King Lear

Lear is asleep in a tent in the French camp. Cordelia enters with Kent, thanks him for everything he has done, and is gently refused — Kent asks to remain unrecognised a little longer. She turns to her sleeping father and speaks a prayer: "O you kind gods, cure this great breach in his abused nature! The untun'd and jarring senses, O, wind up of this child-changed father." She kisses him before he wakes: "Restoration hang thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss repair those violent harms that my two sisters have in thy reverence made!" Then she describes what he endured — the storm, the open heath, the lightning — and says that she would not have turned her enemy's dog away from her fire on such a night, let alone her father. Lear wakes in confusion. His first words: "You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave. Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead." He asks Cordelia when she died. He does not know where he is. He looks at his hands and is not sure they are his. He gathers himself slowly. "I am a very foolish fond old man, fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less." He is afraid his mind is not right. He thinks he should know this woman, and knows this man, but cannot be certain. "For, as I am a man, I think this lady to be my child Cordelia." Cordelia: "And so I am. I am." He reaches for her tears to confirm they are real. Then he says what he believes to be true: "If you have poison for me, I will drink it. I know you do not love me; for your sisters have, as I do remember, done me wrong. You have some cause, they have not." Cordelia: "No cause, no cause." He asks if he is in France. He is told England. He does not argue. He asks only to be forgiven: "Pray you now, forget and forgive: I am old and foolish." The physician advises not to press him further. Outside, Kent learns the approaching forces are led by Edmund. The battle is imminent.