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'erread and for so much as I 15 have perused, I find it not fit for your o'erlooking.

GLO. Give me the letter, sir.

EDм. 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.

EDм. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.

20

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 25 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 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?

30

EDM. It was not brought me, my lord; there's the cun- 35 ning 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 40 not.

GLO. It is his.

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

GLO. Has he never heretofore sounded you in this busi- 45

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.

GLO. O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter! 50 Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him; ay, 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 55 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 60 my affection to your honour and to no other pretence of danger.

GLO. Think you so?

EDм. If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance 65 have your satisfaction, and 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. 70 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.

75

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; 80

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 85 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. EDM. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune-often the surfeit of our own behaviour 90 we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, and liars, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine 95 thrusting on: an admirable evasion of man to lay his disposition to the charge of a star! Edgar

Enter EDGAR.

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.

EDG. Do you busy yourself with that?

100

105

EDM. I promise you, the effects he writ 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, and 110 I know not what.

EDG. How long have you been a sectary astronomical?

EDM. Come, come; when saw you my father last?

EDG. Why, the night gone by.

EDM. Spake you with him?

115

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 : 120 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.

A credulous father, and a brother noble,
Whose nature is so far from doing harms

[Exit EDGAR.

That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty
My practices ride easy. I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.

[Exit.

125

130

135

140