February 29th, 1916.
PERSONS:
| Lear, King of Britain. |
| Hygd, his Queen. |
| Goneril, daughter to Lear and Hygd. |
| Cordeil, daughter to Lear and Hygd. |
| Gormflaith, waiting-woman to Hygd. |
| Merryn, waiting-woman to Hygd. |
| A Physician. |
| Two Elderly Women. |
KING LEAR'S WIFE
The scene is a bedchamber in a one-storied house. The walls consist of a few courses of huge irregular boulders roughly squared and fitted together; a thatched roof rises steeply from the back wall. In the centre of the back wall is a doorway opening on a garden and covered by two leather curtains; the chamber is partially hung with similar hangings stitched with bright wools. There is a small window on each side of this door.
Toward the front a bed stands with its head against the right wall; it has thin leather curtains hung by thongs and drawn back. Farther forward a rich robe and a crown hang on a peg in the same wall. There is a second door beyond the bed, and between this and the bed's head stands a small table with a bronze lamp and a bronze cup on it. Queen Hygd, an emaciated woman, is asleep in the bed; her plenteous black hair, veined with silver, spreads over the pillow. Her waiting-woman, Merryn, middle-aged and hard-featured, sits watching her in a chair on the farther side of the bed. The light of early morning fills the room.
Merryn.
MANY, many must die who long to live,
Yet this one cannot die who longs to die:
Even her sleep, come now at last, thwarts death,
Although sleep lures us all half way to death. …
I could not sit beside her every night
If I believed that I might suffer so:
I am sure I am not made to be diseased,
I feel there is no malady can touch me—
Save the red cancer, growing where it will.
Taking her beads from her girdle, she kneels at the foot of the bed.
O sweet Saint Cleer, and sweet Saint Elid too,
Shield me from rooting cancers and from madness:
Shield me from sudden death, worse than two death-beds;
Let me not lie like this unwanted queen,
Yet let my time come not ere I am ready—
Grant space enow to relish the watchers' tears
And give my clothes away and calm my features
And streek my limbs according to my will,
Not the hard will of fumbling corpse-washers.
She prays silently.
King Lear, a great, golden-bearded man in the full maturity of life, enters abruptly by the door beyond the bed, followed by the Physician.
Lear.
Why are you here? Are you here for ever?
Where is the young Scotswoman? Where is she?
Merryn.
O, Sire, move softly; the Queen sleeps at last.
Lear, continuing in an undertone. Where is the young Scotswoman? Where is Gormflaith? It is her watch. … I know; I have marked your hours. Did the Queen send her away? Did the Queen Bid you stay near her in her hate of Gormflaith? You work upon her yeasting brain to think That she's not safe except when you crouch near her To spy with your dropt eyes and soundless presence. Merryn. Sire, midnight should have ended Gormflaith's watch, But Gormflaith had another kind of will And ended at a godlier hour by slumber, A letter in her hand, the night-lamp out. She loitered in the hall when she should sleep. My duty has two hours ere she returns. Lear. The Queen should have young women about her bed, Fresh cool-breathed women to lie down at her side And plenish her with vigour; for sick or wasted women Can draw a virtue from such abounding presence, When night makes life unwary and looses the strings of being, Even by the breath, and most of all by sleep. Her slumber was then no fault: go you and find her. Physician. It is not strange that a bought watcher drowses; What is most strange is that the Queen sleeps Who would not sleep for all my draughts of sleep In the last days. When did this change appear? Merryn. We shall not know—it came while Gormflaith nodded. When I awoke her and she saw the Queen She could not speak for fear: When the rekindling lamp showed certainly The bed-clothes stirring about our lady's neck, She knew there was no death, she breathed, she said She had not slept until her mistress slept And lulled her; but I asked her how her mistress Slept, and her utterance faded. She should be blamed with rods, as I was blamed For slumber, after a day and a night of watching, By the Queen's child-bed, twenty years ago. Lear. She does what she must do: let her alone. I know her watch is now: get gone and send her.
Merryn goes out by the door beyond the bed.
Is it a portent now to sleep at night?
What change is here? What see you in the Queen?
Can you discern how this disease will end?
Physician.
Surmise might spring and healing follow yet,
If I could find a trouble that could heal;
But these strong inward pains that keep her ebbing
Have not their source in perishing flesh.
I have seen women creep into their beds
And sink with this blind pain because they nursed
Some bitterness or burden in the mind
That drew the life, sucklings too long at breast.
Do you know such a cause in this poor lady?
Lear.
There is no cause. How should there be a cause?
Physician.
We cannot die wholly against our wills;
And in the texture of women I have found
Harder determination than in men:
The body grows impatient of enduring,
The harried mind is from the body estranged,
And we consent to go: by the Queen's touch,
The way she moves—or does not move—in bed,
The eyes so cold and keen in her white mask,
I know she has consented.
The snarling look of a mute wounded hawk,
That would be let alone, is always hers—
Yet she was sorely tender: it may be
Some wound in her affection will not heal.
We should be careful—the mind can so be hurt
That nought can make it be unhurt again.
Where, then, did her affection