Further to yesterday's post regarding reading aloud with emotion, another scene from King Lear is a splendid example from which to learn. The eighty-year-old Lear, after having been denied a roof by the two daughters who had sworn their love for him in the first scene, is being guided toward a hovel in which he can be sheltered from a wild storm. However, before entering, he stops to say a prayer. But it's not a prayer for help or revenge. Rather he prays to the poor people of the kingdom, who he now realizes have been ignored during his reign:

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,

And show the heavens more just. (3. 4. 28-36)

If we read aloud, we realize that great poetry contains all the attributes of great music: the sounds, the rhythms, the ideas, and of course, the emotion.