Scene 4: The French camp. A Tent

Enter with drum and colours, Cordelia, Physician and Soldiers.

[CORDELIA]: Alack, ’tis he: why, he was met even now As mad as the vex’d sea; singing aloud; Crown’d with rank fumiter and furrow weeds, With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn. A century send forth; Search every acre in the high-grown field, And bring him to our eye.

[_Exit an Officer._]

What can man’s wisdom In the restoring his bereaved sense, He that helps him take all my outward worth.

[PHYSICIAN]: There is means, madam: Our foster nurse of nature is repose, The which he lacks; that to provoke in him Are many simples operative, whose power Will close the eye of anguish.

[CORDELIA]: All bless’d secrets, All you unpublish’d virtues of the earth, Spring with my tears! Be aidant and remediate In the good man’s distress! Seek, seek for him; Lest his ungovern’d rage dissolve the life That wants the means to lead it.

Enter a Messenger.

[MESSENGER]: News, madam; The British powers are marching hitherward.

[CORDELIA]: ’Tis known before. Our preparation stands In expectation of them. O dear father, It is thy business that I go about; Therefore great France My mourning and important tears hath pitied. No blown ambition doth our arms incite, But love, dear love, and our ag’d father’s right: Soon may I hear and see him!

[_Exeunt._]