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EDM. I know no news, my lord.
GLO. What paper were you reading?
EDM. Nothing, my lord.

GLO. 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.

EDM. I beseech you, sir, pardon me it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'erread; and for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking.

GLO. 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.

GLO. 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.

GLO. [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.

GLO. 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.

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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 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 so?

EDM. 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 that without any further delay than this very evening.

GLO. He cannot be such a monster.
EDM. Nor is not, sure.

GLO. 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.

GLO. 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 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 true-hearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty! -T is strange! [Exit.

EDM. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, (often

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the surfeit of our own behaviour) 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, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; 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 whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition on 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-and | pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villainous melaneholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam.

Enter EDGAR.

O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.

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

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

EDG. Do you busy yourself with that?

a

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. The night gone by.

EDM. Spake you with him?
EDG. Ay, two hours together.

EDM. Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him, by word nor countenance? EDG. None at all.

EDM. Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him and at my entreaty forbear his presence until 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.

(*) First folio, surfets. (+) First folio omits, the. (2) First folio, on. (§) First folio omits, Tut. () First folio omits, Edgar-and. aas of unnaturalness-] The folio, omitting the intervening lines, reads,——

"BAST. I promise you, the effects he writes of, succeede unVOL. III. 65

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He flashes into one gross crime or other,
That sets 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 sick :-
If you come slack of former services,
You shall do well; the fault of it I'll answer.
Osw. He's coming, madam; I hear him.
[Horns without.
GON. Put on what weary negligence you
please,

You and your fellows; I'd have it come to question:

If he distaste it, let him to my sister,
Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one
Not to be over-rul'd. Idle old man,
That still would manage those authorities,

(*) First folio omits, go armed.

happily. When saw you my Father last?"

6 That's my fear.] In the quartos, the remainder of this speech, and Edgar's reply, are omitted.

Not to be over-rul'd.] This, and the four following lines, are omitted in the folio.

F

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KENT. A man, sir.

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.(2) LEAR. What art thou?

KENT. A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the king.

LEAR. If thou beest as poor for a subject, as he is for a king, thou art poor enough. What wouldst thou?

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KNIGHT. My lord, I know not what the matter is; but, to my judgment, your highness is not entertained with that ceremonious affection as you were wont; there's a great abatement of kindness appears as well in the general dependants as in the duke himself also, and your daughter.

LEAR. Ha! sayest thou so?

KNIGHT. I beseech you, pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken; for my duty cannot be silent when I think your highness wronged.

LEAR. Thou but rememberest me of mine own

(*) First folio, Daughters.

b That can my speech diffuse,-] Diffuse, here, signifies, disguise.

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