That might your nature, honour, and exception, And, when he's not himself, does wrong Laertes, Sir, in this audience, Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, Laer. I am satisfied in nature, Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most I have a voice and precedent of peace, To keep my name ungored. But till that time, I do receive your offer'd love like love, And will not wrong it. Ham. I embrace it freely; And will this brother's wager frankly play.- Laer. Come, one for me. Ham. I'll be your foil, Laertes; in mine ignorance Your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night, I Laer. [Aside. And yet it is almost against my conscience. Ham. Come, for the third, Laertes: you do but dally; pray you, pass with your best violence; I am afeard you make a wanton of me. Osr. Nothing neither way. [They play. [LAERTES wounds HAMLET; then, in scufling, they change rapiers, and HAMLET wounds LAFETES, King. Part them, they are incensed. Ham. Nay, come again. [The QUEEN falls. Osr. Look to the queen there, ho! Laer. Why, as a woodcock to my own springe, Osrie; I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery. Ham. How does the queen? King. She swoons to see them bleed. [Hamlet! Queen. No, no, the drink, the drink,-0 my dear The drink, the drink;-I am poison'd! Ham. O villany!-Ho! let the door be lock'd: Treachery! seek it out. [Dies. [LAERTES falls. Laer. It is here, Hamlet: Hamlet, thou art slain; No medicine in the world can do thee good; In thee there is not half an hour's life; The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, Unbated and envenom'd: the foul practice Hath turn'd itself on me; lo, here I He, Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd: I can no more; the king, the king's to blame. Ham. The point Envenom'd too!-Then, venom, to thy work. Osr, and Lords. Treason! treason! [Stabs the KING. Drink off this potion:-is the union here? Follow my mother. Laer. He is justly served; [KING dies. It is a poison temper'd by himself.- [Dies. Ham. Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee. Thou livest; report me and my cause aright Hor. Never believe it: I am more an antique Roman than a Dane: Ham. As thou 'rt a man, Give me the cup: let go, by heaven, I'll have it.O God!-Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity a while, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. [March afar off, and shot within. What warlike noise is this? The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, Hor. Not from his mouth, Had it the ability of life to thank you; He never gave commandment for their death. Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters: Fallen on the inventors' heads: all this can I Fort. Let us haste to hear it, And call the noblest to the audience. SCENE I.-A Room of State in KING LEAR's Palace. Enter KENT, GLOSTER, and EDMUND. Kent. I thought the king had more affected the duke of Albany, than Cornwall. Glo. It did always seem so to us: but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most; for equalities are so weigh'd, that curiosity in neither can make choice of either's moiety. Kent. Is not this your son, my lord? Glo. His breeding, Sir, hath been at my charge: I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it. Kent. I cannot conceive you. Glo. Sir, this young fellow's mother could: whereupon she grew round-wombed; and had, indeed, Sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault? Kent. I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper. Glo. But I have, Sir, a son by order of law, some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account: though this knave came somewhat saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair; there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged.-Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund ? [Exeunt GLOSTER and EDMUND. Lear. Meantime we shall express our darker purpose. Give me the map there.-Know that we have divided In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age; Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburden'd crawl toward death.-Our son of Cornwall, And you, our no less loving son of Albany, We have this hour a constant will to publish Our daughters' several dowers, that future strife May be prevented now. The princes, France and BurGreat rivals in our youngest daughter's love, [gundy, Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn, And here are to be answer'd.-Tell me, my daughters, (Since now we will divest us, both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state,) Which of you, shall we say, doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend Where merit doth most challenge it.-Goneril, Our eldest-born, speak first. Gon. Sir, I Do love you more than words can wield the matter; [silent. Cor. [Aside.] What shall Cordelia do? Love, and be Reg. I am made of that self metal as my sister, Which the most precious square of sense possesses; Obey you, love you, and most honour you. Why have my sisters husbands, if they say They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed, That lord, whose hand must take my plight, shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and duty: Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters, To love my father all. Lear. But goes this with thy heart? Cor. Ay, good my lord. Lear. So young, and so untender? Cor. So young, my lord, and true. Lear. Let it be so.-Thy truth, then, be thy dower: For, by the sacred radiance of the sun, The mysteries of Hecate, and the night; By all the operations of the orbs From whom we do exist, and cease to be; Propinquity and property of blood, And, as a stranger to my heart and me, Hold thee from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian, Or he that makes his generation messes To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved, As thou my sometime daughter. Kent. Good my liege, Lear. Peace, Kent! Come not between the dragon and his wrath. I loved her most, and thought to set my rest [sight! On her kind nursery.