King Lear by William Shakespeare
Act 1 - Scene 2
The Earl of Gloucester’s Castle.
Edmund : Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law
[p]My services are bound.
Wherefore should I
[p]Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
[p]The
curiosity of nations to deprive me,
[p]For that I am some twelve or
fourteen moonshines
[p]Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore
base?
[p]When my dimensions are as well compact,
[p]My mind as
generous, and my shape as true,
[p]As honest madam's issue? Why brand
they us
[p]With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
[p]Who, in
the lusty stealth of nature, take
[p]More composition and fierce
quality
[p]Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
[p]Go to th'
creating a whole tribe of fops
[p]Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well
then,
[p]Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.
[p]Our father's love
is to the bastard Edmund
[p]As to th' legitimate. Fine word-
'legitimate'!
[p]Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
[p]And my
invention thrive, Edmund the base
[p]Shall top th' legitimate. I grow;
I prosper.
[p]Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
Earl of Glouchester : Kent banish'd thus? and France in choler parted?
[p]And the King gone
to-night? subscrib'd his pow'r?
[p]Confin'd to exhibition? All this
done
[p]Upon the gad? Edmund, how now? What news?
Edmund : So please your lordship, none.
Earl of Glouchester : Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
Edmund : I know no news, my lord.
Earl of Glouchester : What paper were you reading?
Edmund : Nothing, my lord.
Earl of Glouchester : No? What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your
[p]pocket?
The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide
[p]itself. Let's
see. Come, if it be nothing, I shall not need
[p]spectacles.
Edmund : I beseech you, sir, pardon me. It is a letter from my brother
[p]that
I have not all o'er-read; and for so much as I have
[p]perus'd, I find
it not fit for your o'erlooking.
Earl of Glouchester : Give me the letter, sir.
Edmund : I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as
[p]in
part I understand them, are to blame.
Earl of Glouchester : Let's see, let's see!
Edmund : I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as
[p]an
essay or taste of my virtue.
Earl of Glouchester : [reads] 'This policy and reverence of age makes the world
[p]bitter to
the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us
[p]till our oldness
cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle
[p]and fond bondage in the
oppression of aged tyranny, who sways,
[p]not as it hath power, but as
it is suffer'd. Come to me, that
[p]of this I may speak more. If our
father would sleep till I
[p]wak'd him, you should enjoy half his
revenue for ever, and live
[p]the beloved of your brother,
[p]
'EDGAR.'
[p]Hum! Conspiracy?
'Sleep till I wak'd him, you should enjoy half
[p]his revenue.' My son
Edgar! Had he a hand to write this? a heart
[p]and brain to breed it
in? When came this to you? Who brought it?
Edmund : It was not brought me, my lord: there's the cunning of it. I
[p]found
it thrown in at the casement of my closet.
Earl of Glouchester : You know the character to be your brother's?
Edmund : If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it were his;
[p]but in
respect of that, I would fain think it were not.
Earl of Glouchester : It is his.
Edmund : It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in
the
[p]contents.
Earl of Glouchester : Hath he never before sounded you in this business?
Edmund : Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft maintain it to be
fit
[p]that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the
father
[p]should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his
revenue.
Earl of Glouchester : O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter!
Abhorred
[p]villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse
than
[p]brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him. I'll apprehend him.
Abominable
[p]villain! Where is he?
Edmund : I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please you to suspend
[p]your
indignation against my brother till you can derive from him
[p]better
testimony of his intent, you should run a certain course;
[p]where, if
you violently proceed against him, mistaking his
[p]purpose, it would
make a great gap in your own honour and shake
[p]in pieces the heart
of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life
[p]for him that he hath
writ this to feel my affection to your
[p]honour, and to no other
pretence of danger.
Earl of Glouchester : Think you so?
Edmund : If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall
[p]hear
us confer of this and by an auricular assurance have
your
[p]satisfaction, and that without any further delay than this
very
[p]evening.
Earl of Glouchester : He cannot be such a monster.
Edmund : Nor is not, sure.
Earl of Glouchester : To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him.
[p]Heaven and
earth! Edmund, seek him out; wind me into him, I pray
[p]you; frame
the business after your own wisdom. I would unstate
[p]myself to be in
a due resolution.
Edmund : I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business as I
[p]shall
find means, and acquaint you withal.
Earl of Glouchester : These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to
[p]us.
Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet
[p]nature
finds itself scourg'd by the sequent effects. Love
cools,
[p]friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies;
in
[p]countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond
crack'd
[p]'twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under
the
[p]prediction; there's son against father: the King falls from
bias
[p]of nature; there's father against child. We have seen the
best
[p]of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and
all
[p]ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. Find
out
[p]this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do
it
[p]carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banish'd!
his
[p]offence, honesty! 'Tis strange. Exit.
Edmund : This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are
[p]sick
in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make
[p]guilty
of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if
[p]we were
villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion;
[p]knaves,
thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance;
[p]drunkards,
liars, and adulterers by an enforc'd obedience of
[p]planetary
influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine
[p]thrusting on.
An admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay
[p]his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star! My father
[p]compounded with my
mother under the Dragon's Tail, and my
[p]nativity was under Ursa
Major, so that it follows I am rough and
[p]lecherous. Fut! I should
have been that I am, had the
[p]maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing.
[p]Edgar-
[p][Enter Edgar.]
[p]and pat!
he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy. My
[p]cue is
villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam.
[p]O, these
eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi.
Edgar : How now, brother Edmund? What serious contemplation are you
[p]in?
Edmund : I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day,
[p]what
should follow these eclipses.
Edgar : Do you busy yourself with that?
Edmund : I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily: as
[p]of
unnaturalness between the child and the parent; death,
[p]dearth,
dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state,
[p]menaces and
maledictions against king and nobles; needless
[p]diffidences,
banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts,
[p]nuptial breaches,
and I know not what.
Edgar : How long have you been a sectary astronomical?
Edmund : Come, come! When saw you my father last?
Edgar : The night gone by.
Edmund : Spake you with him?
Edgar : Ay, two hours together.
Edmund : Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him by
[p]word
or countenance
Edgar : None at all.
Edmund : Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him; and at
my
[p]entreaty forbear his presence until some little time
hath
[p]qualified the heat of his displeasure, which at this instant
so
[p]rageth in him that with the mischief of your person it
would
[p]scarcely allay.
Edgar : Some villain hath done me wrong.
Edmund : That's my fear. I pray you have a continent forbearance till
[p]the
speed of his rage goes slower; and, as I say, retire with me
[p]to my
lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to hear my
[p]lord speak.
Pray ye, go! There's my key. If you do stir abroad,
[p]go arm'd.
Edgar : Arm'd, brother?
Edmund : Brother, I advise you to the best. Go arm'd. I am no honest man
[p]if
there be any good meaning toward you. I have told you what I
[p]have
seen and heard; but faintly, nothing like the image and
[p]horror of
it. Pray you, away!
Edgar : Shall I hear from you anon?
Edmund : I do serve you in this business.
[p][Exit Edgar.]
[p]A credulous
father! and a brother noble,
[p]Whose nature is so far from doing
harms
[p]That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty
[p]My
practices ride easy! I see the business.
[p]Let me, if not by birth,
have lands by wit;
[p]All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.
Exit.
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