Shall pass between us. Ere long you are like to hear,

If you dare venture in your own behalf,

A mistress’s command. Wear this. Spare speech.

Decline your head. This kiss, if it durst speak,

Would stretch thy spirits up into the air.

⌈she kisses him⌉

Conceive, and fare you well.

EDMUND Yours in the ranks of death.

GONORIL My most dear Gloucester.

⌈Exit Edmund⌉

To thee a woman’s services are due;

My foot usurps my body.

OSWALD Madam, here comes my lord.

Exit

Enter the Duke of Albany

GONORIL

I have been worth the whistling.

ALBANY O Gonoril,

You are not worth the dust which the rude wind

Blows in your face. I fear your disposition.

That nature which contemns it origin

Cannot be bordered certain in itself.

She that herself will sliver and disbranch

From her material sap perforce must wither,

And come to deadly use.

GONORIL No more. The text is foolish.

ALBANY

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile;

Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?

Tigers, not daughters, what have you performed?

A father, and a gracious, aged man,

Whose reverence even the head-lugged bear would

lick,

Most barbarous, most degenerate, have you madded.

Could my good-brother suffer you to do it—

A man, a prince by him so benefacted?

If that the heavens do not their visible spirits

Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,

It will come,

Humanity must perforce prey on itself,

Like monsters of the deep.

GONORIL Milk-livered man,

That bear‘st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;

Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerning

Thine honour from thy suffering; that not know’st

Fools do those villains pity who are punished

Ere they have done their mischief: where’s thy drum?

France spreads his banners in our noiseless land,

With plumed helm thy flaxen biggin threats,

Whiles thou, a moral fool, sits still and cries

‘Alack, why does he so?’

ALBANY See thyself, devil.

Proper deformity shows not in the fiend

So horrid as in woman.

GONORIL O vain fool! 60

ALBANY

Thou changed and self-covered thing, for shame

Bemonster not thy feature. Were’t my fitness

To let these hands obey my blood,

They are apt enough to dislocate and tear

Thy flesh and bones. Howe’er thou art a fiend,

A woman’s shape doth shield thee.

GONORIL Marry your manhood, mew—

Enter ⌈Second⌉ Gentleman

ALBANY What news?

⌈SECOND⌉ GENTLEMAN

O my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall’s dead,

Slain by his servant going to put out

The other eye of Gloucester.

ALBANY Gloucester’s eyes?

⌈FSECOND⌉ GENTLEMAN

A servant that he bred, thralled with remorse,

Opposed against the act, bending his sword

To his great master, who thereat enraged

Flew on him, and amongst them felled him dead,

But not without that harmful stroke which since

Hath plucked him after.

ALBANY This shows you are above,

You justicers, that these our nether crimes

So speedily can venge. But O, poor Gloucester!

Lost he his other eye?

⌈SECOND⌉ GENTLEMAN Both, both, my lord. 80

(To Gonoril) This letter, madam, craves a speedy

answer.

’Tis from your sister.

GONORIL (aside) One way I like this well;

But being widow, and my Gloucester with her,

May all the building on my fancy pluck

Upon my hateful life. Another way

The news is not so took.—I’ll read and answer. Exit

ALBANY

Where was his son when they did take his eyes?

⌈ECOND⌉GENTLEMAN

Come with my lady hither.

ALBANY He is not here.

⌈ECOND⌉GENTLEMAN

No, my good lord; I met him back again.

ALBANY Knows he the wickedness? 90

⌈ECOND⌉GENTLEMAN

Ay, my good lord; ’twas he informed against him,

And quit the house on purpose that their punishment

Might have the freer course.

ALBANY Gloucester, I live

To thank thee for the love thou showed’st the King,

And to revenge thy eyes.—Come hither, friend

Tell me what more thou knowest. Exeunt

Sc. 17 Enter the Earl of Kent disguised, and ⌈First⌉ Gentleman

KENT Why the King of France is so suddenly gone back know you no reason?

⌈FIRST⌉ GENTLEMAN

Something he left imperfect in the state

Which, since his coming forth, is thought of; which

Imports to the kingdom so much fear and danger

That his personal return was most required

And necessary.

KENT

Who hath he left behind him general?

⌈IRST⌉ NTLEMAN

The Maréchal of France, Monsieur la Far.

KENT Did your letters pierce the Queen to any demonstration of grief? II

⌈IRST⌉ ENTLEMAN

Ay, sir. She took them, read them in my presence,

And now and then an ample tear trilled down

Her delicate cheek. It seemed she was a queen

Over her passion who, most rebel-like,

Sought to be king o’er her.

KENT O, then it moved her.

⌈IRST⌉GENTLEMAN

Not to a rage. Patience and sorrow strove

Who should express her goodliest. You have seen

Sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears

Were like, a better way. Those happy smilets

That played on her ripe lip seemed not to know