s in a wood and tells the public what
kind of lunatics exist there--beggars who go about naked, thrust wooden
pricks and pins into their flesh, scream with wild voices and enforce
charity, and says that he wishes to simulate such a lunatic in order to
save himself from persecution. Having communicated this to the public,
he retires.

The fourth scene is again before Gloucester's castle. Enter Lear and the
fool. Lear sees Kent in the stocks, and, still not recognizing him, is
inflamed with rage against those who dared so to insult his messenger,
and calls for the Duke and Regan. The fool goes on with his jokes.

Lear with difficulty restrains his ire. Enter the Duke and Regan. Lear
complains of Goneril but Regan justifies her sister. Lear curses
Goneril, and, when Regan tells him he had better return to her sister,
he is indignant and says: "Ask her forgiveness?" and falls down on his
knees demonstrating how indecent it would be if he were abjectly to beg
food and clothing as charity from his own daughter, and he curses
Goneril with the strangest curses and asks who put his servant in the
stocks. Before Regan can answer, Goneril arrives. Lear becomes yet more
exasperated and again curses Goneril, but when he is told that it was
the Duke himself who ordered the stocks, he does not say anything,
because, at this moment, Regan tells him that she can not receive him
now and that he had best return to Goneril, and that in a month's time
she herself will receive him, with, however, not a hundred but fifty
servants. Lear again curses Goneril and does not want to go to her,
continuing to hope that Regan will accept him with the whole hundred
servants. But Regan says she will receive him only with twenty-five and
then Lear makes up his mind to go back to Goneril who admits fifty. But
when Goneril says that even twenty-five are too many, Lear pours forth a
long argument about the superfluous and the needful being relative and
says that if man is not allowed more than he needs, he is not to be
distinguished from a beast. Lear, or rather the actor who plays Lear's
part, adds that there is no need for a lady's finery, which does not
keep her warm. After this he flies into a mad fury and says that to take
vengeance on his daughters he will do something dreadful but that he
will not weep, and so he departs. A storm begins.

Such is the second act, full of unnatural events, and yet more unnatural
speeches, not flowing from the positio