Introduction]

Speaker: King Lear has summoned us to a meeting. In attendance are his daughters Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, his two sons-in-law, and the King of France who hopes to marry Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia. I am the Earl of Kent. We've been hearing rumors that the King is planning to step down and now we will discover how he plans to divide his kingdom.

Speaker: Know that we have divided in three, our kingdom, and here's our fast intent to shake all cares in business from our age, conferring them on younger strengths, while we unburdened crawl towards death.

Speaker: Tell me my daughters, which of you shall we say does love us most that we our largest bounty may extend when nature doth with merit challenge? Goneril, our eldest born, speak first.

Speaker: Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter, dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty. Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare. As much as child e'er loved or father found. A love that makes breath poor and speech unable. Beyond all manner of so much I love you.

Speaker: Of all these bounds, even from this line to this, we make thee lady, to thine and Albany’s issues be this perpetual. What says our second daughter, our dearest Regan?

Speaker: I am made of that self-mettle as my sister. I find she names my very deed of love. Only she comes too short, that I profess myself an enemy to all other joys, and find I am alone felicitate in your dear highness' love.

Speaker: To thee and thine hereditary ever, remain this ample third of our fair kingdom. No less in space, validity, or pleasure than that conferred on Goneril. Now, our joy, although our last. What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.

Speaker: Nothing, my lord.

Speaker: Nothing?

Speaker: Nothing [laughs] Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.

Speaker: Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond, no more nor less.

Speaker: How, how, Cordelia? Mend your speech a little. Lest you may mar your fortunes.

Speaker: Good, my lord, you have begot me, bred me, loved me. I return those duties back as are right fit, obey you, love you, and most honor you. Why have my sisters' husbands if they say they love you all? Haply when I shall wed that lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry half my love with him, half my care and duty. Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters, to love my father all.

Speaker: So young and so untender.

Speaker: So young, my lord, and true.

Speaker: Let it be so. Thy truth then be thy dower. For by the sacred radiance of the sun, here I disclaim all my paternal care, propinquity, and property of blood. And as a stranger to my heart and me hold thee from this forever thou my sometime daughter.

Speaker: Good, my liege,--

Speaker: Peace, Kent. Come not between the dragon and his wrath. I loved her most and thought to set my rest on her kind nursery. Hence, and avoid my sight.

So be my grave my peace, as here I give her father's heart from her. Cornwall and Albany, with my two daughters' dowers, digest this third. Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.

I do invest you jointly with my power, pre-eminence, and all the large effects that troop with majesty. Only shall we retain the name, and all th' additions to a king. The rest, be yours; which to confirm, this coronet part between you.

Speaker: Royal Lear, Whom I have ever honored as my king, cheque this hideous rashness, thy youngest daughter does not love thee least;

Speaker: Kent, on thy life, no more.

Speaker: See better, Lear. and let me still remain the true blank of thine eye. Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat, I'll tell thee thou dost evil.

Speaker: Hear me, recreant. Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow, which nor our nature nor our place can bear, our potency made good, take thy reward. Five days we do allot thee, for provision to shield thee from disasters of the world; and on the sixth to turn thy hated back upon our kingdom.

Speaker: It's a dangerous thing to tell a king the truth when flatter is what he's expecting. Both Cordelia and I have been banished for doing so. The King of France still wants to marry Cordelia even though she's been disinherited and dishonored.

Speaker: I yet beseech, Your Majesty,-- If for I want that glib and oily art, to speak and purpose not; since what I well intend, I'll do't before I speak, that you make known, it is no unchaste action, or dishonour'd step that hath deprived me of your grace and favour.

Speaker: Better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better.

Speaker: Lear tells Goneril and Regan that he will live with each of them in alternating months. He and his 100 knights who his daughters will have to pay, feed, and shelter.

Speaker: You see how full of changes his age is. He always loved our sister most; and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off

Speaker: 'Tis the infirmity of his age, yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.

Speaker: The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look from his age to receive unruly waywardness.

Speaker: Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent's banishment.

Speaker: We must do something

Speaker: This is the home of King Lear's devoted Earl of Gloucester. Gloucester has two sons. One of them is legitimate.

Speaker: Fine word, legitimate.

Speaker: Not this one. Having been born out of wedlock. Edmund will inherit nothing. So to change his destiny he has forged a letter supposedly from his brother Edgar, which asks Edmund to join him in a plot to kill their father, with his death share the inheritance between them.