-[To CoR.] Hence, and avoid my I do invest you jointly with my power, That troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly course, By you to be sustain'd, shall our abode Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain The sway, Revenue, execution of the rest, Kent. Let it fall rather, though the fork invade When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom; This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgment, Lear. Kent, on thy life, no more. Kent. My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thine enemies; nor fear to lose it, Lear. Out of my sight! Kent. See better, Lear; and let me still remain The true blank of thine eye. Lear. Now, by Apollo,Kent. Now, by Apollo, king, Thou swear'st thy gods in vain. Lear. [Laying his hand on his sword.] O, vassal! Alb. Corn. Dear Sir, forbear. Kent. Do; Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift; [miscreant! Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat, Lear. Hear me, recreant! On thine allegiance hear me! Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow, Kent. Fare thee well, king: since thus thou wilt apFreedom lives hence, and banishment is here. [pear, [To COR.] The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid, That good effects may spring from words of love. [Erit Re-enter GLOSTER, with FRANCE, BURGUNDY, and Glo. Here's France and Burgundy, my noble lord. We first address toward you, who with this king Bur. Most royal majesty, I crave no more than hath your highness offer'd, Lear. Right noble Burgundy, When she was dear to us, we did hold her so; Bur. I know no answer. Lear. Sir, Will you, with those infirmities she owes, Dower'd with our curse, and stranger'd with our oath, Bur. Pardon me, royal Sir; Election makes not up on such conditions. Lear. Then leave her, Sir; for by the power that made me, I tell you all her wealth.-[To FRANCE.] For you, great France. This is most strange, That she, that even but now was your best object, That monsters it, or your fore-vouch'd affection Could never plant in me. Cor. I yet beseech your majesty, (If for I want that glib and oily art, To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend, I'll do't before I speak,) that you make known It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness, No unchaste action, or dishonour'd step, A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue Lear. Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm. Bur. I am sorry then, you have so lost a father, That you must lose a husband. Cor. Peace be with Burgundy! Since that respects of fortune are his love, I shall not be his wife. [poor; France. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect Thou losest here, a better where to find. Lear. Thou hast her, France: let her be thine; for we Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see That face of hers again:-therefore begone Without our grace, our love, our benison.Come, noble Burgundy. [Flourish. Exeunt LEAR, BURGUNDY, CORNWALL, ALBANY, GLOSTER, and Attendants. France. Bid farewell to your sisters. Cor. The jewels of our father, with wash'd eyes Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are; And, like a sister, am most loath to call Your faults, as they are named. Use 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. Gon. Prescribe not us our duties. Reg. Let your study Be to content your lord, who hath received you France. Come, my fair Cordelia. [Exeunt FRANCE and CORDELIA. Gon. Sister, 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 see how full of changes his age is; the observation we have made of it hath not been little: he always loved 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-engrafted condition, but therewithal, the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them. Reg. Such unconstant starts 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 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.-A Hall in the EARL OF GLOSTER'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 The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines And France in choler Enter GLOSTER. Glo. Kent banish'd thus! parted! And the king gone to-night! subscribed his power! [Putting up the letter. Glo. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter? Edm. I know no news, my lord. Glo. What paper were you reading? Glo. No? What needed then that terrible despatch 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; for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your overlooking. 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."- Humph!- 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. 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 business? Edm. Never, my lord: but I have often heard him 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. Glo. O villain, villain!-His very opinion in 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. 1 dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath writ this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no er 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 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 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!-Strange! 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 enforced 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 bastardising. Edgar Enter EDGAR. and pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy my cue is villanous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam.-O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi. Edg. How new, brother Edmund? contemplation are you in? What serious 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. Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him, by word or countenance? Edg. None at all. 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 continent 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, [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, That still would manage those authorities SCENE IV.-A Hall in the same. Enter KENT, disguised. For which I razed my likeness.-Now, banish'd Kent, Horns within. Enter LEAR, Knights, and Attendants. 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. > |