that he hath writ this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no other pretence of danger.

8

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.1

Edm. I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business2 as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal.

3

Glo. These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: Though the wisdom of nature3 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 between 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

8

to your honour,] It has been already observed that this was the usual mode of address to a Lord in Shakspeare's time. - pretence-] Pretence is design, purpose.

9

1

I would unstate myself, to be in a due resolution.] i. e. he would give all he possessed to be certain of the truth; for that is the meaning of the words to be in a due resolution.

2

convey the business-] To convey is to carry through; in this place it is to manage artfully: we say of a juggler, that he has a clean conveyance.

3

the wisdom of nature-] That this, though natural philosophy can give account of eclipses, yet we feel their consequences.

of our time: Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves! Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall ose thee nothing; do it carefully:-And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty!-Strange! strange! [Exit.

Edm. This is the excellent foppery of the world! toat, when we are sick in fortune, (often 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 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 villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o'Bedlam.-O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.5

5

and treachers,] for treacherous.

O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.] The commentators, not being musicians, have regarded this passage perhaps as unintelligible nonsense, and therefore left it as they found it, without bestowing a single conjecture on its meaning and import. Shakspeare however shows by the context that he was well acquainted with the property of these syllables in solmisation, which imply a series of sounds so unnatural, that ancient

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?

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. Why, 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, or countenance? Edg. None at all.

1

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 conti

musicians prohibited their use. The monkish writers on musick say, mi contra fa est diabolus: the interval fa mi, including a tritonus, or sharp 4th, consisting of three tones, without the intervention of a semi-tone, expressed in the modern scale by the letters FGAB, would form a musical phrase extremely disagreeable to the ear. Edmund, speaking of eclipses as portents and prodigies, compares the dislocation of events, the times being out of joint, to the unnatural and offensive sounds, fa sol la mi. DR, BURNEY.

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

SCENE III.

A Room in the Duke of Albany's Palace.

Enter GONERIL and Steward.

[Exit.

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 gross crime or other,

That set 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.
Stew. He's coming, madam; I hear him.

[Horns within. Gon. Put on what weary negligence you please, You and your fellows; I'd have it come to question: If he dislike 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,
That he hath given away!-Now, by my life,
Old fools are babes again; and must be us'd
With checks, as flatteries,-when they are seen

abus'd."

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; 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,

5 Old fools are babes again; and must be us'd

With checks, as flatteries,-when they are seen abus'd.] i, e. When old fools will not yield to the appliances of persuasion, harsh treatment must be employed to compel their submission. When flatteries are seen to be abused by them, checks must be used, as the only means left to subdue them.