O heavens,
If you do love old men, if your sweet sway[3451][3452]
Allow obedience, if yourselves are old,[3451][3453]
Make it your cause; send down, and take my part![3451]
[To Gon.] Art not ashamed to look upon this beard?[3454] 190
O Regan, wilt thou take her by the hand?[3455]
Gon. Why not by the hand, sir? How have I offended?
All's not offence that indiscretion finds[3456]
And dotage terms so.
Lear. O sides, you are too tough;
Will you yet hold? How came my man i' the stocks?[3457] 195
Corn. I set him there, sir: but his own disorders[3458]
Deserved much less advancement.[3459]
Lear. You! did you?
Reg. I pray you, father, being weak, seem so.[3460]
If, till the expiration of your month,[3461]
You will return and sojourn with my sister, 200
Dismissing half your train, come then to me:
I am now from home and out of that provision[3462]
Which shall be needful for your entertainment.
Lear. Return to her, and fifty men dismiss'd?
No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose 205
To wage against the enmity o' the air,[3463][3464]
To be a comrade with the wolf and owl,—[3463][3465]
Necessity's sharp pinch! Return with her?
Why, the hot-blooded France, that dowerless took[3466][3467]
Our youngest born, I could as well be brought[3467] 210
To knee his throne, and, squire-like, pension beg[3468]
To keep base life afoot. Return with her?
Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter
To this detested groom. [Pointing at Oswald.[3469]
Gon. At your choice, sir.
Lear. I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad:[3470] 215
I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell:
We'll no more meet, no more see one another:
But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter;
Or rather a disease that's in my flesh,[3471]
Which I must needs call mine: thou art a boil,[3472] 220
A plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle,[3473][3474]
In my corrupted blood. But I'll not chide thee;[3473]
Let shame come when it will, I do not call it:[3475]
I do not bid the thunder-bearer shoot,[3476]
Nor tell tales of thee to high-judging Jove:[3477] 225
Mend when thou canst; be better at thy leisure:
I can be patient; I can stay with Regan,
I and my hundred knights.
Reg. Not altogether so:[3478][3479]
I look'd not for you yet, nor am provided[3478][3480]
For your fit welcome. Give ear, sir, to my sister;[3478][3481] 230
For those that mingle reason with your passion[3478][3482]
Must be content to think you old, and so—[3483]
But she knows what she does.