Speaker: Our Father's love is to the bastard Edmund as to the legitimate, well then, legitimate Edgar. I must have your land. If this letter speed and my invention thrive, Edmund, the base shall chew the legitimate. I grow, I prosper, no Gods stand up for bastards.

Speaker: Edmund lets his father see him reading the letter, but says it's nothing important. Gloucester insists on seeing it.

Speaker: Please, your Lordship it's a letter from my brother not meant for your looking.

Speaker: Oh, my God. Is this his hand?

Speaker: It is but I can't believe he wrote it with his heart--

Speaker: Find him.

Speaker: Gloucester believes Edmund's forgery and commands that Edgar be brought to him for punishment.

Speaker: Edgar, when saw you my father last?

Speaker: This morning.

Speaker: How have you angered him?

Speaker: Edmund tells his brother Edgar that he must have done something to enrage their father. Edgar thinks he can straighten it out but Edmund says it's worse than that their father has commanded his men to hunt Edgar down. It's not safe here for Edgar he must hide himself.

Speaker: I do serve you in this business.

Speaker: I've been banished, but I'm ignoring the order because I want to make sure that no harm comes to Lear. I don't trust Goneril or Regan. So disguised as a servant, I offer my services to the king. Now Lear's first month with his eldest daughter's not going well. Angry over his behavior and the rowdiness of his 100 Nights. She tells her servants to treat her father rudely, not to answer when he calls.

Speaker: Put on what weary negligence you please, you and your fellows, I'll have it come to question. If he dislike it, let him to my sister, whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one, not to be over-ruled. Idle old man.

Speaker: Where's my knave, my fool

Speaker: That still would manage those authorities that he hath given away.

Speaker: Go you and call my fool hither. Where's my fool, ho? I think the world's asleep.

Speaker: Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet one?

Speaker: No, lad, teach me.

Speaker: That lord that counsell'd thee to give away thy land. Come place him here by me. Do thou for him stand.

The sweet and bitter fool will presently appear; the one in motley here, the other found out there.

Speaker: Does thou call me fool, boy?

Speaker: All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with. Thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown, when thou gavest thy golden one away. Thou madest thy

daughters thy mothers. Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie. I would fain learn to lie.

Speaker: How now, daughter, what makes that frontlet on? You are too much of late i' the frown.

Speaker: Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning.

Speaker: Not only, sir, this your all-licensed fool, but other of your insolent retinue do hourly carp and quarrel; breaking forth in rank and not-to-be endured riots. Sir, I had thought, by making this well-known unto you, to have found a safe redress; but now grow fearful that you protect this course, and put it on by your allowance.

Speaker: Are you our daughter?

Speaker: I would you would make use of your good wisdom. Here do you keep a 100 knights and squires; men so disorder'd, so debosh'd and bold that this our court, infected with their manners, shows like a riotous inn, epicurism and lust make it more like a tavern or a brothel than a graced palace. The shame itself doth speak for instant remedy: be then desired by her, that else will take the thing she begs, a little to disquantity your train.

Speaker: Saddle my horses. I'll not trouble thee. Yet have I left a daughter. it is come to this? Let it be so, yet have I left a daughter, who, I am sure, is kind and comfortable.

Prepare my horses.

Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear. Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend to make this creature fruitful. Into her womb convey sterility, dry up in her the organs of increase;

and from her derogate body never spring a babe to honour her. If she must teem, give her child of spleen; that it may live to be a thwart disnatured torment to her that she may feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.

Speaker: Goneril sends word to her sister Regan warning that their father is on his way to her. Regan and her husband leave their home so as not to be there when Lear arrives. Finding Regan not at home Lear travels on to Gloucester's Castle. And discovering that Regan is here, he sends for her and the Duke to come speak with him but they send word back they are tired and will not come.

Speaker: Deny to speak with me? They are sick? They are weary? They have travell'd all the night? Fetch me a better answer.

Speaker: My dear Lord, you know the fiery quality of a Duke how unremovable and fixed he is in his own course.

Speaker: Fiery? what quality? Why, Gloucester, Gloucester, I'ld speak with the Duke of Cornwall and his wife.

Speaker: Well, my good Lord, I have informed them so.

Speaker: Inform'd them. Dost thou understand me, man?

Speaker: Aye, my good Lord.

