INT. KEW. UNDER A TREE. DAY.

Thurlow approaching. The King and Willis reading.

WILLIS   ‘These weeds are memories of those worser hours …’

KING   ‘I prithee put them off.’ Go on, man, go on.

WILLIS   ‘I prithee put them off.’

KING   ‘How does the King?’

WILLIS   ‘How does the King?’
Willis is obviously no actor.

PAPANDIEK   Lord Thurlow, sir.

THURLOW   Your Majesty.

KING   Ah, Thurlow. The very man. Yes, we are reading a spot of Shakespeare. Willis, give him the book.

THURLOW   (sotto voce to Willis) King Lear? Is that wise?

WILLIS   I’d no idea what it was about.

KING   I’m asleep, apparently, and Cordelia comes in and asks the doctor – that’s Greville here – how I am, you see. Off we go.

THURLOW   Who’s Cordelia?

KING   You are. Yes, but …Willis can’t do it. He’s a fine doctor, but a hopeless actor. Off you go.

THURLOW   (as Cordelia)
‘O you kind gods
Cure this great breach in his abused nature.
Th’untuned and jarring senses, O wind up,
Of this child-changed father.’

KING   That’s very good. ‘Child-changed father’ is very good. Go on, Greville, it’s you now.

GREVILLE   ‘He hath slept long, be by, good madam, when we do awaken him. I doubt not of his temperance.’

THURLOW  
‘O my dear father! Restoration hang
Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms which my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made.’

KING   Well, come on, man. Come on. Kiss me.
Thurlow goes for the King’s hand.

KING   No, not there, man. Here. Here. It’s Shakespeare. Right.
Gives him his cheek to kiss.
Now, push off again. This is the moment when the King awakes, you see. Are you ready? That’s it, come on.
The King does an elaborate and old-fashioned pantomime of waking up.

THURLOW   ‘How fares my Royal Lord? How does Your Majesty?’

KING   (as Lear)
‘You do me wrong to take me out o’ th’ grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.’

Oh, it’s so true!
‘Pray do not mock me.
I am a very foolish, fond old man.
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.’

WILLIS   Is that the end, Your Majesty?

KING   Oh, good Lord no … Cordelia – that’s Thurlow – dies. Hanged. And the shock of it kills the King. So they all die. It’s a tragedy.

THURLOW   (moved) Very affecting.

KING   Well, it’s the way I play it.

THURLOW   Your Majesty seems more yourself.

KING   Do I? Yes, I do. I have always been myself even when I was ill. Only now I seem myself. That’s the important thing. I have remembered how to seem. What, what?
Greville starts.

GREVILLE   What did Your Majesty say?