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The untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up,
Of this child-changed father!!

Phys. So please your majesty, That we may wake the king? he hath slept long. Cor. Be governed by your knowledge, and proceed I' the sway of your own will. Is he arrayed? Gent. Ay, madam; in the heaviness of his sleep, We put fresh garments on him.

Phys. Be by, good madam, when we do awake him; I doubt not of his temperance.

Cor. Very well.

Phys. Please you, draw near.-Louder the music

there.2

Cor. O my dear father!

Restoration, hang

Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms, that my two sisters

Have in thy reverence made!

Kent.

Kind and dear princess!

Cor. Had you not been their father, these white

flakes.

Had challenged pity of them. Was this a face
To be exposed against the warring winds?
[To stand against the deep, dread-bolted thunder?
In the most terrible and nimble stroke

Of quick, cross lightning? to watch (poor perdu!)
With this thin helm?3] Mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father,
To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn,
In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!

1 That is, changed by his children; a father whose jarring senses have been untuned by the ingratitude of his daughters.

2 This and the foregoing speech are not in the folio. It has been already observed, that Shakspeare considered soft music as favorable to sleep. Lear, we may suppose, had been thus composed to rest; and now the physician desires louder music to be played, for the purpose of waking him.

3 The lines in crotchets are not in the folio. The allusion is to the forlorn hope of an army, called in French enfans perdus; amongst other desperate adventures in which they were engaged, the night-watches seem to have been a common one.

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'Tis wonder, that thy life and wits at once Had not concluded all.'-He wakes; speak to him. Phys. Madam, do you; 'tis fittest.

Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

Lear. You do me wrong, to take me out o' the grave.

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.

Cor.

Sir, do you know me? Lear. You are a spirit, I know; when did you die? Cor. Still, still, far wide!

Phys. He's scarce awake; let him alone awhile. Lear. Where have I been? Where am I?-Fair daylight?

I am mightily abused.2-I should even die with pity,
To see another thus.-I know not what to say.
I will not swear these are my hands :-let's see;-
I feel this pin prick. 'Would I were assured

Of my condition.

Cor.

And hold your hands in benediction o'er me.
No, sir, you must not kneel.

Lear.

O, look upon me, sir,

Pray, do not mock me.

I am a very foolish, fond old man,

3

Fourscore and upward; and, to deal plainly,

I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

Methinks I should know you, and know this man :
Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant

What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady

To be my child Cordelia.

1 i. e. had not all ended.

2 I am strangely imposed upon by appearances; I am in a strange mist of uncertainty.

3 The folio here adds the words "not an hour more or less;" which have been regarded as the interpolation of some player.

Cor.

If

And so I am, I am.

Lear. Be your tears wet? Yes, 'faith. I pray,

weep not;

you have poison for me, I will drink it.

I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.

You have some cause; they have not.

Cor.

Lear. Am I in France?
Kent.

Lear. Do not abuse me.

No cause, no cause.

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Phys. Be comforted, good madam. The great rage, You see, is killed in him; [and yet it is danger

To make him even o'er the time he has lost.]
Desire him to go in; trouble him no more,

Till further settling.

Cor. Will't please your highness walk?
Lear.

You must bear with me;

'Pray you now, forget and forgive; I am old and foolish.

[Exeunt LEAR, CORDELIA, Physician, and

Attendants.

[Gent. Holds it true, sir,

That the duke of Cornwall was so slain?

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They say, Edgar,

His banished son, is with the earl of Kent

In Germany.

Kent.

Report is changeable.

"Tis time to look about; the powers o' the kingdom

Approach apace.

Gent. The arbitrement is like to be a bloody. Fare you well, sir.

1 "To make him even o'er the time he has lost,"

[Exit.

is to make the occurrences of it plain or level to his troubled mind. See Baret's Alvearie, 1573, E. 307.

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