King Lear: the great lines, and how to say Gloucester
Poor naked wretches, I have ta'en too little care of this, a very foolish fond old man, and GLOSS-ter.
Pronunciation: Gloucester
GLOSS-ter (rhymes with "foster"). Two syllables. The middle "-ces-" is silent, just as in Worcester (WUSS-ter) and Leicester (LESS-ter). It is an English county and city, and the earldom in the play is named for it.
"Poor naked wretches" (Act 3, Scene 4)
Out in the storm, just before he goes into the hovel and meets Poor Tom, Lear thinks of the homeless for the first time in his life:
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.
(The order matters: this speech comes before he meets Poor Tom, not after.)
In plain words: "I was king and never thought about people with no roof. Medicine for the powerful: go out and feel what they feel, then give them your surplus." Looped and windowed means full of holes; superflux means the extra you don't need.
For anyone in disaster work it is the line that hits hardest: "I have ta'en too little care of this."
"A very foolish fond old man" (Act 4, Scene 7)
Lear wakes from madness to find Cordelia caring for him:
Pray, do not mock me:
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Fond here means foolish, doting, which was its older meaning. Fourscore is eighty.
Key facts
- Gloucester is pronounced GLOSS-ter
- "O, I have ta'en too little care of this!" (King Lear 3.4)
- "I am a very foolish fond old man" (King Lear 4.7)
- "Poor naked wretches" comes before Lear meets Poor Tom
- Fond once meant foolish; fourscore means eighty