Act 4, Scene 2

Before the Duke of Albany's Palace.

[Enter Goneril and Edmund; Oswald meeting them.]
Goneril
2244 Welcome, my lord: I marvel our mild husband
2245 Not met us on the way.—Now, where's your master?
Oswald
2246 Madam, within; but never man so chang'd.
2247 I told him of the army that was landed;
2248 He smil'd at it: I told him you were coming;
2249 His answer was, 'The worse': Of Gloster's treachery
2250 And of the loyal service of his son
2251 When I inform'd him, then he call'd me sot
2252 And told me I had turn'd the wrong side out:—
2253 What most he should dislike seems pleasant to him;
2254 What like, offensive.
[To Edmund.]
Goneril
2255 Then shall you go no further.
2256 It is the cowish terror of his spirit,
2257 That dares not undertake: he'll not feel wrongs
2258 Which tie him to an answer. Our wishes on the way
2259 May prove effects. Back, Edmund, to my brother;
2260 Hasten his musters and conduct his powers:
2261 I must change arms at home, and give the distaff
2262 Into my husband's hands. This trusty servant
2263 Shall pass between us; ere long you are like to hear,
2264 If you dare venture in your own behalf,
2265 A mistress's command.
[Giving a favour.]
Goneril
2266 Wear this; spare speech;
2267 Decline your head: this kiss, if it durst speak,
2268 Would stretch thy spirits up into the air:—
2269 Conceive, and fare thee well.
Edmund
2270 Yours in the ranks of death!
[Exit Edmund.]
Goneril
2271 My most dear Gloster.
2272 O, the difference of man and man!
2273 To thee a woman's services are due:
2274 My fool usurps my body.
Oswald
2275 Madam, here comes my lord.
[Exit.]
[Enter Albany.]
Goneril
2276 I have been worth the whistle.
Albany
2277 O Goneril!
2278 You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
2279 Blows in your face! I fear your disposition:
2280 That nature which contemns it origin
2281 Cannot be bordered certain in itself;
2282 She that herself will sliver and disbranch
2283 From her material sap, perforce must wither
2284 And come to deadly use.
Goneril
2285 No more; the text is foolish.
Albany
2286 Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile:
2287 Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?
2288 Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform'd?
2289 A father, and a gracious aged man,
2290 Whose reverence even the head-lugg'd bear would lick,
2291 Most barbarous, most degenerate, have you madded.
2292 Could my good brother suffer you to do it?
2293 A man, a prince, by him so benefited!
2294 If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
2295 Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,
2296 It will come,
2297 Humanity must perforce prey on itself,
2298 Like monsters of the deep.
Goneril
2299 Milk-liver'd man!
2300 That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;
2301 Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning
2302 Thine honour from thy suffering; that not know'st
2303 Fools do those villains pity who are punish'd
2304 Ere they have done their mischief. Where's thy drum?
2305 France spreads his banners in our noiseless land;
2306 With plumed helm thy slayer begins threats;
2307 Whiles thou, a moral fool, sitt'st still, and criest
2308 'Alack, why does he so?'
Albany
2309 See thyself, devil!
2310 Proper deformity seems not in the fiend
2311 So horrid as in woman.
Goneril
2312 O vain fool!
Albany
2313 Thou changed and self-cover'd thing, for shame!
2314 Be-monster not thy feature! Were't my fitness
2315 To let these hands obey my blood.
2316 They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
2317 Thy flesh and bones:—howe'er thou art a fiend,
2318 A woman's shape doth shield thee.
Goneril
2319 Marry, your manhood now!
[Enter a Messenger.]
Albany
2320 What news?
Messenger
2321 O, my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall's dead;
2322 Slain by his servant, going to put out
2323 The other eye of Gloster.
Albany
2324 Gloster's eyes!
Messenger
2325 A servant that he bred, thrill'd with remorse,
2326 Oppos'd against the act, bending his sword
2327 To his great master; who, thereat enrag'd,
2328 Flew on him, and amongst them fell'd him dead;
2329 But not without that harmful stroke which since
2330 Hath pluck'd him after.
Albany
2331 This shows you are above,
2332 You justicers, that these our nether crimes
2333 So speedily can venge!—But, O poor Gloster!
2334 Lost he his other eye?
Messenger
2335 Both, both, my lord.—
2336 This letter, madam, craves a speedy answer;
2337 'Tis from your sister.
[Aside.]
Goneril
2338 One way I like this well;
2339 But being widow, and my Gloster with her,
2340 May all the building in my fancy pluck
2341 Upon my hateful life: another way
2342 The news is not so tart.—I'll read, and answer.
[Exit.]
Albany
2343 Where was his son when they did take his eyes?
Messenger
2344 Come with my lady hither.
Albany
2345 He is not here.
Messenger
2346 No, my good lord; I met him back again.
Albany
2347 Knows he the wickedness?
Messenger
2348 Ay, my good lord. 'Twas he inform'd against him;
2349 And quit the house on purpose, that their punishment
2350 Might have the freer course.
Albany
2351 Gloster, I live
2352 To thank thee for the love thou show'dst the king,
2353 And to revenge thine eyes.—Come hither, friend:
2354 Tell me what more thou know'st.
[Exeunt.]

