No Fear Shakespeare
King Lear
Get this No Fear to go!
Act 4, Scene 2, Page 2
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EDMUND
Yours in the ranks of death.
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EDMUND
I’m at your service until death.
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GONERIL
My most dear Gloucester!
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GONERIL
My dear Gloucester!
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Exit EDMUND
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EDMUND exits. |
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Oh, the difference of man and man!
To thee a woman’s services are due.
My fool usurps my body.
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What a man!—especially compared to my husband. Edmund, you deserve me to be your woman. There’s a fool sharing my bed now.
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OSWALD
Madam, here comes my lord.
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OSWALD
Ma'am, my master’s coming.
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Exit OSWALD
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He exits. |
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Enter ALBANY
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ALBANY enters. |
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GONERIL
I have been worth the whistle.
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GONERIL
So you finally find me worthy of your attentions.
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ALBANY
O Goneril,
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face. I fear your disposition.
That nature, which contemns its origin
Cannot be bordered certain in itself.
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap perforce must wither
And come to deadly use.
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ALBANY
Goneril, you aren’t worth the dust the wind blows in your face. I don’t trust you. You can’t trust anyone who abuses her own father, her flesh and blood. A woman who breaks off relations with her bloodline is like a branch that tries to break away from the tree. She will wither and come to a bad end.
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GONERIL
No more. The text is foolish.
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GONERIL
Oh, shut up. Your words are idiotic.
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ALBANY
Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.
Filths savor but themselves. What have you done?
Tigers, not daughters, what have you performed?
A father, and a gracious agèd man,
Whose reverence even the head-lugged bear would lick,
Most barbarous, most degenerate, have you madded.
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ALBANY
Bad people can’t appreciate wisdom or goodness. They only like things as bad as themselves. What have you two sisters done? You’re tigers, not daughters. Barbaric degenerates, you’ve driven insane a kindly old father, whom even an angry bear would treat gent-ly. Could my good brother-in-law—a man to whom the
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