William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear

ACT II. 2. Scene II. Before Gloster's Castle. (continued)

Corn.
Peace, sirrah!
You beastly knave, know you no reverence?

Kent.
Yes, sir; but anger hath a privilege.

Corn.
Why art thou angry?

Kent.
That such a slave as this should wear a sword,
Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these,
Like rats, oft bite the holy cords a-twain
Which are too intrinse t' unloose; smooth every passion
That in the natures of their lords rebel;
Bring oil to fire, snow to their colder moods;
Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters,
Knowing naught, like dogs, but following.--
A plague upon your epileptic visage!
Smile you my speeches, as I were a fool?
Goose, an I had you upon Sarum plain,
I'd drive ye cackling home to Camelot.

Corn.
What, art thou mad, old fellow?

Glou.
How fell you out?
Say that.

Kent.
No contraries hold more antipathy
Than I and such a knave.

Corn.
Why dost thou call him knave? What is his fault?

Kent.
His countenance likes me not.

Corn.
No more perchance does mine, or his, or hers.

Kent.
Sir, 'tis my occupation to be plain:
I have seen better faces in my time
Than stands on any shoulder that I see
Before me at this instant.

Corn.
This is some fellow
Who, having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature: he cannot flatter, he,--
An honest mind and plain,--he must speak truth!
An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know which in this plainness
Harbour more craft and more corrupter ends
Than twenty silly-ducking observants
That stretch their duties nicely.

Kent.
Sir, in good faith, in sincere verity,
Under the allowance of your great aspect,
Whose influence, like the wreath of radiant fire
On flickering Phoebus' front,--