Page:King Lear (1917) Yale.djvu/81

King Lear, III. ii

Kent. Who's there?

Fool. Marry, here's grace and a cod-piece;

that's a wise man and a fool.

Kent. Alas! sir, are you here? things that love night

Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies

Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,

And make them keep their caves. Since I was man

Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,

Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never

Remember to have heard; man's nature cannot carry

The affliction nor the fear.

Lear. Let the great gods,

That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads,

Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,

That hast within thee undivulged crimes,

Unwhipp'd of justice; hide thee, thou bloody hand;

Thou perjur'd, and thou simular of virtue

That art incestuous; caitiff, to pieces shake,

That under covert and convenient seeming

Hast practis'd on man's life; close pent-up guilts

Rive your concealing continents, and cry

These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man

More sinn'd against than sinning.

Kent. Alack! bare-headed!

Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;

Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest;

Repose you there while I to this hard house,—

More harder than the stone whereof 'tis rais'd,—

Which even but now, demanding after you,

Denied me to come in, return and force

Their scanted courtesy.

 44 Gallow: terrify

50 pother: disturbance

54 simular: simulator

58 Rive: split

continents: covers

59 grace: mercy

