KING LEAR LEAVES A VOICEMAIL FOR HIS DAUGHTER REGAN
Thou shouldst not have been
old till thou hadst been wise.
Regan, pick up the damn phone! I know you're there, you're trying to ignore
me, but you can't do that. Well, you can, can't you? For you I don't exist.
But you exist. Pick up the goddamned phone!
You sit up late with Cornwall your husband, scheming how to pry loose
Goneril's lands that I like an idiot gave away. Even my Fool saw what I was
doing. But who listens to a fool? Not you. Not me. Not anymore.
I dispossessed Cordelia for you bitches! It is too late now. She is Queen of
France and I sit here, watching you plotting around me. Oh, I am vain and
I'm older than dirt, and my senses misgive-roast beef tastes like Oscar
Meyer salami. Sad, but now I know when I've beguiled myself, when I've let
your vanity become mine. Sickening, sickening.
I wanted to crawl unburdened toward Death. I'm seeing worse than death. I
see my daughters oblivious or simply hateful. All right, girls, hear it: I
fucked up. Is that what you want to hear? Your father is a moron.
Superficiality was all. I am the victim only of my own bad choices.
Remember when you were little-you'd watch the court barber shave me each
morning? You thought it was funny.
Then I stopped shaving. You were grown and it wasn't funny anymore. I could
not look into my own eyes. I could not look at my face.
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