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Gon. Sifter, it is not a 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.

Gon. You fee how full of changes his age is; the obfervation we have made of it hath not been little : he always loved our fister most; and with what poor judgement he hath now caft her off, appears too grofsly.

Reg. 'Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but flenderly known himself.

Gon. The best and foundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look to receive from his age, not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, but, therewithal, the unruly waywardness that infirm and cholerick years bring with them.

Reg. Such unconftant ftarts are we like to have from him, as this of Kent's banishment.

Gon. There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and him. Pray you, let us hit together: If our father carry authority with fuch difpofitions as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us. Reg. We fhall further think of it.

Gon. We must do something, and i' the heat.

SCENE II.

A Hall in the Earl of GLOSTER's Cafile.

Enter EDMUND, with a letter.

[Exeunt.

Edm. Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound: Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom; and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,

For

For that I am fome twelve or fourteen moon-fhines

Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore bafe?
When my dimenfions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honeft madam's iffue? Why brand they us
With bafe? with bafenefs? baftardy? base, base?
Who, in the lufty ftealth of nature, take
More compofition and fierce quality,
Than doth, within a dull, ftale, 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 bafe
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I profper:-
Now, gods, ftand up for baftards!

Enter GLOSTER.

Glo. Kent banish'd thus! And France in choler parted! And the king gone to-night! subscrib'd his power! Confin'd to exhibition! All this done

Upon the gad!· -Edmund! How now? what news?
Edm. So please your lordship, none.

[putting up the letter.

Glo. Why fo earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
Edm. I know no news, my lord.

Glo. What paper were you reading?
Edm. Nothing, my lord.

Glo. No? What needed then that terrible defpatch of it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath not fuch need to hide itself. Let's fee: Come, if it be nothing, I fhall not need spectacles.

Edm.

Edm. I beseech you, fir, pardon me: it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read; for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your over-looking. Glo. Give me the letter, fir.

Edm. 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.

Edm. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an effay or tafte 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 oppreffion of aged tyranny; who fways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would fleep till I waked him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, Edgar.-Humph-Confpiracy!— Sleep till I waked him,—you should enjoy half his revenue,— My fon 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 cafement 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.

Glo. It is his.

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

Glo. Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this bu finefs?

Edm, Never, my lord: But I have often heard him

maintain

maintain it to be fit, that fons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as ward to the fon, and the fon manage his revenue.

Glo. O villain, villain !-His very opinion in the letter! -Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detefted, brutish villain! worse than brutish !-Go, firrah, feek him; I'll apprehend him:-Abominable villain !—Where is he?

Edm. 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 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 fo?

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

Glo. He cannot be such a monster.
Edm. Nor is not, fure.

Glo. To his father, that fo 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 feek him, fir, presently; convey the bufinefs as I fhall find means, and acquaint you withal,

Glo. These late eclipses in the fun 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 fequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide in cities, mutinies; in countries, difcord; in pa

:

laces,

laces, treafon; and the bond crack'd between fon and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction ; there's fon against father: the king falls from bias of nature; there's father against child. We have feen the best of our time: Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us difquietly to our graves !— Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully:-And the noble and true-hearted Kent banifh'd his offence, honefty!-Strange! ftrange! [Exit. Edm. This is the excellent foppery of the world! that, when we are fick in fortune, (often the furfeit of our own behaviour,) we make guilty of our disasters, the fun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools, by heavenly compulfion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by fpherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary inAuence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish difpofition to the charge of a star! 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.—Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my baftardizing. Edgar

Enter EDGAR.

and pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: My cue is villainous melancholy, with a figh like Tom o' Bedlam.-O, these eclipses do portend these divisions ! fa, fol, la, mi.

Edg. How now, brother Edmund? What ferious contemplation are you in ?.

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

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