Mojo, The Bard, & Me

Come o’er the bourn, Bessy to me.

 Her boat hath a leak,

And she must not speak

Why she dares not come over to thee.

-Edgar/Fool

King Lear                            Act III, scene vi, line 25

The first line above is Edgar’s and the next three belong to the Fool. So, to be clear, Edgar is playing a bit of a madman right now, and the Fool is supposedly a fool, but in truth neither is mad or a fool. Both are quite sane and know exactly what they're saying.

This is the scene where Lear and the others are in a farmhouse and they are holding a mock trial of Goneril and Regan. These latter two are not present, and there’s a lot of ramblings of the Fool, of Edgar, and of Lear.

I wasn’t sure what ‘bourn’ was, so I googled it and found it to be a stream or brook. But I also used my Shakespeare glossary which told me that it’s a frontier, destination, or boundary. But given that the fool talks about a leaky boat, the water definition seems to make more sense. 

 

Come o'er the bourn, Bessy to me. Wait a tic, neither one of those is Bessy, and they're already on my side of the bourn. Not to mention that's a pretty big bourn. But you get the idea.