Kent. This is not altogether fool, my lord.

Fool. No, faith, lords and great men will not let me. If I had a monopoly out, they would have part on’t. And ladies too, they will not let me have all the fool to myself; they’ll be snatching.

Two servants were paid to set his house on fire

And, when he fled, to pierce him with little darts.

And so this man, widely praised and admired,

Envied by many, a soldier, philosopher,

A young Adonis, was dead at forty-six.

So much, alas, for Alcibiades.

Now as for me, admittedly grotesque,

Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,

Bearing an envious mountain on my back

Where sits deformity to mock my body,

I’m your imperishable comedian.

I suffer multi-interments, executions,

Yet like Donne’s lovers, I die and rise the same,

Vulgar, mean, selfish, undefeatable.

You wouldn’t think me much to look at me,

A clown’s hooked nose and all the rest of it,

Yet, for all that, I have a way with women.

Love ’em and leave ’em, as I like to say.

And nothing pleases the kids more than my cudgel.

They see the justice of it, don’t you see.

How, against all odds, this ugly man,

Hated, unmanumitted just like them,

Wields his big stick and whacks authority

Hard on its wooden head. I lack the graces

That everyone observed in the young Greek,

Women and men alike. He grew so vain

He wouldn’t play the flute, claimed it distorted

The sculptural virtues of his classic features.

That, I would venture to say, is not my problem.

You find me always dressed, made-up, in white,

All dredged in flour, like an apprentice baker,

Though sometimes masked, like your Jack Ketch, in black.