Fool (english)

put an arm around Lear’s shoulders, but he elbowed me away.
    “Rescind your orders, harpies, or I shall leave this house.” He made for the great gate.
    “It is for your own good, Father,” said Goneril. “Now, cease this ranting and come inside.”
    “I gave you all!” screeched Lear, waving a palsied claw at Regan.
    “And you took your bloody time giving it, too, you senile old fuck,” said Regan.
    “She came up with that one all on her own, nuncle,” said I, looking on the bright side.
    “I will go,” threatened Lear, another step toward the gate. “I’m not having you on. I’ll head right out that door.”
    “Pity,” said Goneril.
    “Shame, really,” said Regan.
    “Here I go. Right out that gate. Never to return. All alone.”
    “Ta,” said Goneril.
    “Au revoir,” said Regan, in nearly perfect fucking French.
    “I mean it.” The old man was actually through the gate now.
    “Close it,” said Regan.
    “But, lady, it’s not fit for man nor beast out there,” said Gloucester.

    “Fucking close it!” said Goneril. She ran forward and pushed the great iron lever by the gatehouse with all her might. The heavy, iron-clad portcullis slammed down, the points just missing the old king as they set in the ports a foot deep in the stone.
    “I’ll go,” said Lear, through the grate. “Don’t think I won’t.”
    The sisters left the courtyard for the shelter of the castle. Cornwall followed them and called for Gloucester to come along.
    “But this storm,” said Gloucester, watching his old friend through the bars. “No one should be out in this storm.”
    “He brought it on himself,” said Cornwall. “Now, come along, good Gloucester.”
    Gloucester pulled himself away from the grate and followed Cornwall into the castle, leaving just Kent and me standing in the rain in only our woolen cloaks. Kent looked tortured over the old man’s fate.
    “He’s alone, Pocket. It’s not even noon and the sky is as dark as midnight. Lear is outside and alone.”
    “Oh buggering bugger,” said I. I looked at the chains leading up to the top of the gatehouse, the beams that protruded from the walls, the crenellations at the top to protect the archers. Damn the anchoress and Belette for my monkey-training as an acrobat. “I’ll go with him. But you have to hide Drool from Edmund. Talk to the laundress with the smashing knockers, she’ll help. She fancies the lad, no matter what she says.”
    “I’ll go get help to crank up the gate,” said Kent.
    “Not to worry. You look after the Natural, and watch your back for Edmund and Oswald. I’ll return with the old man when I can.” And with that I shoved Jones down the back of my jerkin, ran and leapt onto the massive chain, spidered up it hand over hand, swung up onto one of the beams that protruded from the stone above, then hopped from beam to beam until I could find a handhold in the stone-and scurried up another story to the top of the wall. “Sorry sodding fortress,” I shouted to Kent with a wave. In a wink I was over the wall and down the drawbridge chains on the other side to the ground below.
    The old man was already at the gates of the walled village, nearly disappearing amid the rain, tottering out onto the heath in his fur cape, looking like an ancient sodden rat.
    ACT III
    Jesters do oft prove prophets.
    – King Lear, Act V, Scene 3, Regan

SEVENTEEN – REIGNING FOOLS,
    HAILING NUTTERS
    B low, wind, crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!” thundered Lear.
    The old man had perched himself on the top of a hill outside Gloucester and was shouting into the wind like a bloody lunatic, even as lightning raked the sky with white-hot claws and thunder shook me to my ribs.
    “Come in from there, you bloody decrepit old looney!” said I, huddled under a holly bush nearby; drenched and cold and at the end of my patience with the old man. “Come back to Gloucester and ask shelter from your daughters.”
    “Oh, ye heartless gods! Send your oak-cleaving thunderbolts down on me!
    Burn me with your sulfurous and life-ending fires!
    Singe my white head and reduce me to a pillar of ash!
    Strike me dead! Let your wrath take fiery form and smite me!
    Take me, spare no violence!

    I do not blame thee, thou art not my daughters!
    I’ve given you nothing and expect no quarter!
    Do your horrible pleasure direct,
    To a poor, infirm, despised old man!
    Crack the sky! Strike me dead!”
    The old man paused as a thunderbolt split a tree on the heath