King Lear — Act 1, Scene 2 · Shakespeare for Bharat

EDMUND

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy lawMy services are bound. Wherefore should IStand in the plague of custom, and permitThe curiosity of nations to deprive me,For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shinesLag 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 usWith base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, takeMore composition and fierce qualityThan 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 EdmundAs to the legitimate: fine word,--legitimate!Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,And my invention thrive, Edmund the baseShall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

GLOUCESTER

Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted!And the king gone to-night! subscribed his power!Confined to exhibition! All this doneUpon the gad! Edmund, how now! what news?

EDMUND

So please your lordship, none.

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 ofit into your pocket? the quality of nothing hathnot 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 letterfrom my brother, that I have not all o'er-read;and for so much as I have perused, I find it notfit for your o'er-looking.

GLOUCESTER

Give me the letter, sir.

EDMUND

I shall offend, either to detain or give it. Thecontents, 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 wrotethis but as an essay or taste of my virtue.

GLOUCESTER

[Reads] 'This policy and reverence of age makesthe world bitter to the best of our times; keepsour fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relishthem. I begin to find an idle and fond bondagein the oppression of aged tyranny; who sways, notas it hath power, but as it is suffered. Come tome, that of this I may speak more. If our fatherwould sleep till I waked him, you should half hisrevenue for ever, and live the beloved of yourbrother, EDGAR.'Hum--conspiracy!--'Sleep till I waked him,--youshould enjoy half his revenue,'--My son Edgar!Had he a hand to write this? a heart and brainto breed it in?--When came this to you? whobrought it?

EDMUND

It was not brought me, my lord; there's thecunning of it; I found it thrown in at thecasement of my closet.

GLOUCESTER

You know the character to be your brother's?

EDMUND

If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swearit were his; but, in respect of that, I wouldfain think it were not.

GLOUCESTER

It is his.

EDMUND

It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart isnot in the contents.

GLOUCESTER

Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business?

EDMUND

Never, my lord: but I have heard him oftmaintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age,and fathers declining, the father should be asward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.

GLOUCESTER

O villain, villain! His very opinion in theletter! 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 pleaseyou to suspend your indignation against mybrother till you can derive from him bettertestimony of his intent, you shall run a certaincourse; where, if you violently proceed againsthim, mistaking his purpose, it would make a greatgap in your own honour, and shake in pieces theheart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my lifefor him, that he hath wrote this to feel myaffection to your honour, and to no furtherpretence of danger.

GLOUCESTER

Think you so?

EDMUND

If your honour judge it meet, I will place youwhere you shall hear us confer of this, and by anauricular assurance have your satisfaction; andthat 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 entirelyloves him. Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek himout: wind me into him, I pray you: frame thebusiness after your own wisdom. I would unstatemyself, to be in a due resolution.

EDMUND

I will seek him, sir, presently: convey thebusiness as I shall find means and acquaint you withal.

GLOUCESTER

These late eclipses in the sun and moon portendno good to us: though the wisdom of nature canreason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itselfscourged by the sequent effects: love cools,friendship falls off, brothers divide: incities, mutinies; in countries, discord; inpalaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt sonand father. This villain of mine comes under theprediction; there's son against father: the kingfalls from bias of nature; there's father againstchild. We have seen the best of our time:machinations, hollowness, treachery, and allruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to ourgraves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shalllose thee nothing; do it carefully. And thenoble and true-hearted Kent banished! hisoffence, honesty! 'Tis strange.

EDMUND

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeitof our own behavior,--we make guilty of ourdisasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: asif we were villains by necessity; fools byheavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, andtreachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience ofplanetary influence; and all that we are evil in,by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasionof whoremaster man, to lay his goatishdisposition to the charge of a star! Myfather compounded with my mother under thedragon's tail; and my nativity was under Ursamajor; so that it follows, I am rough andlecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am,had the maidenliest star in the firmamenttwinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar--

EDMUND

And pat he comes like the catastrophe of the oldcomedy: my cue is villanous melancholy, with asigh like Tom o' Bedlam. O, these eclipses doportend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.

EDGAR

How now, brother Edmund! what seriouscontemplation are you in?

EDMUND

I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I readthis other day, what should follow these eclipses.

EDGAR

Do you busy yourself about that?

EDMUND

I promise you, the effects he writes of succeedunhappily; as of unnaturalness between the childand the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions ofancient amities; divisions in state, menaces andmaledictions against king and nobles; needlessdiffidences, banishment of friends, dissipationof cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.

EDGAR

How long have you been a sectary astronomical?

EDMUND

Come, come; when saw you my father last?

EDGAR

Why, the night gone by.

EDMUND

Spake you with him?

EDGAR

Ay, two hours together.

EDMUND

Parted you in good terms? Found you nodispleasure in him by word or countenance?

EDGAR

None at all.

EDMUND

Bethink yourself wherein you may have offendedhim: and at my entreaty forbear his presencetill some little time hath qualified the heat ofhis displeasure; which at this instant so ragethin him, that with the mischief of your person itwould scarcely allay.

EDGAR

Some villain hath done me wrong.

EDMUND

That's my fear. I pray you, have a continentforbearance till the spied of his rage goesslower; and, as I say, retire with me to mylodging, from whence I will fitly bring you tohear my lord speak: pray ye, go; there's my key:if you do stir abroad, go armed.

EDGAR

Armed, brother!

EDMUND

Brother, I advise you to the best; go armed: Iam no honest man if there be any good meaningtowards you: I have told you what I have seenand heard; but faintly, nothing like the imageand horror of it: pray you, away.

EDGAR

Shall I hear from you anon?

EDMUND

I do serve you in this business.

EDMUND

A credulous father! and a brother noble,Whose nature is so far from doing harms,That he suspects none: on whose foolish honestyMy practises 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.