Page:King Lear (1917) Yale.djvu/67

King Lear, II. iv  Fool. Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese

fly that way.

Fathers that wear rags

Do make their children blind,

But fathers that bear bags

Shall see their children kind.

Fortune, that arrant whore,

Ne'er turns the key to the poor.

But for all this thou shalt have as many dolours

for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year.

Lear. O! how this mother swells up toward my heart;

Hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow!

Thy element's below. Where is this daughter?

Kent. With the earl, sir: here within.

Lear. Follow me not; stay here.

Gent. Made you no more offence than what

you speak of?

Kent. None.

How chance the king comes with so small a number?

Fool. An 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.

 54 dolours: pun on dollars

55 tell: count

56 mother: vertigo, a disease called the "hysteric passion"

