142 I have receiv'd a hurt:—follow me, lady.—
2143 Turn out that eyeless villain;—throw this slave
2144 Upon the dunghill.—Regan, I bleed apace:
2145 Untimely comes this hurt: give me your arm.
[Exit Cornwall, led by Regan; Servants unbind Gloster and lead him out.]
Second Servant
2146 I'll never care what wickedness I do,
2147 If this man come to good.
Third Servant
2148 If she live long,
2149 And in the end meet the old course of death,
2150 Women will all turn monsters.
Second Servant
2151 Let's follow the old earl, and get the Bedlam
2152 To lead him where he would: his roguish madness
2153 Allows itself to anything.
Third Servant
2154 Go thou: I'll fetch some flax and whites of eggs
2155 To apply to his bleeding face. Now heaven help him!
[Exeunt severally.]

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Notes

TLN 2047archaic vocab
“a most festinate preparation”
'Festinate' means hurried or hasty (from Latin festinare, to make haste). Cornwall is telling Edmund to urge Albany to prepare his forces as quickly as possible.
TLN 2061archaic vocab
“Pinion him like a thief”
To 'pinion' someone is to bind their arms tightly to their sides, as a bird's wings are pinioned to prevent flight. Cornwall orders Gloucester secured as if he were a common criminal rather than an earl in his own castle.
TLN 2067archaic vocab
“Bind fast his corky arms”
'Corky' means dried-out and withered, like cork — the word pictures Gloucester's old man's arms as thin, sapless, and brittle. The detail signals that the bound man is elderly, and the binding is therefore additionally cruel.
TLN 2074cultural context
“most ignobly done / To pluck me by the beard”
In Elizabethan England, pulling a man's beard was one of the gravest public insults — a deliberate challenge to his honor and manhood. That it is done here by a woman to an old man tied to a chair makes it doubly degrading. Gloucester's outrage ('most ignobly done') invokes a code of honor Cornwall and Regan are systematically dismantling.
TLN 2097rhetorical device
“I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course”
Gloucester compares himself to a bear in the sport of bear-baiting: the bear is chained to a stake in the pit and must endure wave after wave ('courses') of dogs attacking it until one or the other is dead. Bear-baiting arenas stood near the Globe Theatre; Shakespeare's audience would picture this instantly. Gloucester is saying he is trapped and must endure whatever comes.
TLN 2101historical topical
“In his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs”
'Anointed flesh' means the flesh of a king consecrated by the holy oil of coronation. Anointing at the coronation was a sacramental act that made the king's person sacred and inviolable — attacking him physically was not merely treason but sacrilege. Gloucester is saying Goneril's cruelty violates what should be untouchable.
historical The king's two bodieshistorical The divine right of kings
TLN 2104archaic vocab
“quench'd the stelled fires”
'Stelled fires' means the fixed stars — 'stelled' is a Shakespearean coinage from Latin stella (star), meaning 'starred' or 'fixed in the sky.' Gloucester is saying the storm Lear endured on the heath was so violent that even the sea, whipped up by the same storm, would have risen and extinguished the stars themselves.
TLN 2129stage direction note
“Out, vile jelly! / Where is thy lustre now?”
Cornwall gouges out Gloucester's second eye and throws it on the ground, taunting its 'lustre' — the eye's natural shine is now extinguished. 'Vile jelly' is clinical in its contempt, reducing the organ of sight to mere matter. The on-stage blinding is one of the most violent acts in Shakespeare's theater; it is performed fully in view of the audience, not off-stage as Elizabethan convention often required for extreme violence.
TLN 2151historical topical
“get the Bedlam / To lead him where he would: his roguish madness / Allows itself to anything”
'Bedlam' is a contraction of 'Bethlem,' the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem in London — England's only dedicated asylum for the insane. 'Bedlam beggars' were real or fake ex-inmates licensed to wander the country begging, and Edgar has been playing this role (as 'Poor Tom'). The servant's plan is to use Edgar's convincing act of madness as cover to guide the blind Gloucester undetected.
historical Harsnett's Declaration and Poor Tom's devils
TLN 2154historical topical
“fetch some flax and whites of eggs / To apply to his bleeding face”
Flax (the fibrous plant fiber, used as lint before cotton was common) and raw egg-whites were standard Elizabethan wound dressings. Egg-white was believed to cool and soothe inflammation and draw the flesh together; flax soaked in it served as a bandage. The Third Servant's impulse to fetch them is a small, humane act that closes the scene in pointed contrast to its preceding cruelty.