Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand For lifting food to't? But I will punish home. No, I will weep no more. In such a night To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure. In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,-- O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that. And then suddenly, as he controls himself, the blessed spirit of kindness breathes on him 'like a meadow gale of spring,' and he turns gently to Kent: Prithee, go in thyself; seek thine own ease: This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more. But I'll go in. In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty-- Nay, get thee in. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep. But his prayer is not for himself. Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, it begins, and I need not quote more. This is one of those passages which make one worship Shakespeare.[160] Much has been written on the representation of insanity in _King Lear_, and I will confine myself to one or two points which may have escaped notice. The most obvious symptom of Lear's insanity, especially in its first stages, is of course the domination of a fixed idea. Whatever presents itself to his senses, is seized on by this idea and compelled to express it; as for example in those words, already quoted, which first show that his mind has actually given way: Hast thou given all To thy two daughters? And art thou come to this?[161] But it is remarkable that what we have here is only, in an exaggerated and perverted form, the very same action of imagination that, just before the breakdown of reason, produced those sublime appeals: O heavens, If you do love old men, if your sweet sway Allow obedience, if yourselves are old, Make it your cause; and: 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 have with two pernicious daughters join'd Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul! Shakespeare, long before this, in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, had noticed the resemblance between the lunatic, the lover, and the poet; and the partial truth that genius is allied to insanity was quite familiar to him. But he presents here the supplementary half-truth that insanity is allied to genius.