Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her? Bur. Royal Lear, Give but that portion which yourself proposed, Duchess of Burgundy. 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. 235 240 Peace be with Burgundy! Since that respects of fortune are his love, I shall not be his wife. France. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon: Be it lawful I take up what's cast away. Gods, gods! 't is strange that from their cold'st neglect My love should kindle to inflamed respect. 245 Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance, 250 Thou losest here, a better where to find. 255 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. 260 [Flourish. Exeunt all but France, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia 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: 265 To your professed bosoms I commit him: But yet, alas, stood I within his grace, I would prefer him to a better place. Reg. Prescribe not us our duties. Gon. Let your study 270 275 [Exeunt France and Cordelia Come, my fair Cordelia. Gon. Sister, it is not a little I have to say of what most nearly appertains to us both. hence to-night. I think our father will Reg. That's most certain, and with you; next month with us. 281 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. 285 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-engraffed condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them. 292 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's 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 on 't. Gon. We must do something, and i' the heat. SCENE II. The Earl of Gloucester's castle Enter EDMUND, with a letter Edm. Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound. Wherefore should I 299 [Exeunt Stand in the plague of custom, and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines My mind as generous, and my shape as true, Enter GLOUCESTER Glou. Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted! And the king gone to-night! subscribed his power! Confined to exhibition! All this done Upon the gad! Edmund, how now! what news? 20 [Putting up the letter Glou. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter? Edm. I know no news, my lord. Glou. What paper were you reading? Edm. Nothing, my lord. 25 Glou. 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. 30 Edm. 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 perused, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking. Glou. Give me the letter, sir. 34 Edm. I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame. Glou. 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. 39 Glou. [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.' 48 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? 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. 55 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. 60 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? 64 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. 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? 72 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. 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? 81 Eam. 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. Glou. He cannot be such a monster- 86 Glou. To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him. Heaven and earth! me into him, I pray you: own wisdom. resolution. Edmund, seek him out; wind frame the business after your I would unstate myself, to be in a due Edm. I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal. 95 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, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty! 'Tis strange. [Exit 109 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 man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! Edgar 119 |