That justly think'st, and hast most rightly said! That good effects may spring from words of love. Glou. Here's France and Burgundy, my noble lord. 191 Lear. My lord of Burgundy, We first address towards you, who with this king Hath rivall'd for our daughter: what, in the least, Most royal majesty, I crave no more than what your highness offer'd, Bur. I know no answer. Lear. Will you, with those infirmities she Cor. That you must lose a husband. France. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised! My love should kindle to inflamed respect. Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France: 260 Lear. Thou hast her, France: let her be thine; for we Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see [Flourish. Exeunt all but France, eyes 270 Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are; To your professed bosoms I commit him: I would prefer him to a better place. Reg. Prescribe not us our duties. Let your study 279 Be to content your lord, who hath received you At fortune's alms. You have obedience scanted, And well are worth the want that you have wanted. Cor. Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last shame them derides. 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. 290 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 judgement 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 longengraffed 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. Glou. 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. Glou. Let's sec, let's see. Edm. 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 Gon. There is further compliment of leave- times; keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness taking between France and him. Pray you, let's cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle and hit together: if our father carry authority with fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is of his will but offend us. 310 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.' Hum-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 Reg. We shall further think on't. SCENE II. The Earl of Gloucester's castle. Enter EDMUND, with a letter. Edm. Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy you? who brought it? law My services are bound. Wherefore should I For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon- 11 Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base? Glou Enter GLOUCester. 20 Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted! And the king gone to-night! subscribed power! his Confined to exhibition! All this done 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 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. Glou. It is his. 70 Edm. It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the contents. Glou. Hath he never heretofore 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 I ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue. Glou 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 i 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 wrote this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no further 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, 30 and by an auricular assurance have your satis 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 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. III Glou. 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 '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, Edinund; it shall lose thee nothing: do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! 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 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 bastardizing. 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 now, brother Edmund! what serious contemplation are you in? 151 Edm. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses. Edg. Do you busy yourself about 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? 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. 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. 180 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 ye, 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, 199 He flashes into one gross crime or other, tion: If he dislike it. let him to our sister, 10 That still would manage those authorities 20 Osrv. KING LEAR. SCENE IV. A hall in the same. Enter KENT, disguised. Kent. If but as well I other accents borrow, If thou canst serve where thou dost stand con- So may it come, thy master, whom thou lovest, Horns within. Enter LEAR, Knights, Lear. Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it ready. [Exit an Attendant.] How now! what art thou? 10 Kent. A man, sir. 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. Lear. 21 If thou be as poor for a subject as he is for a king, thou art poor enough. What wouldst thou? Kent. Service. Lear. Who wouldst thou serve? Kent. You. Lear. Dost thou know me, fellow? Kent. No, sir; but you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master. 30 Lear. What's that? Kent. Authority. Lear. What services canst thou do? Kent. I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message bluntly: that which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in; and the best of me is diligence. Lear. Kent. Not so young, sir, to love a woman for 39 singing, nor so old to dote on her for any thing: I have years on my back forty eight. How old art thou? Lear. Follow me: thou shalt serve me: if I You, you, sirrah, where's my daughter? Re-enter Knight. [ACT 1. How now! where's that mongrel? Lear. Why came not the slave back to me when I called him. Knight. Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner, he would not. Lear. He would not! 60 Knight. My lord, I know not what the matter is; but, to my judgement, your highness is as you were wont; there's a great abatement of not entertained with that ceremonious affection kindness appears as well in the general dependants as in the duke himself also and your daughter. Lear. Ha! sayest thou so? Knight. I beseech you, pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken; for my duty cannot be silent when I think your highness wronged. 71 Lear. Thou but rememberest me of mine own of late; which I have rather blamed as mine own conception: I have perceived a most faint neglect jealous curiosity than as a very pretence and purBut where's my fool? I have not seen him this pose of unkindness: I will look further into t two days. France, sir, the fool hath much pined away. Go you, and tell my daughter I would speak with Re-enter Oswald. O, you sir, you, come you hither, sir: who am I, 'My lady's father'! my lord's knave: Do you bandy looks with me, you differences: away, away! If you will measure They know not how their wits to wear, Their manners are so apish. Lear. When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah? Fool. I have used it, nuncle, ever since thou madest thy daughters thy mothers: for when thou gavest them the rod, and put'st down thine own breeches, [Singing] Then they for sudden joy did weep, That such a king should play bo-peep, 190 Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie: I would fain learn to lie. Lear. An you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped. Fool. I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left nothing i' the middle: here comes one o' the parings. 150 mum, Fool. Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet fool? Lear. No, lad; teach me. Fool. That lord that counsell'd thee To give away thy land, Come place him here by me, Do thou for him stand: Lear. Dost thou call me fool, boy? Fool. All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with. Kent. This is not altogether fool, my lord. Fool. No, faith, lords and great men will not let me; if I had a monopoly out, they would have part on't: and ladies too, they will not let me have all fool to myself; they'll be snatching. Give me an egg, nuncle, and I'll give thee two crowns. 171 Lear. What two crowns shall they be? Fool. Why, after I have cut the egg i' the middle, and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou clovest thy crown i' the middle, and gavest away both parts, thou borest thy ass on thy back o'er the dirt: thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown, when thou gavest thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in this, let him be whipped that first finds it so. [Singing] Fools had ne'er less wit in a year; For wise men are grown foppish, 180 He that keeps nor crust nor crum, Do hourly carp and quarrel; breaking forth 221 I had thought, by making this well known unto you, To have found a safe redress; but now grow fearful, |