Today’s Totally Random
Lines
Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter!- My lord, if you will give me leave, I will
tread this unbolted villain into mortar, and daub the wall of a jakes with him.—‘Spare
my gray beard,’ you wagtail?
Kent
King Lear
Act II, Scene ii, Line
68
This is a
continuation of the spat between Oswald and Kent. It began because of Oswald’s
disrespect for Lear, which Kent would not suffer in the least. It led, a little
earlier in this scene to the longest bit of name-calling I’ve ever seen. Here’s
Kent’s answer to Oswald when the latter asked him, What dost thou know me
for?
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver’d, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.
Don’t hold back, Kent. Tell us how you really feel.
