need to hide it felf. Let's fee; come, if it be nothing, I fhall not need fpectacles.

Baft. I beseech you, Sir, pardon me ; it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read; and for fo much as I have perus'd, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking. Glo. Give me the letter, Sir.

Baft. I fhall offend, either to detain, or give it; the contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame. Glo. Let's fee, let's fee.

Baft. I hope for my brother's juftification, he wrote this but as an effay, or tafte of my virtue.

Glo. [reads.] This policy in revenge of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us, 'till our oldnafs cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppreffion of aged tyranny which favays, not as it hath power, but as it is fuffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would fleep 'till I wak'd him, you should enjoy balf his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother. Edgar. -Hum-Confpiracy! -fleep 'till I wake himyou should enjoy half his revenue- -My fon Edgar! had he a hand to write this! a heart and a brain to breed it in! When came this to you? who brought it?

Baf. It was not brought me, my Lord; there's the cunning of it. I found it thrown in at the cafement of my closet.

Glo. You know the character to be your brother's?

Baft. If the matter were good, my Lord, I durft swear it were his; but in refpect of that, I would fain think it

were not.

Glo. It is his.

Baft. It is his hand, my Lord; I hope his heart is not in the contents.

Glo. Has he never before founded you in this business? Baft. Never, my Lord. But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that fons being at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father fhould be as a ward to the son, and the fon manage his revenue.

Glo. O villain, villain! his very opinion in the letter. Abhorred villain! unnatural, detefted, brutish villain!

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worfe

worse than brutish! Go, Sirrah, feek him ; I'll apprehend him. Abominable villain! where is he!

Baft. I do not well know, my Lord; if it fhall please you to fufpend your indignation against my brother, 'till you can derive from him better teftimony of his intent, you fhould run a certain course; where, if you violently proceed against him, miftaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your honour, and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath writ this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no other pretence of danger.

Glo. Think you fo?

Baft. If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you fhall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular affurance have your fatisfaction, and that without any further delay than this very evening.

Glo. He cannot be fuch a monster. Edmund, feek him out; wind me into him, I pray you; frame the business after your own wifdom. I would unftate my felf, to be in a due refolution.

Bast. I will feek him, Sir, presently, convey the business as I fhall find means, and acquaint you withal.

Glo. Thefe late eclipfes in the fun and moon portend no good to us; though the wifdom of mankind can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds it felf fcourg'd by the fequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, difcord; in palaces, treafon; and the bond crack'd 'twixt fon and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction, there's fon against father; the King falls from biafs of nature, there's father against child. We have seen the beft of our time. Machinations, hollownefs, treachery, and all ruinous diforders, follow us difquietly to our graves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lofe thee nothing, do it carefully- -and the noble and true-hearted Kent banish'd! his offence, Honefty. 'Tis ftrange. [Exit,

SCENE VIII.

Baft. This is the excellent foppery of the world; that when we are fick in fortune (often the furfeits of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our difafters, the fun, the

moon

moon and ftars; as if we were villains on neceffity, fools by heavenly compulfion, knaves, thieves, and treacherous by fpherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an inforc'd obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-mafter Man, to lay his goatish difpofition on the charge of a ftar! my father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Urfa major, fo that it follows I am rough and lecherous. I fhould have been what I am, had the maidenlieft ftar in the firmament twinkled on my baftardizing.

SCENE IX. To him, Enter Edgar.

Baft. Pat!-he comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy; my cue is villainious Melancholy, with a figh like Tom o' Bedlam-O, these eclipses portend these divifions! fa, fol, la, me[Humming.

Edg. How now, brother Edmund, what serious contemplation are you in?

Baft. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what fhould follow these eclipses. Edg. Do you bufie your felf with that?

Baft. I promife you, the effects he writes of fucceed unhappily. When saw you my father laft?

Edg. The night gone by.

Baft. Spake you with him?

Edg. Ay, two hours together.

Baft. Parted you in good terms, found you no displeasure in him, by word or countenance?

Edg. None at all.

Baft. Bethink your self wherein you have offended him: and at my intreaty forbear his prefence, until fome little time hath qualified the heat of his difpleasure; which at this inftant fo rageth in him, that without the mischief of your perfon it would fcarcely allay.

Edg. Some villain hath done me wrong.

Baft. That's my fear: I pray you have a continent forbearance 'till the speed of his rage goes flower: and, as I fay, retire with me to my lodging, from whence I will

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fitly

fitly bring you to hear my Lord speak: pray you go, there's my key: if you do ftir abroad, go arm'd.

Edg. Arm'd, brother!

Baft. Brother, I advise you to the beft;

I am no honeft man if there be any good meaning toward 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?

SCENE

Baft. I ferve you in this bufinefs:

X.

A credulous father, and a brother noble,
Whofe nature is fo far from doing harms,

That he suspects none; on whose foolish honefty
My practices ride eafy I fee the business.

:

Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;
All with me's meet, that I can fashion fit.

[Exit,

[Exit.

SCENE XI. The Duke of Albany's Palace.
Enter Gonerill, and Steward.

Gon. Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool?

Stew. Ay, Madam.

Gon. By day and night he wrongs me; every hour He flashes into one grofs crime or other,

That fets us all at odds; I'll not endure it;

His Knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us
On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,
I will not speak with him, say I am fick.

If you come flack of former fervices,

You shall do well, the fault of it I'll answer.
Stew. He's coming, Madam, I hear him.
Gon. Put on what weary negligence you please,

You and your fellows: I'd have it come to question:
If he diftafte it, let him to my fifter,

Whofe mind and mine I know in that are one.

Remember what I have said..

Stew. Very well, Madam.

Gon. And let his Knights have colder looks among you : What grows of it no matter, and advise

Your fellows fo: I'll write ftrait to my fifter

To hold my courfe. Go and prepare for dinner. [Exeunt.

SCENE

SCENE XII. An open place near the Palace.

Enter Kent difguis'd.

Kent. If but as well I other accents borrow
And can my speech diffuse, * my good intent,
May carry thro' it felf to that full iffue

For which I raz'd my likeness. Banifh'd Kent,
If thou canst serve where thou doft stand condemn'd,
it come, thy mafter whom thou lov❜ft

So

may

Shall find thee full of labours.

Horns within. Enter Lear, Knights and Attendants, Lear. Let me not ftay a jot for dinner, go get it ready: how now, what art thou?

Kent. A man, Sir.

Lear. What doft thou profefs? what would't thou with us?

Kent. I do profefs to be no less than I feem; to ferve him truly that will put me in truft, to love him that is honeft, to converfe with him that is wife, to fay little, to fear judgment, to fight when I cannot chuse, and to eat no fifh.

Lear. What art thou?

Kent. A very honeft-hearted fellow, and as poor as the King.

Lear. If thou beeft as poor for a fubject, as he's for a King, thou art poor enough. What would'st thou? Kent. Service.

Lear. Whom would'ft thou ferve?

Kent. You.

Lear. Doft thou know me, fellow ?

Kent. No, Sir, but you have that in your countenance, which I would fain call mafter.

Lear. What's that?

Lent. Authority.

Lear. What fervices canft thou do?

Kent. I can keep honest counfels, ride, run, marr a curious tale in telling it, and deliver a plain meffage bluntly:

To diffufe here fignifies to diforder, to put out of a regular course. It is ufed in the fame fenfe in other places in this Author; diffused attire, diffafed founds.

that