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King Lear : Act 1, Scene 2

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           Enter Bastard [EDMUND, with a letter].

      EDMUND
  1   Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
  2   My services are bound. Wherefore should I
  3   Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
  4   The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
  5   For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
  6   Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
  7   When my dimensions are as well compact,
  8   My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
  9   As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
 10   With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
 11   Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
 12   More composition and fierce quality
 13   Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
 14   Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
 15   Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
 16   Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
 17   Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
 18   As to the legitimate: fine word,—legitimate!
 19   Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
 20   And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
 21   Shall top th' legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
 22   Now, gods, stand up for bastards!


           Enter GLOUCESTER.

      GLOUCESTER
 23   Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted!
 24   And the king gone tonight! subscrib'd his pow'r!
 25   Confined to exhibition! All this done
 26   Upon the gad! Edmund, how now! what news?

      EDMUND
 27   So please your lordship, none.


           [Putting up the letter.]

      GLOUCESTER
 28   Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?

      EDMUND
 29   I know no news, my lord.

      GLOUCESTER
 30   What paper were you reading?

      EDMUND
 31   Nothing, my lord.

      GLOUCESTER
 32   No? What needed, then, that terrible dispatch of
 33   it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath
 34   not such need to hide itself. Let's see: come,
 35   if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.

      EDMUND
 36   I beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a letter
 37   from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read;
 38   and for so much as I have perused, I find it not
 39   fit for your o'er-looking.

      GLOUCESTER
 40   Give me the letter, sir.

      EDMUND
 41   I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The
 42   contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.

      GLOUCESTER
 43   Let's see, let's see.

      EDMUND
 44   I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote
 45   this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.

      GLOUCESTER  [Reads]
 46      "This policy and reverence of age makes the world
 47      bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes
 48      from us till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin
 49      to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression
 50      of aged tyranny; who sways, not as it hath power,
 51      but as it is suffer'd. Come to me, that of this I may
 52      speak more. If our father would sleep till I waked
 53      him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever,
 54      and live the beloved of your brother,  —EDGAR."
 55   Hum—conspiracy!—"Sleep till I waked him,—you
 56   should enjoy half his revenue,"—My son Edgar! Had
 57   he a hand to write this? a heart and brain to breed
 58   it in?—When came this to you? who brought it?


      EDMUND
 59   It was not brought me, my lord; there's the cunning
 60   of it; I found it thrown in at the casement of my
 61   closet.

      GLOUCESTER
 62   You know the character to be your brother's?

      EDMUND
 63   If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear
 64   it were his; but, in respect of that, I would
 65   fain think it were not.

      GLOUCESTER
 66   It is his.

      EDMUND
 67   It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is
 68   not in the contents.

      GLOUCESTER
 69   Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this
 70   business?

      EDMUND
 71   Never, my lord: but I have heard him oft
 72   maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age,
 73   and fathers declin'd, the father should be as
 74   ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.

      GLOUCESTER
 75   O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter!
 76   Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish
 77   villain! worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him;
 78   I'll apprehend him: abominable villain! Where is he?

      EDMUND
 79   I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please you
 80   to suspend your indignation against my brother
 81   till you can derive from him better testimony of
 82   his intent, you should run a certain course; where,
 83   if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his
 84   purpose, it would make a great gap in your own
 85   honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his
 86   obedience. I dare pawn down my life for him, that
 87   he hath wrote this to feel my affection to your
 88   honour, and to no further pretense of danger.

      GLOUCESTER
 89   Think you so?

      EDMUND
 90   If your honour judge it meet, I will place you
 91   where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an
 92   auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and
 93   that without any further delay than this very evening.

      GLOUCESTER
 94   He cannot be such a monster—

      EDMUND
 95   Nor is not, sure.

      GLOUCESTER
 96   To his father, that so tenderly and entirely
 97   loves him. Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him
 98   out: wind me into him, I pray you: frame the
 99   business after your own wisdom. I would unstate
100   myself, to be in a due resolution.

      EDMUND
101   I will seek him, sir, presently: convey the business
102   as I shall find means and acquaint you withal.

      GLOUCESTER
103   These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no
104   good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason
105   it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by
106   the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off,
107   brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries,
108   discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked
109   'twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes
110   under the prediction; there's son against father: the
111   king falls from bias of nature; there's father against
112   child. We have seen the best of our time. Machinations,
113   hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders,
114   follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out this
115   villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it
116   carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent
117   banished! his offence, honesty! 'Tis strange.


           Exit.

      EDMUND
118   This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when
119   we are sick in fortune,—often the surfeits of our own
120   behaviour,—we make guilty of our disasters the sun,
121   the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by
122   necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves,
123   thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance;
124   drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced
125   obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are
126   evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable
127   evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
128   disposition to the charge of a star! My father
129   compounded with my mother under the Dragon's Tail;
130   and my nativity was under Ursa Major; so that it
131   follows, I am rough and lecherous. Fut, I should have
132   been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the
133   firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar—


           Enter EDGAR.
134   And pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old
135   comedy: my cue is villainous melancholy, with a
136   sigh like Tom o' Bedlam.  —O, these eclipses do
137   portend these divisions! [Humming.] fa, sol, la, mi.

      EDGAR
138   How now, brother Edmund! what serious
139   contemplation are you in?

      EDMUND
140   I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read
141   this other day, what should follow these eclipses.

      EDGAR
142   Do you busy yourself about that?

      EDMUND
143   I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed
144   unhappily; as of unnaturalness between the child
145   and the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions of
146   ancient amities; divisions in state, menaces and
147   maledictions against king and nobles; needless
148   diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation
149   of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.

      EDGAR
150   How long have you been a sectary astronomical?

      EDMUND
151   Come, come; when saw you my father last?

      EDGAR
152   Why, the night gone by.

      EDMUND
153   Spake you with him?

      EDGAR
154   Ay, two hours together.

      EDMUND
155   Parted you in good terms? Found you no
156   displeasure in him by word or countenance?

      EDGAR
157   None at all.

      EDMUND
158   Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended
159   him: and at my entreaty forbear his presence
160   till some little time hath qualified the heat of
161   his displeasure; which at this instant so rageth
162   in him, that with the mischief of your person it
163   would scarcely allay.

      EDGAR
164   Some villain hath done me wrong.

      EDMUND
165   That's my fear. I pray you, have a continent
166   forbearance till the speed of his rage goes
167   slower; and, as I say, retire with me to my
168   lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to
169   hear my lord speak. Pray ye, go; there's my key.
170   If you do stir abroad, go armed.

      EDGAR
171   Armed, brother?

      EDMUND
172   Brother, I advise you to the best; go armed: I
173   am no honest man if there be any good meaning
174   towards you: I have told you what I have seen
175   and heard; but faintly, nothing like the image
176   and horror of it: pray you, away.

      EDGAR
177   Shall I hear from you anon?

      EDMUND
178   I do serve you in this business.


           Exit [EDGAR].

179   A credulous father! and a brother noble,
180   Whose nature is so far from doing harms,
181   That he suspects none: on whose foolish honesty
182   My practises ride easy! I see the business.
183   Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
184   All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.

           Exit.