Speaker: The king would speak with Cornwall; the dear father would with his daughter, speak, commands her service. Are they inform'd of this? Tell the hot duke.

Speaker: I would have all well betwixt you.

Speaker: No, but not yet, maybe he is not well. Infirmity doth still neglect all office whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves. When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind to suffer with the body. O, me, my heart, my rising heart, but, down.

Speaker: I am glad to see your Highness.

Speaker: Regan, I think you are; I know what reason I have to think so. Should thou not be glad, I would divorce me from thy mother's tomb. Thy sister's naught. O, Regan, she hath tied sharp-tooth'd unkindness, like a vulture, here. I can scarce speak to thee; thou'lt not believe with how depraved a quality-- O, Regan.

Speaker: I cannot think my sister in the least would fail her obligation. If, sir, perchance she have restrain'd the riots of your followers.

Speaker: My curses on her.

Speaker: O, sir, you are old, nature in you stands on the very verge of her confine, you should be ruled and led by some discretion, that discerns your state better than you yourself. Therefore, I pray you,

that to our sister you do make return; say you have wrong'd her.

Speaker: Ask her forgiveness. Do you but mark how this becomes the house. Dear daughter, I confess that I am old; age is unnecessary: on my knees, I beg that you'll vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food.

Speaker: Good sir, no more; these are unsightly tricks. Return you to my sister.

Speaker: Oh, Regan will you take her by the hand?

Speaker: Why not by the hand, sir? How have I offended? All's not offence that indiscretion finds and dotage terms so.

Speaker: I pray you, father, being weak, seem so. If, till the expiration of your month, you will return and sojourn with my sister, dismissing half your train, come then to me.

Speaker: Return to her, and 50 men dismiss'd? No, rather I abjure all roofs and choose to wage against the enmity in the air. To be a comrade with the wolf and owl, necessity's sharp pinch.

Speaker: At your choice, Sir.

Speaker: I Prithee, daughter, do not make me mad. I will not trouble thee my child. Farewell. We'll no more meet, no more see one another and yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter or rather a disease that's in my flesh which I must needs call mine but I'll not chide thee. I can be patient. I can stay with Regan. I, and my 100 knights.

Speaker: If you will come to me, I entreat you bring but 5 and 20.

Speaker: I gave you all.

Speaker: In good time you gave it.

Speaker: Made you my guardians, my depositaries. I'll go with thee. Thy 50 yet doth double 5 and 20 and thou art twice my life.

Speaker: Hear me, my lord. What need you 5 and 20,10, or 5, to follow in a house where twice so many have a command to tend you?

Speaker: What need one?

Speaker: O, reason not the need. Allow not nature more than nature needs. Man's life's as cheap as beast's. You heavens, give me that patience I need.

If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts against their father, fool me not so much to bear it tamely. No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, that all the world shall--

I will do such things,-- What they are, yet I know not, but they will be the terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep. No, I'll not weep, I have full cause for weeping; but this heart

Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws. Or ere I'll weep. O, fool, I shall go mad.

Speaker: This house is little. The old man and his people cannot be well bestowed.

Speaker: It is his own blame, hath put himself from rest. And must needs taste is folly.

Speaker: Blow, winds and crack your cheeks. Rage, blow. You sulphurous and thought-executing fires. Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head. Crack nature's moulds that make ingrateful man.

Speaker: O, nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house. It's better than this rainwater out the door. Good nuncle, in. Ask thy daughter's blessing. Here's a night pities neither wise man nor fool.

Speaker: Rumble thy bellyful. Spit, fire, spout, rain. Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters. I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness. Then let fall your horrible pleasure. I am a man more sinned against than sinning.

Speaker: Gracious, my lord. Hard by here is a hovel. Some friendship will it lend you against the tempest.

Speaker: My wits begin to turn. Come on my boy. How dost my boy? Art Cold? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow? Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart that's sorry yet for thee.

[sings] He that has and a little tiny wit--

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,--

Must make content with his fortunes fit,

For the rain it raineth every day.

Speaker: Alack, alack Edmund. I like not this unnatural dealing. When I desire their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of my own house. Charged me on pain of perpetual displeasure. Neither to speak of him, entreat for him nor any way sustained him.

Speaker: Most savage and unnatural.

