LEAR.
Ay, every inch a 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 wren goes to’t, 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 daughters got ’tween the lawful sheets.
To’t, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers.
Behold yond simp’ring dame,
Whose face between her forks presages snow;
That minces virtue, and does shake the head
To hear of pleasure’s name.
The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to’t with a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend’s; there’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit; burning, scalding, stench, consumption. Fie, fie, fie! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination. There’s money for thee.
GLOUCESTER.
O, let me kiss that hand!
LEAR.
Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
GLOUCESTER.
O ruin’d piece of nature, this great world
Shall so wear out to naught. Dost thou know me?
LEAR.
I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me?
No, do thy worst, blind Cupid; I’ll not love.
Read thou this challenge; mark but the penning of it.
GLOUCESTER.
Were all the letters suns, I could not see one.
EDGAR.
I would not take this from report,
It is, and my heart breaks at it.
LEAR.
Read.
GLOUCESTER.
What, with the case of eyes?
LEAR.
O, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head, nor no money in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light, yet you see how this world goes.