Lear: What is to do?
Goneril (advancing to meet them with a deep obeisance):
O, Sir, the Queen is dead: long live the Queen,
You have been ready with the coronation.
Lear:
What do you mean? Young madam, will you mock?
Goneril:
But is not she your choice?
The old Queen thought so, for I found her here,
Lipping the prints of her supplanter's feet,
Prostrate in homage, on her face, silent.
I tremble within to have seen her fallen down.
I must be pardoned if I scorn your ways:
You cannot know this feeling that I know,
You are not of her kin or house; but I
Share blood with her, and, though she grew too worn
To be your Queen, she was my mother, Sir.
Gormflaith:
The Queen has seen me.
Lear:
She is safe in bed.
Goneril:
Do not speak low: your voice sounds guilty so;
And there is no more need--she will not wake.
Lear:
She cannot sleep for ever. When she wakes
I will announce my purpose in the need
Of Britain for a prince to follow me,
And tell her that she is to be deposed ...
What have you done? She is not breathing now.
She breathed here lately. Is she truly dead?
Goneril:
Your graceful consort steals from us too soon:
Will you not tell her that she should remain--
If she can trust the faith you keep with a queen?
[She steps to GORMFLAITH, who is sidling toward the garden door-way,
and, taking her hand, leads her to the foot of the bed.]
Lady, why will you go? The King intends
That you shall soon be royal, and thereby
Admitted to our breed: then stay with us
In this domestic privacy to mourn
The grief here fallen on our family.
Kneel now; I yield the eldest daughter's place.
Why do you fumble in your bosom so?
Put your cold hands together; close your eyes,
In inward isolation to assemble
Your memories of the dead, your prayers for her.
[She turns to LEAR, who has approached the bed and drawn back the
curtain.]
What utterance of doom would the king use
Upon a watchman in the castle garth
Who left his gate and let an enemy in?
The watcher by the Queen thus left her station:
The sick bruised Queen is dead of that neglect.
And what should be the doom on a seducer
Who drew that sentinel from his fixt watch?
Lear:
She had long been dying, and she would have died
Had all her dutiful daughters tended her bed.
Goneril:
Yes, she had long been dying in her heart.
She lived to see you give her crown away;
She died to see you fondle a menial:
These blows you dealt now, but what elder wounds
Received them to such purpose suddenly?
What had you caused her to remember most?
What things would she be like to babble over
In the wild helpless hour when fitful life
No more can choose what thoughts it shall encourage
In the tost mind? She has suffered you twice over,
Your animal thoughts and hungry powers, this day,
Until I knew you unkingly and untrue.
Lear:
Punishment once taught you daughterly silence;
It shall be tried again ... What has she said?
Goneril:
You cannot touch me now I know your nature:
Your force upon my mind was only terrible
When I believed you a cruel flawless man.
Ruler of lands and dreaded judge of men,
Now you have done a murder with your mind
Can you see any murderer put to death?
Can you--
Lear:
What has she said?
Goneril:
Continue in your joy of punishing evil,
Your passion of just revenge upon wrong-doers,
Unkingly and untrue?
Lear:
Enough: what do you know?
Goneril:
That which could add a further agony
To the last agony, the daily poison
Of her late, withering life; but never word
Of fairer hours or any lost delight.
Have you no memory, either, of her youth,
While she was still to use, spoil, forsake,
That maims your new contentment with a longing
For what is gone and will not come again?
Lear:
I did not know that she could die to-day.
She had a bloodless beauty that cheated me:
She was not born for wedlock. She shut me out.
She is no colder now ... I'll hear no more.
You shall be answered afterward for this.
Put something over her: get her buried:
I will not look on her again.
[He breaks from GONERIL and flings abruptly out by the door near the bed.]
Gormflaith:
My king, you leave me!
Goneril:
Soon we follow him:
But, ah, poor fragile beauty, you cannot rise
While this grave burden weights your drooping head.
[Laying her hand caressingly on GORMFLAITH'S neck, she gradually forces
her head farther and farther down.]
You were not nurtured to sustain a crown,
Your unanointed parents could not breed
The spirit that ten hundred years must ripen.
Lo, how you sink and fail.
Gormflaith:
You had best take care,
For where my neck has bruises yours shall have wounds.
The King knows of your wolfish snapping at me:
He will protect me.
Goneril:
Ay, if he is in time.
Gormflaith (taking off the crown and holding it up blindly toward
Goneril with one hand):
Take it and let me go!
Goneril:
Nay, not to me:
You are the Queen's, to serve her even in death.
Yield her her own. Approach her: do not fear;
She will not chide you or forgive you now.
Go on your knees; the crown still holds you down.
[GORMFLAITH stumbles forward on her knees and lays the crown on the bed,
then crouches motionlessly against the bedside.]
Goneril (taking the crown and putting it on the dead Queen's head):
Mother and Queen, to you this holiest circlet
Returns, by you renews its purpose and pride;
Though it is sullied with a menial warmth,
Your august coldness shall rehallow it,
And when the young lewd blood that lent it heat
Is also cooler we can well forget.
[She steps to GORMFLAITH.]
