King Lear
I tell you all her wealth. [_To France_] For you, great king,
I would not from your love make such a stray
To match you where I hate; therefore beseech you
T’avert your liking a more worthier way
Than on a wretch whom nature is asham’d
Almost t’acknowledge hers.
FRANCE.
This is most strange,
That she, who even but now was your best object,
The argument of your praise, balm of your age,
The best, the dearest, should in this trice of time
Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle
So many folds of favour. Sure her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it, or your fore-vouch’d affection
Fall into taint; which to believe of her
Must be a faith that reason without miracle
Should never plant in me.
CORDELIA.
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,
That hath depriv’d me of your grace and favour;
But even for want of that for which I am richer,
A still soliciting eye, and such a tongue
As I am glad I have not, though not to have it
Hath lost me in your liking.
LEAR.
Better thou hadst
Not been born than not to have pleas’d me better.
FRANCE.
Is it but this?—a tardiness in nature
Which often leaves the history unspoke
That it intends to do? My lord of Burgundy,
What say you to the lady? Love’s not love
When it is mingled with regards that stands
Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dowry.
BURGUNDY.
Royal King,
Give but that portion which yourself propos’d,
And here I take Cordelia by the hand,
Duchess of Burgundy.
LEAR.
Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.
BURGUNDY.
I am sorry, then, you have so lost a father
That you must lose a husband.
CORDELIA.
Peace be with Burgundy!
Since that respects of fortunes are his love,
I shall not be his wife.
FRANCE.
Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;
Most choice forsaken; and most lov’d, despis’d!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:
Be it lawful, I take up what’s cast away.
Gods, gods! ’Tis strange that from their cold’st neglect
My love should kindle to inflam’d respect.
Thy dowerless daughter, King, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:
Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy
Can buy this unpriz’d precious maid of me.
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:
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 be gone
Without our grace, our love, our benison.
Come, noble Burgundy.
[_Flourish. Exeunt Lear, Burgundy, Cornwall, Albany, Gloucester and
Attendants._]
FRANCE.
Bid farewell to your sisters.
CORDELIA.
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 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.
REGAN.
Prescribe not us our duties.
GONERIL.
Let your study
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.
CORDELIA.
Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:
Who covers faults, at last shame derides.
Well may you prosper.
FRANCE.
Come, my fair Cordelia.
[_Exeunt France and Cordelia._]
GONERIL.
Sister, it is not little I have to say of what most nearly
appertains to us both. I think our father will hence tonight.
REGAN.
That’s most certain, and with you; next month with us.
GONERIL.
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.
REGAN.
’Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly
known himself.
GONERIL.
The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must
we look from his age to receive not alone the imperfections of
long-engrafted condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness
that infirm and choleric years bring with them.
REGAN.
Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent’s
banishment.
GONERIL.
There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and
him. Pray you let us hit together: if our father carry authority
with such disposition as he bears, this last surrender of his
will but offend us.
REGAN.
We shall further think of it.
GONERIL.
We must do something, and i’ th’ heat.
[_Exeunt._]
SCENE II. A Hall in the Earl of Gloucester’s Castle
Enter Edmund with a
letter.
EDMUND.
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
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.
GLOUCESTER.
Kent banish’d thus! and France in choler parted!
And the King gone tonight! Prescrib’d his pow’r!
Confin’d to exhibition! All this done
Upon the gad!—Edmund, how now! What news?
EDMUND.
So please your lordship, none.
[_Putting up the letter._]
GLOUCESTER.
Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
EDMUND.
I know no news, my lord.
GLOUCESTER.
What paper were you reading?
EDMUND.
Nothing, my lord.
GLOUCESTER.
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.
EDMUND.
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’er-looking.
GLOUCESTER.
Give me the letter, sir.
EDMUND.
I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as in
part I understand them, are to blame.
GLOUCESTER.
Let’s see, let’s see!
EDMUND.
I hope, for my brother’s justification, he wrote this but as an
essay, or taste of my virtue.
GLOUCESTER.
[_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.’
Hum! Conspiracy? ‘Sleep till I wake 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?
EDMUND.
It was not brought me, my lord, there’s the cunning of it. I
found it thrown in at the casement of my closet.
GLOUCESTER.
You know the character to be your brother’s?
EDMUND.
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.
GLOUCESTER.
It is his.
EDMUND.
It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the
contents.
GLOUCESTER.
Has he never before sounded you in this business?
EDMUND.
Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit
that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declined, the father
should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.
GLOUCESTER.
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?
EDMUND.
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 should 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.
GLOUCESTER.
Think you so?
EDMUND.
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.
GLOUCESTER.
He cannot be such a monster.
EDMUND.
Nor is not, sure.
GLOUCESTER.
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.
EDMUND.
I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business as I shall
find means, and acquaint you withal.
GLOUCESTER.
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, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it
carefully.—And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his
offence, honesty! ’Tis strange.
[_Exit._]
EDMUND.
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are
sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we
make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as
if we were villains on 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. Fut! I
should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the
firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
Enter Edgar.
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.
EDGAR.
How now, brother Edmund, what serious contemplation are you in?
EDMUND.
I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day,
what should follow these eclipses.
EDGAR.
Do you busy yourself with that?
EDMUND.
I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily: as of