“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”
― The Defendant
― The Defendant
“honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set a leg? No: or a arm? No: or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honour? A word. What is that then? Air. A trim reckoning! - Who hath it? He that died o‘ Wednesday? Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I‘ll have none of it: honour is a mere scutcheon: - and so ends my catechism.”
―
―
“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.
Ear; of Gloster, “I see it feelingly.”
Lear, “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. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? - Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a begger?
Earl of Gloster, ‘Ay, sir.
Lear, “And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog’s obey’d in office. - Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost though lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind For which thou whipst her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tattere’d clothes small vices to appear; Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, - I say, none; I’ll able ‘em to seal the accuser’s lips. Get thee glass eyes; To see the things thou dost not. - Now, now, now, now: Pull off my boots: - harder, harder: - so.
Edgar (aside), “O, matter and impertinency mixt! Reason in madness!”
―
Ear; of Gloster, “I see it feelingly.”
Lear, “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. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? - Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a begger?
Earl of Gloster, ‘Ay, sir.
Lear, “And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog’s obey’d in office. - Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost though lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind For which thou whipst her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tattere’d clothes small vices to appear; Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, - I say, none; I’ll able ‘em to seal the accuser’s lips. Get thee glass eyes; To see the things thou dost not. - Now, now, now, now: Pull off my boots: - harder, harder: - so.
Edgar (aside), “O, matter and impertinency mixt! Reason in madness!”
―
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