That face of her's 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.

CORD. The Jewels of our father, with wash'd eyes
Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are;
And, like a sister, am most loth to call

270

Your faults as they are nam'd. Love well our father:
To your professed bosoms I commit him ;

But yet, alas, stood I within his grace,

I would prefer him to a better place.
So, farewell to you both.

REG. Prescribe not us our duties.

GON.

Let your study

280

Be to content your Lord, who hath receiv'd you
At Fortune's alms. You have obedience scanted,
And well are worth the want that you have wanted.1
CORD. Time shall unfold what plighted2 Cunning hides :
Who cover faults, at last Shame them derides.

Well may you prosper!

FRANCE.

Come, my fair Cordelia.
[Exeunt FRANCE and CORDELIA.

GON. Sister, it is not 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 lov'd 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-engraff'd condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.

1 i.e. having failed in love, you well deserve to go without love. VIII: NN

2 folded.

273

301

ACT I
Sc. I

1

ACT I REG. Such unconstant starts are we like to have from Sc. I

him as this of Kent's banishment.

GON. There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and him. Pray you, let us sit together:1 if our father carry authority with such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us.

REG. We shall further think of it.

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
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit

2

The curiosity of nations to deprive me,

For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take

More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word-legitimate!
Well, my Legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my
invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper :
Now, Gods, stand up for bastards!

Enter GLOUCESTER.

GLOU. Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted!

And the King gone to-night! subscrib'd his power!

1 harmonise, agree. a i.e. scrupulous pedantry.

3 given away in writing.

ΤΟ

20

GLOU. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
EDM. I know no news, my Lord.

GLOU. What paper were you reading?

EDM. Nothing, my Lord.

30

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.

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 perus'd, I find it not fit for your o'erlooking.

GLOU. Give me the letter, Sir.

40

EDM. I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The con-
tents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.
GLOU. Let's see, let's see.

EDм. 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 ag'd Tyranny; who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffer'd. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep till I wak'd him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the belov'd of your brother, EDGAR.

Hum-conspiracy!-Sleep till I wak'd 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

1 maintenance.

61

your

brother's?

ACT I 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.

Sc. II

GLOU. It is his.

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

GLOU. Has he never before 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.

73

GLOU. O Villain, Villain! His very opinion in the letter !
Abhorr'd Villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish Villain!
worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him; I'll appre-
hend 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 affec-
tion to your Honour, and to no other pretence of
danger.

GLOU. 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.
GLOU. He cannot be such a monster—

EDM. Nor is not, sure.

92

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 myself1 to be in a due resolution.

ΙΟΙ

EDM. I will seek him, Sir, presently; convey the business
as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal.
GLOU. These late eclipses in the Sun and Moon portend

1 i.e. give all I have.

no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourg'd by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack'd '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 banish'd! 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 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 enforc'd 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.

132

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.

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.

140

ACT I

Sc. II