Lear. To thee and thine hereditary ever Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom; No less in space, validity, and pleasure, Than that conferr'd on Goneril. Now, our joy, Although the last, not least; to whose young love The vines of France and milk of Burgundy Strive to be interess'd; what can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak. 90 Lear. Nothing will come of nothing: speak again. Cor. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond; nor more nor less. Lear. How, how, Cordelia! mend your speech a little, Lest it may mar your fortunes. Half my love with him, half my care and duty: Lear. But goes thy heart with this? For, by the sacred radiance of the sun, From whom we do exist, and cease to be; ous Scythian, The barbar Or he that makes his generation messes Kent. Lear. Peace, Kent! Good my liege, Kent. Do: Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Lear. Which we durst never yet, and with strain'd pride To come between our sentence and our power, Which nor our nature nor our place can bear, 179 Thy banish'd trunk be found in our dominions, The moment is thy death. Away! by Jupiter, This shall not be revoked. Kent. Fare thee well, king: sith thus thou wilt appear, Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here. [To Cordelia] The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid, That justly think'st, and hast most rightly said! [To Regan and Goneril] And your large speeches may your deeds approve, That good effects may spring from words of love. Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu; He'll shape his old course in a country new. [Exit. Flourish. Re-enter GLOUCESTER, with FRANCE, BURGUNDY, and Attendants. Glou. Here's France and Burgundy, my noble lord. 191 Lear. My lord of Burgundy. We first address towards you, who with this king Hath rivall'd for our daughter what, in the least, Will you require in present dower with her, Nor will you tender less. Lear. Right noble Burgundy, When she was dear to us, we did hold her so; But now her price is fall'n. Sir, there she stands: 200 If aught within that little seeming substance, Bur. I know no answer. object, The argument of your praise, balm of your age, Most best, most dearest, should in this trice of time 219 Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle So many folds of favor. Sure, her offence Must be of such unnatural degree, That monsters it, or your fore-vouch'd affection Fall'n into taint: which to believe of her, Must be a faith that reason without miracle Could never plant in me. Cor. I'll do't before I speak,-that you make knowr favor; But even for want of that for which I am Bur. Give but that portion which yourself proposed, And here I take Cordelia by the hand, Lear. Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm. father That you must lose a husband. Cor. Peace be with Burgundy! 250 Since that respects of fortune are his love, I shall not be his wife. France. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon: Be it lawful I take up what's cast away. Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect My love should kindle to inflamed respect. Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance, Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France: Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy 261 Can buy this unprized precious maid of me Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind: Thou losest here, a better where to find. Lear. Thou hast her, France: let her be thine; for we Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see That face of hers again. Therefore be gone Without our grace, our love, our benison. Come, noble Burgundy. [Flourish. Exeunt all but France, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. France. Bid farewell to your sisters. 270 Cor. The jewels of our father, with wash'd Cor. Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last shame them derides. Come, my fair Cordelia. [Exeunt France and Cordelia. Gon. Sister, it is not a little I have to say of what most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father will hence to-night. Reg. That's most certain, and with you; next month with us. 290 Gon. You see how full of changes his age is; the observation we have made of it hath not been little he always loved our sister most; and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off appears too grossly. Reg. 'Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself. Gon. The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look to receive from his age, not alone the imperfections of long-engraffed condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them. Reg. Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent's banishment. Gon. There is further compliment of leavetaking between France and him. Pray you, let's hit together: if our father carry authority with such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us. 310 Reg. We shall further think on't. Gon. We must do something, and i' the heat, [Exeunt. SCENE II. The Earl of Gloucester's castle. Enter EDMUND, with a letter. Edm. Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound. Wherefore should I Lag of a brother? Why bastard ? wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, us With base? with baseness? bastardy ? base, base? 10 Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take Edm. So please your lordship, none. [Putting up the letter. Glou. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter? Edm. I know no news, my lord. Glou. 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, if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles. 40 Edm. 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. Glou. Give me the letter, sir. Edm. I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame. Glou. Let's see, let's see. Edm. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue. Glou. [Reads] '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 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 enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, EDGAR.' 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? Edm. It was not brought me, my lord; there's the cunning of it; I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet. Glou. You know the character to be your brother's? Edm. If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it were his; but, in respect of that, I would fain think it were not. Glou. It is his. 70 dom 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 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 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 noble and truehearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty! 'Tis strange. [Exit. Edm. 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 disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, Edm. It is his hand, my lord; but I hope thieves, and treachers, by spherical predomhis heart is not in the contents. Glou. Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business ? Edm. 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. Glou. 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? Edm. 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 him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your own honor, 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 honor, and to no further pretence of danger. Glou. Think you so? Edm. If your honor judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and that without any further delay than this very evening. Glou. He cannot be such a monster- 101 Glou. To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him. Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him 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. Edm. I will seek him, sir, presently: convey the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal. 111 Glou. These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us; though the wis inance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of 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 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 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. Edg. How now, brother Edmund ! what serious contemplation are you in? 151 Edm. I am thinking, brother, of a predic tion I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses. Edg. Do you busy yourself about that? Edm. I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed 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 of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what. Edg. How long have you been a sectary astronomical? Edm. Come, come; when saw you my father last? Edg. None at all. Edm. Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended 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. Edg. Some villain hath done me wrong. Edm. That's my fear. I pray you, have a continent forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower; and, as I say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak: pray ye, go; there's my key if you do stir abroad, go armed. Edg. Armed, brother! Edm. Brother, I advise you to the best; go armed: I am no honest man if there be any good meaning 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. Edg. Shall I hear from you anon? Edm. I do serve you in this business. [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 practices ride easy! I see the business. ing, When he returns from hunt I will not speak with him; say I am sick : Gon. Put on what weary négligence you please, You and your fellows; I'll have it come to question: If he dislike it, let him to our sister, Well, madam. 20 Gon. And let his knights have colder looks among you; What grows of it, no matter; advise your fellows so : I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall, That I may speak: I'll write straight to my sister, To hold my very course. Prepare for dinner. [Exeunt. SCENE IV. A hall in the same. Enter KENT, disguised. Kent. If but as well I other accents borrow, That can my speech defuse, my good intent May carry through itself to that full issue For which I razed my likeness. Now, banish'd Kent, If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn'd, So may it come, thy master, whom thou lovest, Horns within. Enter LEAR, Knights, Lear. Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it ready. [Exit an Attendant.] How now! what art thou? Kent. A man, sir. 10 Lear. What dost thou profess? what wouldst thou with us? Kent. I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve him truly that will put me in trust to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise, and says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I cannot choose; and to eat no fish. Lear. What art thou? Kent. A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the king. 21 Lear. If thou be as poor for a subject as he is for a king, thou art poor enough. What wouldst thou? Kent. Service. |