Explore "King Lear" by William Shakespeare on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Enter Edgar.
EDGAR. I heard myself proclaim'd, / And by the happy hollow of a tree / Escap'd the hunt. No port is free, no place / That guard and most unusual vigilance / Does not attend my taking. While I may scape / I will preserve myself: and am bethought / To take the basest and most poorest shape / That ever penury in contempt of man, / Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth, / Blanket my loins; elf all my hair in knots, / And with presented nakedness outface / The winds and persecutions of the sky. / The country gives me proof and precedent / Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, / Strike in their numb'd 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. Poor Turlygod! poor Tom, / That's something yet: Edgar I nothing am.