Speaker: Go to. Say you nothing. There is division between the Dukes and a worse matter than that. I have received a letter this night. It is dangerous to be spoken. I have locked the letter in my closet. These injuries the King now bears will be revenged home. There is part of a power already footed. We must incline to the king. I will seek him and privily relieve him. Go you and maintain talk with the Duke that my charity be not of him perceived. If he ask for me, I'm ill and gone to bed. If I die for it as no less is threatened me, the king my old master must be relieved. There is strange things toward Edmund. Pray you. Be careful.

Speaker: This courtesy forbid thee shall the Duke instantly know and of that letter too. This seems a fair deserving and must draw me that which my father loses. No less than all. The younger rises when the old doth fall.

Speaker: Hearing of division between the Dukes Cordelia's husband the King of France has landed an army at Dover.

Speaker: This is the letter he spoke of, which approves him an intelligent party to the advantages of France.

Speaker: Edmund betrays his father telling Cornwall that Gloucester knew about France's plan to help Lear.

Speaker: If the matter of this letter be certain, you have mighty business in hand.

Speaker: True or false? It hath made thee Earl of Gloucester. Post speedily to my lord your husband. The army of France is landed. Seek out the traitor Gloucester. Pinion him like a thief.

Speaker: Hang him instantly.

Speaker: Pluck out his eyes.

Speaker: Leave him to my displeasure. Edmund, keep you our sister company. The revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding. Farewell, dear sister. Farewell, my lord of Gloucester.

Speaker: Thou well we may not pass upon his life without the form of justice. Yet our power shall do courtesy to our wrath. Which men may blame but not control.

Speaker: Here is the place, my lord. Good my lord, enter.

Speaker: Filial ingratitude. No, I will weep no more. In such a night to shut me out. O, Regan, Goneril your old kind father whose frank heart gave all. That way madness lies. Let me shun that. No more of that.

Speaker: Good, my lord, enter.

Speaker: In, boy, go first. I'll pray and then I'll sleep. Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are. That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm. How shall your houseless heads, your unfed sides, your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you from seasons such as these? Wheresoever you are. O, I have taken too little care of this. Take physic, pomp. Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel that thou may shake the superflux to them And show the heavens more just.

Speaker: Not come in here, not come in help.

Speaker: Away. The foul fiend follows me. Through the sharp hawthorn blow the cold wind.

Speaker: Didst thou give all to thy daughters and thou art come to this?

Speaker: No. He reserved a blanket, else we'd all been shamed.

Speaker: Who gives anything to poor Tom whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame that hath laid knives under his pillow to course his own shadow for a traitor? Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes.

Speaker: Thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than this? Thou art the thing itself. Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings. Come unbutton here.

Speaker: Prithee nuncle, be contented. It is a naughty night to swim in.

Speaker: My good lord, come. Come here.

Speaker: Edgar continues to act the mad man so that his father will not know him but Lear does not know Gloucester either. Lear's daughters have taken over Gloucester's castle and decreed that their father not be allowed back in. Gloucester takes Lear to shelter.

Speaker: Bind fast his corky arms.

Speaker: What means your graces? Good my friends, consider you are my guest do me no foul play, friends.

Speaker: Bind him, I say.

Speaker: Filthy traitor.

Speaker: Unmerciful lady as you are, I’m none.

Speaker: Come, sir, what letters had you late from France?

Speaker: Be simple-answered, for we know the truth.

Speaker: Where hast thou sent the King?

Speaker: To Dover.

Speaker: Wherefore to Dover? Wast thou not charged at peril.

Speaker: Wherefore to Dover? Let him answer that.

Speaker: Wherefore to Dover?

Speaker: Because I would not see thy cruel nails pluck out his poor old eyes, nor thy fierce sister in his anointed flesh stick boarish fangs. I shall see the wingèd vengeance overtake such children.

Speaker: See it shalt thou never. Fellows, hold the chair. Upon these eyes of thine, I’ll set my foot.

Speaker: He that will hope to live till he be old, give me some help. O, cruel, O, you gods, oh.

Speaker: One side shall mock another. The other too.

[noise]

Speaker: Out, vile jelly. Where is thy luster now?

Speaker: Gloucester calls out to Edmund for help but Regan tells him it was Edmund who betrayed him. Now Gloucester knows he was tricked by Edmund into casting out his good son Edgar. Not all of Cornwall's servants stood by while he blinded Gloucester. One of them fought with him to stop but Regan stabbed him from behind killing him. Not before the servant stabbed Cornwall, killing him.

