other eye and throws it on the ground.]
Glou.
All dark and comfortless.—Where’s my son Edmund?
Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature
To quit this horrid act.
Reg.
Out, treacherous villain!
Thou call’st on him that hates thee: it was he
That made the overture of thy treasons to us;
Who is too good to pity thee.
Glou.
O my follies! Then Edgar was abus’d.—
Kind gods, forgive me that, and prosper him!
Reg.
Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell
His way to Dover.—How is’t, my lord? How look you?
Corn.
I have receiv’d a hurt:—follow me, lady.—
Turn out that eyeless villain;—throw this slave
Upon the dunghill.—Regan, I bleed apace:
Untimely comes this hurt: give me your arm.
[Exit Cornwall, led by Regan; Servants unbind Gloster and lead him out.]
Second Serv.
I’ll never care what wickedness I do,
If this man come to good.
Third Serv.
If she live long,
And in the end meet the old course of death,
Women will all turn monsters.
Second Serv.
Let’s follow the old earl, and get the Bedlam
To lead him where he would: his roguish madness
Allows itself to anything.
Third Serv.
Go thou: I’ll fetch some flax and whites of eggs
To apply to his bleeding face. Now heaven help him!
[Exeunt severally.]
ACT IV.
SCENE I. The heath.
[Enter Edgar.]
Edg.
Yet better thus, and known to be contemn’d,
Than still contemn’d and flatter’d. To be worst,
The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear:
The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then,
Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!
The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
Owes nothing to thy blasts.—But who comes here?
[Enter Gloster, led by an Old Man.]
My father, poorly led?—World, world, O world!
But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,
Life would not yield to age.
Old Man.
O my good lord,
I have been your tenant, and your father’s tenant,
These fourscore years.
Glou.
Away, get thee away; good friend, be gone:
Thy comforts can do me no good at all;
Thee they may hurt.
Old Man.
You cannot see your way.
Glou.
I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;
I stumbled when I saw: full oft ‘tis seen
Our means secure us, and our mere defects
Prove our commodities.—O dear son Edgar,
The food of thy abused father’s wrath!
Might I but live to see thee in my touch,
I’d say I had eyes again!
Old Man.
How now! Who’s there?
Edg.
[Aside.] O gods! Who is’t can say ‘I am at the worst’?
I am worse than e’er I was.
Old Man.
‘Tis poor mad Tom.
Edg.
[Aside.] And worse I may be yet. The worst is not
So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’
Old Man.
Fellow, where goest?
Glou.
Is it a beggar-man?
Old Man.
Madman and beggar too.
Glou.
He has some reason, else he could not beg.
I’ the last night’s storm I such a fellow saw;
Which made me think a man a worm: my son
Came then into my mind, and yet my mind
Was then scarce friends with him: I have heard more since.
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,—
They kill us for their sport.
