Act 4. Scene VII

SCENE VII. A tent in the French camp. LEAR on a bed asleep,
soft music playing; Gentleman, and others attending.

Enter CORDELIA, KENT, and Doctor

CORDELIA
O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work,
To match thy goodness? My life will be too short,
And every measure fail me.

KENT
To be acknowledged, madam, is o'erpaid.
All my reports go with the modest truth;
Nor more nor clipp'd, but so.

CORDELIA
Be better suited:
These weeds are memories of those worser hours:
I prithee, put them off.

KENT
Pardon me, dear madam;
Yet to be known shortens my made intent:
My boon I make it, that you know me not
Till time and I think meet.

CORDELIA
Then be't so, my good lord.

To the Doctor

How does the king?

Doctor
Madam, sleeps still.

CORDELIA
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!

Doctor
So please your majesty
That we may wake the king: he hath slept long.

CORDELIA
Be govern'd by your knowledge, and proceed
I' the sway of your own will. Is he array'd?

Gentleman
Ay, madam; in the heaviness of his sleep
We put fresh garments on him.

Doctor
Be by, good madam, when we do awake him;
I doubt not of his temperance.

CORDELIA
Very well.

Doctor
Please you, draw near. Louder the music there!

CORDELIA
O my dear father! Restoration hang
Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made!

KENT
Kind and dear princess!

CORDELIA
Had you not been their father, these white flakes
Had challenged pity of them. Was this a face
To be opposed against the warring winds?
To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder?
In the most terrible and nimble stroke
Of quick, cross lightning? to watch--poor perdu!--
With this thin helm? Mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father,
To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn,
In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!
'Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once
Had not concluded all. He wakes; speak to him.

Doctor
Madam, do you; 'tis fittest.

CORDELIA
How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?

KING LEAR
You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave:
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like moulten lead.

CORDELIA
Sir, do you know me?

KING LEAR
You are a spirit, I know: when