QUOTES: Madness in King Lear

QUOTES: Madness in King Lear

1. LEAR

   • "This is not Lear: does Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes? Either his notion weakens, his discernings are lethargied -- Ha! waking? 'tis not so. Who is it that can tell me who I am?" (1:4)
   • LEAR: "Dost thou call me fool, boy?" / FOOL: "All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with." (1:4)
   • "O Lear, Lear, Lear! / Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, and thy dear judgement out!" (1:4)
   • "O! how this mother swells up toward my heart; Hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow!" (2:4)
   • "We are not ourselves / When Nature, being oppressed, commands the mind / To suffer with the body." (2:4)
   • "I'll forbear; / And am fall'n out with my more headier will, / To take the indisposed and sickly fit / For the sound man." (2:4)
   • "I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad." (2:4)
   • "I have full cause of weeping, but this heart / Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws / Or ere I'll weep. O Fool! I shall go mad." (2:4)
   • "My wits begin to turn." (3:2)
   • "Where the greater malady is fixed, / The lesser is scarce felt. [...] When the mind's free / The body's delicate; this tempest in my mind / Doth from my senses take all feeling else / Save what beats there - filial ingratitude!" (3:4)
   • "O Regan, Goneril! / Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all, - / O! that way madness lies; let me shun that; no more of that." (3:4)

2. KENT

   • "Be Kent unmannerly, / When Lear is mad." (1:1)
   • "To plainness honour's bound / When majesty falls to folly." (1:1)
   • "If on my credit you dare build so far / To make your speed to Dover, you shall find / Some that will thank you, making just report / Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow / The King hath cause to plain." (3:1)
   • "All the power of his wits have given way to his impatience." (3:6)

3. FOOL

   • "Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb." (1:4)
     • "Why, this fellow has banished two on's daughters, and did the third a blessing against his will: if thou follow him thou must needs wear my coxcomb." (1:4)
   • "When thou clovest thy crown i'th'middle, and gav'st away both parts, thou bor'st thine ass on thy back o'er the dirt: thou hadst little wit in the bald crown when thou gav'st thy golden one away." (1:4)
     • "I had rather be any kind o'thing than a fool; and yet I would not be thee, Nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o'both sides, and left nothing i'th'middle." (1:4)
   • "If a man's brains were in's heels, were't not in danger of kibes? [...] Then, I prithee, be merry; thy wit shall not go slip-shod." (1:5)
     • "Thou would'st make a good Fool." (1:5)
   • "When a wise man gives thee counsel, give me mine again: I would have none but knaves follow it, since a Fool gives it." (2:4)
   • "He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath." (3:6)

4. EDGAR

   • "The country gives me proof and precedent / Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices / Strike in their numbed and mortified bare arms / Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary; / And with this horrible object, from low farms, / Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills, / Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, / Enforce their charity. (2:3)
   • "Who alone suffers, suffers most i'th'mind, / Leaving free things and happy shows behind, / But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip, / When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship." (3:6)

5. REGAN

   • "Those that mingle reason with your passion / Must be content to think you old [...]" (2:4)
   • "[...] the lunatic King [...]" (3:7)

6. OTHERS

   • GENTLEMAN: "[Lear] bids the wind blow the earth into the sea / Or swell the curled waters 'bove the main, / That things might change or cease; tears his white hair [...]" (3:1)
   • 2ND SERVANT: "Let's follow the old Earl [Gloucester], and get the Bedlam / To lead him where he would: his roguish madness / Allows itself to any thing." (3:7)
   • CORDELIA: "Why, he was met even now / As mad as the vexed sea; singing aloud; / Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, / With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, / Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow / In our sustaining corn." (4:4)
   • CORDELIA: "What can man's wisdom / In the restoring his bereaved sense?" (4:4)

7. GLOUCESTER

   • "Thou say'st the king grows mad; I'll tell thee, friend / I am almost mad myself." (3:4)
     • "True to tell thee, / The grief hath crazed my wits." (3:4)
   • "'Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind." (4:1)
     • "Here, take this purse, thou whom the heav'ns' plagues / Have humbled to all strokes [...]" (4:1)