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The First Web Folio Edition of Shakespeare's Works
| A wood. |
| [Enter EDGAR] |
| EDGAR | I heard myself proclaim'd; | ||
| And by the happy hollow of a tree | |||
| Escaped the hunt. No port is free; no place, | |||
| That guard, and most unusual vigilance, | |||
| Does not attend my taking. Whiles I may 'scape, | 5 | ||
| I will preserve myself: and am bethought | |||
| To take the basest and most poorest shape | |||
| That ever penury, in contempt of man, | |||
| Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth; | |||
| Blanket my loins: elf all my hair in knots; | 10 | ||
| And with presented nakedness out-face | |||
| The winds and persecutions of the sky. | |||
| The country gives me proof and precedent | |||
| Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, | |||
| Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms | 15 | ||
| Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary; | |||
| And with this horrible object, from low farms, | |||
| Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills, | |||
| Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, | |||
| Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod! poor Tom! | 20 | ||
| That's something yet: Edgar I nothing am. | |||
| [Exit] |
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