Speaker: Away, get thee away. Good friend, be gone.

Speaker: You cannot see your way.

Speaker: I have no way and therefore I want no eyes. I stumbled when I saw. O, dear son Edgar. The food of thy abused father’s wrath. Might I but live to see thee in my touch, I'd say I had eyes again.

Speaker: It is poor Mad Tom.

Speaker: Is it a beggar man?

Speaker: Mad man and beggar too.

Speaker: He has some reason, else he could not beg. In last night’s storm I such a fellow saw. Which made me think a man a worm. My son came then into my mind and yet my mind was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more since. As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.

Speaker: Bless thee, master.

Speaker: Is it the naked fellow?

Speaker: Ay, my lord.

Speaker: Bring some covering for this naked soul who I’ll entreat to lead me.

Speaker: Alack, sir, he is mad.

Speaker: It is the times' plague when mad men lead the blind.

Speaker: Bless thy sweet eyes, they bleed.

Speaker: Know’st thou the way to Dover?

Speaker: Ay, master. Both stile and gate, horse-way and foot-path. Poor Tom hath been scared out of his good wits. Bless thee, good man’s son from the foul fiend.

Speaker: Take you this purse. Thou whom the heaven's plague have humbled to all strokes that I am wretched makes thee the happier. Heavens, deal so still. Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man that slaves your ordinance that will not see because he does not feel thy power quickly. So distribution should undo excess and each man have enough. Dost thou know Dover?

Speaker: Ay, master.

Speaker: There is a cliff whose high and bending head looks fearfully in the confined deep. Bring me to the very brim of it. From that place, I will no leading need.

Speaker: Give me thy arm. Poor Tom shall lead thee.

Speaker: Come on Sir. Here is the place. How fearful and dizzy it is to cast one’s eyes so low. The fishermen that walk upon the beach appear like mice. I’ll look no more lest my brain turn and the deficient sight topple down headlong.

Speaker: Set me where you stand and thy hand.

Speaker: You are now within a foot of the extreme verge. For all beneath the moon would I not leap upright.

Speaker: Let go of my hand. Bid me farewell and let me hear thee going.

Speaker: Now, fare you well good sir.

Speaker: With all my heart.

Speaker: O, you might gods. This world I do renounce and in your sights shake patiently my great affliction off. If I could bear it longer and not fall to quarrel with your great opposeless wills, my snuff and loathèd part of nature should burn itself out. If Edgar live, O, bless him.

Speaker: Edgar now pretends to be a different person at the bottom of the cliff who has found Gloucester after he miraculously survived a great fall. Surely the gods were behind this miracle. Gloucester agrees and resolves to bear life until it ends naturally.

Speaker: They cannot touch me for coining. I am the king himself. Nature's above ark in that respect.

Speaker: I know that voice.

[singing] When the rain came to wet me once in the window make me chatter

When the thunder would not peace at my bedding

There I found them

There I smelt them out

Go to, they are not men of their words, they told me I was everything; 'tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.

Speaker: It's not the king?

Speaker: I'm every inch the king. When I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man's life. What was thy cause? adultery Thou shalt not die. Die for adultery, No. The rain goes to it and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive for Gloucester's bastard son was kinder to his father than my two daughters, got 'tween the lawful sheets. Down from the waist they are Centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit. Beneath is all the fiends'; there's hell, there's darkness, there's the

sulphurous pit.

Speaker: Oh, let me kiss that hand.

Speaker: Let me wipe it first. It smells of mortality.

Speaker: Oh, ruined piece of nature does thou know me?

Speaker: I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squinting at me? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light, yet you see how this world does go?

Speaker: I see it feelingly.

Speaker: What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears, see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand. Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind for which thou whipp'st her.

Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks.

Get thee glass eyes; and like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.

Speaker: O, matter and impertinency mix'd. Reason in madness.

Speaker: If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes. I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester. Thou must be patient; we came crying hither. Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air, we wawl and cry. When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

Speaker: Cordelia sends men to find her father and bring him to the French camp where he rests. [silence] Edgar takes his father to shelter as well finally revealing his identity. When Gloucester finds out that poor Tom is really his faithful son Edgar, he can die.

