Lear:
A letter--a letter--what read you in a letter?
Gormflaith (taking another letter from her girdle):
Your words to me--my lonely joy your words ...
"If you are steady and true as your gaze "--
Lear (tearing the letter from her, crumpling it, and flinging it to the
back of the room):
Pest!
You should not carry a king's letters about,
Nor hoard a king's letters.
Gormflaith:
No, Sire.
Lear:
Must the King also stand in the presence now?
Gormflaith (rising):
Pardon my troubled mind; you have taken my letter from me.
[LEAR seats himself and takes GORMFLAITH'S hand.]
Gormflaith:
Wait, wait--I might be seen. The Queen may waken yet.
[Stepping lightly to the led, she noiselessly slips the curtain on that
side as far forward as it will come. Then she returns to LEAR, who draws
her to him and seats her on his knee.]
Lear:
You have been long in coming:
Was Merryn long in finding you?
Gormflaith (playing with Lear's emerald):
Did Merryn ...
Has Merryn been ... She loitered long before she came,
For I was at the women's bathing-place ere dawn ...
No jewel in all the land excites me and enthralls
Like this strong source of light that lives upon your breast.
Lear (taking the jewel chain from his neck and slipping it over
Gormflaith's head while she still holds the emerald):
Wear it within your breast to fill the gentle place
That cherished the poor letter lately torn from you.
Gormflaith:
Did Merryn at your bidding, then, forsake her Queen?
[LEAR nods.]
You must not, ah, you must not do these masterful things,
Even to grasp a precious meeting for us two;
For the reproach and chiding are so hard to me,
And even you can never fight the silent women
In hidden league against me, all this house of women.
Merryn has left her Queen in unwatched loneliness,
And yet your daughter Princess Goneril has said
(With lips that scarce held back the spittle for my face)
That if the Queen is left again I shall be whipt.
Lear:
Children speak of the punishments they know.
Her back is now not half so white as yours,
And you shall write your will upon it yet.
Gormflaith:
Ah, no, my King, my faithful.. Ah, no.. no..
The Princess Goneril is right; she judges me:
A sinful woman cannot steadily gaze reply
To the cool, baffling looks of virgin untried force.
She stands beside that crumbling mother in her hate,
And, though we know so well--she and I, O we know--
That she could love no mother nor partake in anguish,
Yet she is flouted when the King forsakes her dam,
She must protect her very flesh, her tenderer flesh,
Although she cannot wince; she's wild in her cold brain,
And soon I must be made to pay a cruel price
For this one gloomy joy in my uncherished life.
Envy and greed are watching me aloof
(Yes, now none of the women will walk with me),
Longing to see me ruined, but she'll do it ...
It is a lonely thing to love a king ...
[She puts her cheek gradually closer and closer to LEAR'S cheek as she
speaks: at length he kisses her suddenly and vehemently, as if he would
grasp her lips with his: she receives it passively, her head thrown
back, her eyes closed.]
Lear:
Goldilocks, when the crown is couching in your hair
And those two mingled golds brighten each other's wonder,
You shall produce a son from flesh unused--
Virgin I chose you for that, first crops are strongest--
A tawny fox with your high-stepping action,
With your untiring power and glittering eyes,
To hold my lands together when I am done,
To keep my lands from crumbling into mouthfuls
For the short jaws of my three mewling vixens.
Hatch for me such a youngster from my seed,
And I and he shall rein my hot-breathed wenches
To let you grind the edges off their teeth.
Gormflaith (shaking her head sadly):
Life holds no more than this for me; this is my hour.
When she is dead I know you'll buy another Queen--
Giving a county for her, gaining a duchy with her--
And put me to wet nursing, leashing me with the thralls.
It will not be unbearable--I've had your love.
Master and friend, grant then this hour to me:
Never again, maybe, can we two sit
At love together, unwatched, unknown of all,
In the Queen's chamber, near the Queen's crown
And with no conscious Queen to hold it from us:
Now let me wear the Queen's true crown on me
And snatch a breathless knowledge of the feeling
Of what it would have been to sit by you
Always and closely, equal and exalted,
To be my light when life is dark again.
Lear:
Girl, by the black stone god, I did not think
You had the nature of a chambermaid,
Who pries and fumbles in her lady's clothes
With her red hands, or on her soily neck
Stealthily hangs her lady's jewels or pearls.
You shall be tiring-maid to the next queen
And try her crown on every day o' your life
In secrecy, if that is your desire:
If you would be a queen, cleanse yourself quickly
Of menial fingering and servile thought.
Gormflaith:
You need not crown me. Let me put it on
As briefly as a gleam of Winter sun.
I will not even warm it with my hair.
Lear:
You cannot have the nature of a queen
If you believe that there are things above you:
Crowns make no queens, queens are the cause of crowns.
Gormflaith (slipping from his knee):
Then I will take one. Look.
[She tip-toes lightly round the front of the bed to where the crown
hangs on the wall.]
Lear:
Come here, mad thing--come back!
Your shadow will wake the Queen.
Gormflaith:
Hush, hush! That angry voice
Will surely wake the Queen.
[She lifts the crown from the peg, and returns with it.]
Lear:
Go back; bear back the crown:
Hang up the crown again.
We are not helpless serfs
To think things are forbidden
And steal them for our joy.
Gormflaith:
Hush, hush! It is too late;
I dare not go again.
Lear:
Put down the crown: your hands are base hands yet.
Give it to me: it issues from my hands.
Gormflaith (seating herself on his knee again, and crowning herself):
Let anger keep your eyes steady and bright
To be my guiding mirror: do not move.
You have received two queens within your eyes.
[She laughs clearly, like a bird's sudden song. HYGD awakes and, after
an instant's bewilderment, turns her head toward the sound; finding the
bed-curtain dropt, she moves it aside a little with her fingers; she
watches LEAR and GORMFLAITH for a short time, then the curtain slips
from her weak grasp and she lies motionless.]
Lear (continuing meanwhile):
Doff it ... (GORMFLAITH kisses him.)
Enough ... (Kiss) Unless you do ...
(Kiss) my will ... (Kiss)
I shall----(Kiss) I shall----(Kiss) I'll have you
... (Kiss) sent ... (Kiss) to ...(Kiss.)
Gormflaith:
Hush.
Lear:
Come to the garden: you shall hear me there.
Gormflaith: