Gow. In Antioch, and his daughter, you have heard Of monstrous lust the due and just reward: A figure of truth, of faith, of loyalty: That him and his they in his palace burn. i.e. The king of Antioch. Enter KENT, GLOSTER, and Edmund. Kent. I thought the king had more affected the duke of Albany, than Cornwall. Glo. It did always seem so to us; but now, in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most; for equalities are so weigh'd that curiosity1 in neither can make choice of either's moiety.2 Kent. Is this your son, my lord? Glo. His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge; I ave so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to it. Kent. I cannot conceive you. Glo. Sir, this young fellow's mother could: whereupon she grew round-wombed: and had, indeed, sir, a son for her cradle, ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault? Kent. I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper. Glo. But I have, sir, a son, by order of law, some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account: though this knave came somewhat saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair: there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged.-Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund ? Edm. No, my lord. vided, Glo. I shall, my lege. We have this hour a constant will to publish ters, (Since now we will divest us, both of rule, Sir, I Glo. My lord of Kent: remember him hereafter No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor: as my honorable friend. Edm. My services to your lordship. As much as child e'er lov'd, or father found. Kent. I must love you, and sue to know you Beyond all manner of so much I love you. [Trumpets sound within. Enter LEAR, CORNWALL, ALBANY, GONERIL, REGAN, CORDELIA, and Attendants. Lear. Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, loster. Most scrupulous nicety. 2 Part or division. Aside. Lear. Of all these bounds, even from this line to this, With shadowy forests and with champains rich'd, And prize me at her worth. In my true heart Which the most precious square of sense possesses; Then poor Cordelia! [Aside. And yet not so; since, I am sure, my love's Lear. To thee, and thine, hereditary ever, Lear. Nothing? Cor. Nothing. Lear. Nothing can come of nothing: speak again. Cor. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond; nor more nor less. Lear. How, how, Cordelia? mend your speech a little, Lest it may mar your fortunes. Good my lord, Lear. But goes this with thy heart? Ay, good my lord. Lear. So young, and so untender! Cor. So young, my lord, and true. To come betwixt our sentence and our power; Lear. Let it be so,-Thy truth then be thy dower: Upon our kingdom: if, on the tenth day following. For, by the sacred radiance of the sun; The mysteries of Hecate, and the night; From whom we do exist, and cease to be; Scythian, The barbarous Or he that makes his generation? messes Lear. Peace, Kent! Good my liege,— Coine not between the dragon and his wrath: Call Burgundy.-Cornwall, and Albany, That troop with majesty.-Ourself, by monthly course, With reservation of an hundred knights, The sway. Kent. Revenue, execution of the rest, the shaft. • Comprehension. ■ Made happy. Kindred. From this time. ailis children. Thy banish'd trunk be found in our dominions, The moment is thy death: Away! By Jupiter, This shall not be revok'd. Kent. Fare thee well, king: since thus thou wilt appear, Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here.- Glo. Here's France and Burgundy, my noble lord. We first address towards you, who with this king Most royal majesty, • Value. Pardon me, royal sir; such conditions. The mark to shoot at. Lear. Then leave her, sir; for, by the power that made me, I tell you all her wealth.-For you, great king, France. This is most strange! That she, that even but now was your best object, That monsters it, or your fore-vouch'd affection Cor. That I am glad I have not, though not to have it, Hath lost me in your liking. Lear. Better thou being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most lov'd, despis'd! My love should kindle to inflamed respect.— Lear. Thou hast her, France: let her be thine; for we Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see [Flourish. Exeunt LEAR, BURGUNDY, CORNWALL, 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: I would preter him to a better place. So farewell to you both. Cor. Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides; Who cover faults, at last shame them dendes. Come, my fair Cordelia. [Exeunt FRANCE and CORDELIA. Gon. Sister, it is not a little I have to say, o' 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. Gon. You see how full of changes his age is: the observation we have made of it hath not been little: he always lov'd our sister most; and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off appears tho 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 frota his age, not alone the imperfections of longgrafted condition, but therewithal, the unruly way• wardness 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. Gon. There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and him. Pray you, let us bit 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 of it. [Exeunt. SCENE II-A Hall in the Earl of Gloster's Enter EDMUND, with a Letter. Edm. Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law Go to the creating a whole tribe of tops, Glo. Why so earnestly seek you to put up tai letter? Edm. I know no news, my lord. 12 Glo. No? What needed then that terrible des spatch of it into your pocket? the quality one! hath not such need to hide itself. Let's see: Auto if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles, Edm. I beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a le from my brother, that I have not all o'er read: '1 so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for FOL" over-looking. Glo. Give me the letter, sir. Edm. I shall offend, either to detain or give it The contents, as in part I understand them, are ta blame. Qualities of mind. • Yielded, surrendered. The nicety of civil institutan. Allowance. 1 STAKLY Gio. Let's see, let's see. Edm. I hope, for my brother's justification, he Wrote this but as an essay3 or taste of my virtue. ule. [Reads. This policy, and reverence of age,' makes the worlil bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fatunes 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 with power, but as it is suffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep fill I woked him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, Edgar.- Humph--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. Glo. You know the character to be your brother's? Elm. 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. this business? Edm. Never, my lord: But I have often heard him 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!-Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than brutish!-Go, sirrah, seek him; I'll apprehend him:-Abominable villain!-Where is the? Edm. I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please you to suspend your indignation against iny 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 honor, 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 honor, and to no other pretence of danger. Glo. Think you so! Elm. If your honor judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us conier of this, and by an auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and that without any further delay than this very evening. Gl. He cannot be such a monster. Gl. 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. 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, riendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; And the bond cracked between 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 fisquietly to our graves!--Find out this villain, Edmund, it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully: -And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! s offence, honesty!-Strange! strange! Erit. Edm. This is the excellent toppery 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 pherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary in• Whereas, • Trial. • Manage. • Weak and foolish. • Following. • Traitors. fluence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: An admirable evasion of whoremas ter man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mothe under the dragon's tail; and my nativity was un der 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 ol comedy: My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o'Bedlam.-O. these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.9 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. Elg. Do you busy yourself with 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? Edm. Come, come: when saw you my father last! Edg. Why, the night gone by. 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. Edg. Some villain hath done me wrong. tinent forbearance, till the speed of his rage goes Edm. That's my fear. I pray you, have a conslower; 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 iny 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, Whose nature is so far from doing harms, My practices ride easy!-I see the business.— That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit: All with me's meet, that I can fashion fit. [Exit. SCENE III-A Room in the Duke of Albany's Palace. Enter GONERIL and Steward. Gon. Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool? Stew. Ay, madam. Gon. By day and night! he wrongs me; every hour. He flashes into one gross crime or other, |