Speaker: O, you kind gods, cure this great breach in his abused nature. The untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up of this child-changed father. Oh, my dear father, restoration hang thy medicine on my lips and let this kiss repair those violent harms that my two sisters haven't thy reverence made.

Was this a face to be bruised against the warring winds, to stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder? Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me, should have stood that night against my fire. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

Speaker: You do me wrong to take me out of the grave. Thou art a soul in bliss but I am bound upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears scald like moulten lead.

Speaker: Sir, do you know me?

Speaker: You're a spirit I know. When did you die?

Speaker: O, look upon me, sir, and lay your hands in benediction o'er me. No, sir, you must not kneel.

Speaker: Pray, do not mock me, I am a very foolish fond old man. Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less. And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you, yet,1 I am doubtful. I think this lady to be my child Cordelia.

Speaker: So I am, I am.

Speaker: Be your tears wet? Yes, 'faith. I pray, weep not. If 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.

Speaker: No cause. No cause.

Speaker: Am I in France?

Speaker: In your own kingdom, sir.

Speaker: Do not abuse me.

Speaker: Wilth it please your Highness walk?

Speaker: You must bear with me. Pray, you now forget and forgive, I am old and foolish.

Speaker: Unexpectedly the French troops are defeated by the British under Edmund and Albany, Lear and Cordelia are captured.

Speaker: We are not the first, who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst. Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?

Speaker: No. No, no, no. Come, let's away to prison, we two alone will sing like birds in the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, and ask of thee forgiveness, so we'll live. Pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh and take upon's the mystery of things as if we were God's spies.

Speaker: Edmund has other plans for Lear and Cordelia he has secretly arranged that they'd be executed. Regan has no husband now, and Goneril sees hers as weak. Both of them want Edmund for themselves.

Speaker: Which of them shall I take? Neither can be enjoyed if both remain alive. To take the widow exasperates, makes mad her sister Goneril. And hardly shall I carry out my side her husband being alive.

Speaker: To consolidate his power, Edmund plans to have Albany murdered. Goneril wants Edmund to kill her husband and marry her. Unfortunately, she has put this in a letter which has fallen into Albany's hands.

Speaker: Edmund, I arrest thee on capitol treason, and in thine attaint, this gilded serpent. Lost thou this paper?

Speaker: Ask me not what I know.

Speaker: Goneril who's also made sure that her sister will not be able to have Edmund, she has poisoned her. Since Albany has discovered Goneril's treachery against him, Regan's death won't do her any good.

Speaker: Edmund. Despite thy victor sword and fire-new fortune, thy valour and thy heart, thou art a traitor. False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father; conspirant 'gainst this high-illustrious prince; from the extremest upward of thy head to the descent and dust below thy foot, A most toad-spotted traitor.

Speaker: Where have you hid yourself? How have you known the miseries of your father?

Speaker: By nursing them, my lord. O, our lives' sweetness, that we the pain of death would hourly die rather than die at once.

Speaker: Edmund learns that Goneril and Regan who both wanted to marry him are dead.

Speaker: Yet, Edmund was beloved. I was contracted to both of them. Now all three marry in an instant. I pant for life, some good I mean to do, despite of mine own nature. Quickly send. Be brief in it, to the castle; for my writ is upon the life of Lear and on Cordelia.

Nay, send in time.

Speaker: Hasty, for thy life.

Speaker: He has commissioned from thy wife and me to hang Cordelia in her cell. To lay the blame upon her own despair that she fordid herself.

Speaker: [cries] She's gone forever. I know when one is dead and when one lives. She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking glass. If that her breath will mist or stay in the stone, why, then she lives.

Speaker: Is this promised end?

Speaker: This feather stirs; she lives. If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt. Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little. Art thou not Kent?

Speaker: The same. Your servant Kent. I am the very man that from the first of difference and decay have followed your sad steps.

Speaker: You are welcome hither.

Speaker: Your eldest daughters have foredone themselves and desperately are dead.

Speaker: My poor fool is hang'd. No, no. No life. Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never. Pray you, undo this button. Thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips. See there. Look there.

Speaker: He faints. my lord, my lord.

Speaker: Break, heart; I prithee, break.

Speaker: Look up, my lord.

Speaker: Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass, he hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer.

Speaker: He's gone indeed.

Speaker: The wonder is he hath endured so long.

Speaker: The weight of this sad time we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most, we that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long.

[silence]

[music]

[00:57:45] [END OF AUDIO]