Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! (King Lear)

Themes: Classical, Death, Dramatic, King Lear, Loss, Misfortune, Shakespeare
Length: 1 Minute
Gender: Male

Lear, in the midst of a storm, laments his misfortune and the betrayal by his daughters, expressing his anguish and despair.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world! Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once, that make ingrateful man! Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children, you owe me no subscription: then let fall your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave, a poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man: but yet I call you servile ministers, that will with two pernicious daughters join your high-engender’d battles ‘gainst a head so old and white as this. O! O! ’tis foul!