Angels at the window

Good night Paul Scofield

King Lear speaks to me more than any other Shakespearean play. The tears that roll down my face are from some where so deep that I cannot really fix the source in my soul.

So this morning we are saying goodnight to Paul Scofield who has died at 86. That is a fine age for a Lear -

No one rages as majestically as Lear at the storm of life and old age:

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned 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!”

- William Shakespeare, King Lear, 3.2.1 

“The prince of darkness is a gentleman.”

- William Shakespeare, King Lear, 3.4.14 

“He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.”
- William Shakespeare, King Lear, 3.6.20

“It is the stars,
The stars above us, govern our conditions.”

- William Shakespeare, King Lear, 4.3.34