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Notes

TLN 2256archaic vocab
“cowish terror of his spirit”
'Cowish' is a rare term meaning timidly cowardly, like a cow that will not fight. Goneril is saying Albany lacks the nerve to retaliate against those who wrong him, and that his spiritlessness — his refusal 'to undertake' any bold action — makes him a safe man to leave behind.
TLN 2261cultural context
“change arms at home, and give the distaff”
The distaff is the stick used in spinning wool or flax — the central tool of women's domestic labor, and thus the standard symbol of female domestic life. 'Change arms' plays on the double meaning: she will swap household roles (taking up military arms while giving Albany the women's distaff) and exchange the visible emblems of gender and authority. Goneril means to lead the war effort herself and let her husband stay home at his spinning.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)
TLN 2276archaic vocab
“I have been worth the whistle”
A proverbial expression meaning 'I used to be worth welcoming' — the whistle being the sound used to call a dog or to signal a greeting. Since Albany fails to meet Goneril on the road, she quips that she was once worth his coming to welcome her. Albany's cold reply demolishes the self-congratulation: she is not worth the dust the wind blows at her.
TLN 2282rhetorical device
“sliver and disbranch / From her material sap, perforce must wither”
Albany uses an extended tree metaphor: a branch that splinters ('slivers') and tears itself off from the trunk must die because it loses the 'material sap' — the living nourishment — that kept it alive. 'Material' here means 'of which it is made, essential.' The image applies to Goneril: by severing herself from the bonds of nature — from her father, her husband, her place in the order of things — she becomes as useless and 'deadly' as dead wood.
historical The great chain of being (order and degree)
TLN 2290historical topical
“head-lugg'd bear would lick”
A 'head-lugg'd bear' is a bear dragged by its head — that is, a baited bear, led by a chain through its nose or ears to the bear-baiting ring. Bear-baiting was common Elizabethan entertainment: a bear was chained to a post and set upon by dogs, the crowd betting on the outcome. Albany's point is that even so maddened and tormented a beast would show 'reverence' to an aged man — making Goneril and Regan more brutal than a circus animal in agony.
TLN 2299archaic vocab
“Milk-liver'd man!”
The liver was believed to be the seat of courage and hot passion; a courageous man had a blood-red, fiery liver, while a coward's liver was thought to be pale or white — bloodless, like milk. 'Milk-livered' is therefore a compound insult meaning utterly, constitutionally cowardly. Goneril uses it as a clinical diagnosis: Albany's passivity in the face of a French invasion is not restraint but a physiological deficiency.
TLN 2310cultural context
“Proper deformity seems not in the fiend / So horrid as in woman”
'Proper deformity' means deformity that is appropriate to its owner — a devil's ugliness belongs to a devil and is expected. Albany is saying that the same evil in a woman is more monstrous, because it violates her 'natural' character far more dramatically than a fiend's malice violates his. The speech registers Albany's horror at an inversion of what he thinks the natural order of femininity requires.
TLN 2325archaic vocab
“thrill'd with remorse, / Oppos'd against the act”
'Thrill'd' means pierced or penetrated, as if by a sharp point — not thrilled in the modern sense of excited. 'Remorse' here means pity or compassion for another's suffering (its older, broader meaning), not guilt for one's own past actions. The Messenger is saying Cornwall's servant was pierced to the core by pity at what he was being made to watch, and on that impulse drew his sword against his master.
TLN 2331cultural context
“you are above, / You justicers, that these our nether crimes / So speedily can venge”
'Justicers' means judges or dispensers of justice — Albany is addressing the gods, calling on them as heavenly magistrates. 'Nether crimes' are the crimes committed here below, on earth. Albany reads Cornwall's death as divine punishment: the gods intervened quickly ('speedily') to avenge Gloucester's blinding — evidence that heaven, though slow, does not overlook atrocity. The speech marks Albany's moral transformation: he has shifted from passive bystander to a man who interprets events as signs of providential justice.
TLN 2339syntax grammar
“being widow, and my Gloster with her, / May all the building in my fancy pluck / Upon my hateful life”
In this aside Goneril works through two responses to the news of Cornwall's death. 'One way' she likes it: Cornwall is gone, so Regan is now a widow and a rival for Edmund. But 'my Gloster' (her name for Edmund) is 'with her' — at Regan's side — which could 'pluck upon my hateful life' the whole 'building in my fancy,' meaning collapse everything she has built in her imagination (her plan for life with Edmund). The syntax is compressed: 'being widow' means 'now that Regan is a widow'; 'building in my fancy' means the structure of her hopes.