King Lear
ACT I SCENE II | The Earl of Gloucester’s castle. | |
Enter EDMUND, solus. | ||
EDMUND | Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law | |
My services are bound. Wherefore should I | ||
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit | ||
The curiosity of nations to deprive me, | 5 | |
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines | ||
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base? | ||
When my dimensions are as well compact, | ||
My mind as generous, and my shape as true, | ||
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us | 10 | |
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? | ||
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take | ||
More composition and fierce quality | ||
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, | ||
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops, | 15 | |
Got ‘tween asleep and wake? Well, then, | ||
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: | ||
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund | ||
As to the legitimate: fine word,–legitimate! | ||
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, | 20 | |
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base | ||
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper: | ||
Now, gods, stand up for bastards! | ||
Enter GLOUCESTER. [Edmund ostentatiously reading a letter.] | ||
GLOUCESTER | Kent banish’d thus, and France in choler parted! | |
And the king gone to-night! subscribed his power! | 25 | |
Confined to exhibition! All this done | ||
Upon the gad! Edmund, how now! what news? | ||
EDMUND | So please your lordship, none. | |
Putting up the letter | ||
GLOUCESTER | Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter? | |
EDMUND | I know no news, my lord. | 30 |
GLOUCESTER | What paper were you reading? | |
EDMUND | Nothing, my lord. | |
GLOUCESTER | No? What needed, then, that terrible dispatch of | |
it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath | ||
not such need to hide itself. Let’s see: come, | 35 | |
if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles. | ||
EDMUND | I beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a letter | |
from my brother, that I have not all o’er-read; | ||
and for so much as I have perused, I find it not | ||
fit for your o’er-looking. | 40 | |
GLOUCESTER | Give me the letter, sir. | |
EDMUND | I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The | |
contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame. | ||
GLOUCESTER | Let’s see, let’s see. | |
EDMUND | I hope, for my brother’s justification, he wrote | 45 |
this but as an essay or taste of my virtue. | ||
GLOUCESTER | GLOUCESTER Reads the letter. | |
“This policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps | ||
our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish | ||
them. I begin to find an idle and fond bondage | ||
in the oppression of aged tyranny; who sways, not | 50 | |
as it hath power, but as it is suffered. Come to | ||
me, that of this I may speak more. If our father | ||
would sleep till I waked him, you should half his | ||
revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your | ||
brother, EDGAR.” | 55 | |
Hum–conspiracy!–‘Sleep till I waked him,–you | ||
should enjoy half his revenue,’–My son Edgar! | ||
Had he a hand to write this? a heart and brain | ||
to breed it in?–When came this to you? who | ||
brought it? | 60 | |
EDMUND | It was not brought me, my lord; there’s the | |
cunning of it; I found it thrown in at the | ||
casement of my closet. | ||
GLOUCESTER | You know the character to be your brother’s? | |
EDMUND | If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear | 65 |
it were his; but, in respect of that, I would | ||
fain think it were not. | ||
GLOUCESTER | It is his. | |
EDMUND | It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is | |
not in the contents. | 70 | |
GLOUCESTER | Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business? | |
EDMUND | Never, my lord: but I have heard him oft | |
maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age, | ||
and fathers declining, the father should be as | ||
ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue. | 75 | |
GLOUCESTER | O villain, villain! His very opinion in the | |
letter! Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, | ||
brutish villain! worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, | ||
seek him; I’ll apprehend him: abominable villain! | ||
Where is he? | 80 | |
EDMUND | I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please | |
you to suspend your indignation against my | ||
brother till you can derive from him better | ||
testimony of his intent, you shall run a certain | ||
course; where, if you violently proceed against | 85 | |
him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great | ||
gap in your own honour, and shake in pieces the | ||
heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life | ||
for him, that he hath wrote this to feel my | ||
affection to your honour, and to no further | 90 | |
pretence of danger. | ||
GLOUCESTER | Think you so? | |
EDMUND | If your honour judge it meet, I will place you | |
where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an | ||
auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and | 95 | |
