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from King Lear
I,ii
EDMUND This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,--often
the surfeit
of our own behavior,--we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we
were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance;
drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge
of a star! My
father compounded with my mother under the
dragon's tail; and my nativity was under Ursa
major;
so that it follows, I am rough and
lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am,
had the maidenliest star in the
firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar--
[Enter EDGAR]
And pat he comes like the catastrophe
of the old
comedy: my cue is villanous melancholy, with a
sigh like Tom o' Bedlam. O, these eclipses do
portend
these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.
EDGAR How now, brother Edmund! what serious
contemplation are you in?
I.iv
KING LEAR
Where's my fool, ho? I think the world's asleep.
...
Fool Sirrah, I'll teach
thee a speech.
KING LEAR Do.
Fool Mark it, nuncle:
Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than
thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set
less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than
two tens to a score.
KENT This is nothing, fool.
Fool Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you
gave me nothing for't. Can you make no use of
nothing, nuncle?
KING LEAR Why, no, boy; nothing can be made
out of nothing.
...
FOOL
[Singing]
Fools had ne'er less wit in a year;
For wise men are
grown foppish,
They know not how their wits to wear,
Their manners are so apish.
...
FOOL
they'll
have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt
have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am
whipped for holding my
peace. I had rather be any
kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be
thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit
o' both sides,
and left nothing i' the middle
...
Fool May not an ass know when the cart
draws
the horse? Whoop, Jug! I love thee.
...
I,v
Thou canst tell why one's nose stands i'
the middle
on's face?
KING LEAR No.
Fool Why, to keep one's eyes of either side's nose; that
what a man cannot
smell out, he may spy into.
...
II,iv
KENT None.
How chance the king comes with so small a train?
Fool
And thou hadst been set i' the stocks for that
question, thou hadst well deserved it.
KENT Why, fool?
Fool
We'll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee
there's no labouring i' the winter. All that follow
their noses
are led by their eyes but blind men; and
there's not a nose among twenty but can smell him
that's stinking. Let
go thy hold when a great wheel
runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with
following it: but the great one that
goes up the
hill, let him draw thee after. When a wise man
gives thee better counsel, give me mine again: I
would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it.
That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows
but for form,
Will pack when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm,
But I will tarry; the fool will
stay,
And let the wise man fly:
The knave turns fool that runs away;
The fool no knave, perdy.
KENT
Where learned you this, fool?
Fool Not i' the stocks, fool.
III,iv
this cold night will turn us all
to fools and madmen
III,vi
thou, sapient sir, sit here
[To EDGAR]
Thou robed man of justice,
take thy place;
[To the Fool]
And thou, his yoke-fellow of equity,
Bench by his side:
...
III,vi
KING LEAR Make no noise, make no noise; draw the curtains:
so, so, so. We'll go to supper i' he morning.
So, so, so.
Fool And I'll go to bed at noon.
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