Kent. Where learned'st thou that, fool?
Fool. Not in the stocks, fool.
[Not from being punished with the sequent effect; not in consequence of an improvidence, that an ant might have taught me to avoid.]
'I have no way, and therefore want no eyes,' says another duke, who is also the victim of that 'absolute' authority which is abroad in this play. 'I stumbled when I saw,' and this is his prayer.
Let the superfluous and lust-dieted man
That slaves your ordinance; that will not SEE
Because he doth not FEEL, feel your power quickly.
'Thou seest how this world goes,' says the outcast king, meeting this poor outcast duke, just after his eyes had been taken out of his head, by the persons then occupying the chief offices in the state. 'Thou seest how this world goes.' 'I SEE it FEELINGLY,' is the duke's reply.
Lear. What! art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears.
And his account of how it goes is—as we shall see—one that requires to be looked at with ears, for it contains, what one calls elsewhere in this play,—ear-kissing arguments.—'Get thee glass eyes,' he says, in conclusion, 'and like a scurvy politician pretend to SEE, the things thou dost not.' And that was not the kind of politician, and that was not the kind of political eye-sight, to which this statesman, and seer, proposed to leave the times, that his legacy should fall on, whatever he might be compelled to tolerate in his own.
'Upon the crown o' the cliff. What thing was that
Which parted from you?'
'A poor unfortunate beggar.' [Softly.] 'As I stood here BELOW, methought his eyes Were two full moons; he had a thousand noses. Horns welked and waved, like the enridged sea.'