that without any further delay than this very evening. | ||
GLOUCESTER | He cannot be such a monster– | |
EDMUND | Nor is not, sure. | |
GLOUCESTER | To his father, that so tenderly and entirely | |
loves him. Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him | 100 | |
out: wind me into him, I pray you: frame the | ||
business after your own wisdom. I would unstate | ||
myself, to be in a due resolution. | ||
EDMUND | I will seek him, sir, presently: convey the | |
business as I shall find means and acquaint you withal. | 105 | |
GLOUCESTER | These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend | |
no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can | ||
reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself | ||
scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, | ||
friendship falls off, brothers divide: in | 110 | |
cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in | ||
palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt son | ||
and father. This villain of mine comes under the | ||
prediction; there’s son against father: the king | ||
falls from bias of nature; there’s father against | 115 | |
child. We have seen the best of our time: | ||
machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all | ||
ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our | ||
graves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall | ||
lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the | 120 | |
noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his | ||
offence, honesty! ‘Tis strange. | ||
Exit | ||
EDMUND | This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, | |
when we are sick in fortune,–often the surfeit | ||
of our own behavior,–we make guilty of our | 125 | |
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as | ||
if we were villains by necessity; fools by | ||
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and | ||
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, | ||
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of | 130 | |
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, | ||
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion | ||
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish | ||
disposition to the charge of a star! My | ||
father compounded with my mother under the | 135 | |
dragon’s tail; and my nativity was under Ursa | ||
major; so that it follows, I am rough and | ||
lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am, | ||
had the maidenliest star in the firmament | ||
twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar– | 140 | |
Enter EDGAR. | ||
And pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old | ||
comedy: my cue is villanous melancholy, with a | ||
sigh like Tom o’ Bedlam. O, these eclipses do | ||
portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi. | ||
EDGAR | How now, brother Edmund! what serious | 145 |
contemplation are you in? | ||
EDMUND | I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read | |
this other day, what should follow these eclipses. | ||
EDGAR | Do you busy yourself about that? | |
EDMUND | I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed | 150 |
unhappily; as of unnaturalness between the child | ||
and the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions of | ||
ancient amities; divisions in state, menaces and | ||
maledictions against king and nobles; needless | ||
diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation | 155 | |
of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what. | ||
EDGAR | How long have you been a sectary astronomical? | |
EDMUND | Come, come; when saw you my father last? | |
EDGAR | Why, the night gone by. | |
EDMUND | Spake you with him? | 160 |
EDGAR | Ay, two hours together. | |
EDMUND | Parted you in good terms? Found you no | |
displeasure in him by word or countenance? | ||
EDGAR | None at all. | |
EDMUND | Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended | 165 |
him: and at my entreaty forbear his presence | ||
till some little time hath qualified the heat of | ||
his displeasure; which at this instant so rageth | ||
in him, that with the mischief of your person it | ||
would scarcely allay. | 170 | |
EDGAR | Some villain hath done me wrong. | |
EDMUND | That’s my fear. I pray you, have a continent | |
forbearance till the spied of his rage goes | ||
slower; and, as I say, retire with me to my | ||
lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to | 175 | |
hear my lord speak: pray ye, go; there’s my key: | ||
if you do stir abroad, go armed. | ||
EDGAR | Armed, brother! | |
EDMUND | Brother, I advise you to the best; go armed: I | |
am no honest man if there be any good meaning | 180 | |
towards you: I have told you what I have seen | ||
and heard; but faintly, nothing like the image | ||
and horror of it: pray you, away. | ||
EDGAR | Shall I hear from you anon? | |
EDMUND | I do serve you in this business. | 185 |
Exit EDGAR. | ||
A credulous father! and a brother noble, | ||
Whose nature is so far from doing harms, | ||
That he suspects none: on whose foolish honesty | ||
My practises ride easy! I see the business. | ||
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit: | 190 | |
All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit. | ||
Exit |
King Lear, Act 1, Scene 3