Rise. Come, for here there is no more to do,
And let us seek your chamber, if you will,
There to confer in greater privacy;
For we have now interment to prepare.
[She leads GORMFLAITH to the door near the bed.]
You must walk first, you are still the Queen elect.
[When GORMFLAITH has passed before her GONERIL unsheathes her hunting
knife.]
Gormflaith (turning in the doorway):
What will you do?
Goneril (thrusting her forward with the haft of the knife):
On. On. On. Go in.
[She follows GORMFLAITH out. After a moment's interval two elderly
women, one a little younger than the other, enter by the same door: they
wear black hoods and shapeless black gowns with large sleeves that flap
like the wings of ungainly birds: between them they carry a heavy
cauldron of hot water.]
The Younger Woman:
We were listening. We were listening.
The Elder Woman:
We were both listening.
The Younger Woman:
Did she struggle?
The Elder Woman:
She could not struggle long.
[They set down the cauldron at the foot of the bed.]
The Elder Woman (curtseying to the Queen's body):
Saving your presence, Madam, we are come
To make you sweeter than you'll be hereafter,
And then be done with you.
The Younger Woman (curtseying in turn):
Three days together, my Lady, y'have had me ducked
For easing a foolish maid at the wrong time;
But now your breath is stopped and you are colder,
And you shall be as wet as a drowned rat
Ere I have done with you.
The Elder Woman (fumbling in the folds of the robe that hangs on the
wall):
Her pocket is empty; Merryn has been here first.
Hearken, and then begin:
You have not touched a royal corpse before,
But I have stretched a king and an old queen,
A king's aunt and a king's brother too,
Without much boasting of a still-born princess;
So that I know, as a priest knows his prayers,
All that is written in the chamberlain's book
About the handling of exalted corpses,
Stripping them and trussing them for the grave:
And there it says that the chief corpse-washer
Shall take for her own use by sacred right
The coverlid, the upper sheet, the mattress
Of any bed in which a queen has died,
And the last robe of state the body wore;
While humbler helpers may divide among them
The under sheet, the pillow, and the bed-gown
Stript from the cooling queen.
Be thankful, then, and praise me every day
That I have brought no other women with me
To spoil you of your share.
The Younger Woman:
Ah, you have always been a friend to me:
Many's the time I have said I did not know
How I could even have lived but for your kindness.
[The ELDER WOMAN draws down the bedclothes from the Queen's body,
loosens them from the bed, and throws them on the floor.]
The Elder Woman:
Pull her feet straight: is your mind wandering?
[She commences to fold the bedclothes, singing as she moves about.]
A louse crept out of my lady's shift--
Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee--
Crying "Oi! Oi! We are turned adrift;
The lady's bosom is cold and stiffed,
And her arm-pit's cold for me."
[While the ELDER WOMAN sings, the YOUNGER WOMAN straightens the Queen's
feet and ties them together, draws the pillow from under her head,
gathers her hair in one hand and knots it roughly; then she loosens her
nightgown, revealing a jewel hung on a cord round the Queen's neck.]
The Elder Woman (running to the vacant side of the bed):
What have you there? Give it to me.
The Younger Woman:
It is mine:
I found it.
The Elder Woman:
Leave it.
The Younger Woman:
Let go.
The Elder Woman:
Leave it, I say.
Will you not? Will you not? An eye for a jewel, then!
[She attacks the face of the YOUNGER WOMAN with her disengaged hand.]
The Younger Woman (starting back):
Oh!
[The ELDER WOMAN breaks the cord and thrusts the jewel into her pocket.]
The Younger Woman:
Aie! Aie! Aie! Old thief! You are always thieving!
You stole a necklace on your wedding day:
You could not bear a child, you stole your daughter:
You stole a shroud the morn your husband died:
Last week you stole the Princess Regan's comb ...
[She stumbles into the chair by the bed, and, throwing her loose sleeves
over her head, rocks herself and moans.]
The Elder Woman (resuming her clothes-folding and her song):
"The lady's linen's no longer neat;"--
Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee--
"Her savour is neither warm nor sweet;
It's close for two in a winding sheet,
And lice are too good for worms to eat;
So here's no place for me."
[GONERIL enters by the door near the bed: her knife and the hand that
holds it are bloody. She pauses a moment irresolutely.]
The Elder Woman:
Still work for old Hrogneda, little Princess?
[GONERIL goes straight to the cauldron, passing the women as if they
were not there: she kneels and washes her knife and her hand in it. The
women retire to the back of the chamber.]
Goneril (speaking to herself):
The way is easy: and it is to be used.
How could this need have been conceived slowly?
In a keen mind it should have leapt and burnt:
What I have done would have been better done
When my sad mother lived and could feel joy.
This striking without thought is better than hunting;
She showed more terror than an animal,
She was more shiftless ...
A little blood is lightly washed away,
A common stain that need not be remembered;
And a hot spasm of rightness quickly born
Can guide me to kill justly and shall guide.
[LEAR enters by the door near the bed.]
Lear:
Goneril, Gormflaith, Gormflaith ... Have you seen Gormflaith?
Goneril: