GONERIL You see how full of changes his age is. The
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observation we have made of it hath QnotQ 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.
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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 FtheF unruly waywardness that infirm
and choleric years bring with them.
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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 FyouF let us hit
together. If our father carry authority with such
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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’the heat.
Exeunt.
1.2 Enter [EDMUND, the] Bastard [, holding 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
5
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?FBase, base?F
10
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 QofQ a whole tribe of fops
Got ’tween a sleep and wake. Well, then,
15
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate. FFine word, ‘legitimate’!F
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
20
Shall top the legitimate. I grow, I prosper:
Now gods, stand up for bastards!
Enter GLOUCESTER.
GLOUCESTER
Kent banished thus? and France in choler parted?
And the King gone tonight? Prescribed his power,
Confined to exhibition? All this done
25
Upon the gad? – Edmund, how now, what news?
EDMUND [Pockets the letter.] So please your lordship, none.
GLOUCESTER Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
EDMUND I know no news, my lord.
30
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
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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; FandF for
so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your
o’er-looking.
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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 too blame.
GLOUCESTER Let’s see, let’s see.
EDMUND I hope, for my brother’s justification, he
45
wrote this but as an essay, or taste of my virtue.
GLOUCESTER [FReadsF.] This policy, Fand reverenceF 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
50
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
55
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
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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
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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
70
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.
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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
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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
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pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my
life for him, FthatF 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
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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.
QEDMUND Nor is not, sure.
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GLOUCESTER To his father, that so tenderly and
entirely loves him. Heaven and earth!Q 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.
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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 FitF thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
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scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship
falls off, brothers divide: in cit
ies, mutinies; in
countries, discord; FinF palaces, treason; FandF the
bond cracked ’twixt son and father. FThis villain of
mine comes under the prediction – there’s son against
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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. FFind out
this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing. Do it
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carefully. – And the noble and true-hearted Kent
banished, his offence honesty! F’TisF strange,
Qstrange!Q FExit.F
EDMUND This is the excellent foppery of the world, that
when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own
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behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the
moon and QtheQ 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
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influence; and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting
on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his
goatish disposition on 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
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I am rough and lecherous. QFut!Q 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
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o’Bedlam. – O, these eclipses do portend these
divisions. FFa, sol, la, mi.F
EDGAR How now, brother Edmund, what serious
contemplation are you in?
EDMUND I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read
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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, Q as of unnaturalness between the child and
the parent, death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient
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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.
EDGAR How long have you been a sectary astronomical?
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EDMUND Come, come,Q when saw you my father last?
EDGAR QWhy,Q the night gone by.
EDMUND Spake you with him?
EDGAR FAy,F two hours together.
EDMUND Parted you in good terms? Found you no
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displeasure in him, by word nor countenance?
EDGAR None at all.
EDMUND Bethink yourself wherein you may have
offended him, and at my entreaty forbear his presence
until some little time hath qualified the heat of his
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displeasure; which at this instant so rageth in him that
with the mischief of your person it would scarcely allay.
EDGAR Some villain hath done me wrong.
EDMUND That’s my fear. FI pray you have a continent
forbearance till the speed of his rage goes slower; and,
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as I say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence I
will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak. Pray ye, go:
there’s my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed.
EDGAR Armed, brother?F
EDMUND Brother, I advise you to the best, Qgo armed.Q
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I am no honest man if there be any good meaning
toward you. I have told you what I have seen and heard
– but faintly; nothing like the image and horror of it.
Pray you, away!
EDGAR Shall I hear from you anon?
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EDMUND I do serve you in this business. Exit Edgar.
A credulous father and a brother noble,
Whose nature is so far from doing harms
That he suspects none – on whose foolish honesty
My practices ride easy. I see the business.
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Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;
All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit. Exit.
1.3 Enter GONERIL and [OSWALD, her] steward.
GONERIL Did my father strike my gentleman for
chiding of his fool?
OSWALD Ay, madam.
GONERIL By day and night he wrongs me. Every hour
He flashes into one gross crime or other
5
That sets us all at odds. I’ll not endure it.
His knights grow riotous and himself upbraids us
The Arden Shakespeare Complete Works Page 276