The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  and the sisters

  FRANCE Bid farewell to your sisters.

  CORDELIA

  Ye jewels of our father, with washed 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. Love well our father.

  To your professed bosoms I commit him.

  But yet, alas, stood I within his grace

  I would prefer him to a better place.

  So farewell to you both.

  REGAN Prescribe not us our duty.

  GONERIL Let your study

  Be to content your lord, who hath received you

  At fortune’s alms. You have obedience scanted,

  And well are worth the want that you have wanted.

  CORDELIA

  Time shall unfold what pleated cunning hides,

  Who covert faults at last with shame derides.

  Well may you prosper.

  FRANCE

  Come, my fair Cordelia.

  Exeunt France and Cordelia

  GONERIL Sister, it is not little I have to say of what most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father will hence tonight.

  REGAN That’s most certain, and with you. Next month with us.

  GONERIL You see how full of changes his age is. The observation we have made of it hath 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.

  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 the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.

  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 you, let us sit together. If our father carry authority with such 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’th’ heat.

  Exeunt

  1.2 Enter Edmond the bastard

  EDMOND

  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

  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—base, base’—

  Who in the lusty stealth of nature take

  More composition and fierce quality

  Than doth within a dull, stale, tirèd bed

  Go to th’ creating a whole tribe of fops

  Got ‘tween a sleep and wake? Well then,

  Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.

  Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmond

  As to th’ legitimate. Fine word, ‘legitimate’.

  Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed

  And my invention thrive, Edmond the base

  Shall to th’ legitimate. I grow, I prosper.

  Now gods, stand up for bastards!

  Enter the Duke of Gloucester. Edmond reads a letter

  GLOUCESTER

  Kent banished thus, and France in choler parted,

  And the King gone tonight, prescribed his power,

  Confined to exhibition—all this done

  Upon the gad?—Edmond, how now? What news?

  EDMOND So please your lordship, none.

  GLOUCESTER Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?

  EDMOND I know no news, my lord. GLOUCESTER What paper were you reading?

  EDMOND 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 it be nothing I shall not need spectacles.

  EDMOND 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’erlooking. GLOUCESTER Give me the letter, sir.

  EDMOND I shall offend either to detain or give it. The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame. GLOUCESTER Let’s see, let’s see.

  EDMOND I hope for my brother’s justification he wrote this but as an assay or taste of my virtue.

  He gives Gloucester a letter

  GLOUCESTER (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.’

  Hum, conspiracy! ‘Sleep till I wake 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 you to this? Who brought it?

  EDMOND It was not brought me, my lord, there’s the cunning of it. I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet.

  GLOUCESTER You know the character to be your brother’s?

  EDMOND 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. GLOUCESTER) It is his.

  EDMOND 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 business?

  EDMOND 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.

  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?

  EDMOND 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 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 my affection to your honour, and to no other pretence of danger.

  GLOUCESTER Think you so?

  EDMOND 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.

  GLOUCESTER He cannot be such a monster. Edmond, 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.

  EDMOND 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 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, Edmond; it shall lose thee nothing. Do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished
, his offence honesty! ’Tis strange.

  Exit

  EDMOND This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeits of our own behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and 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 influence, and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master 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 I am rough and lecherous. Fut! 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 o’ Bedlam.

  ⌈He reads a book⌉

  —O, these eclipses do portend these divisions. Fa, so, la, mi.

  EDGAR How now, brother Edmond, what serious contemplation are you in?

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

  EDGAR Do you busy yourself with that?

  EDMOND I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily. When saw you my father last?

  EDGAR The night gone by.

  EDMOND Spake you with him?

  EDGAR Ay, two hours together.

  EDMOND Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him by word nor countenance?

  EDGAR None at all.

  EDMOND 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 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.

  EDMOND 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 ye, go. There’s my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed.

  EDGAR Armed, brother?

  EDMOND Brother, I advise you to the best. 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?

  EDMOND 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.

  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

  That sets us all at odds. I’ll not endure it.

  His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us

  On every trifle. When he returns from hunting

  I will not speak with him. Say I am sick.

  If you come slack of former services

  You shall do well; the fault of it I’ll answer.

  ⌈Horns within⌉

  OSWALD He’s coming, madam. I hear him.

  GONERIL

  Put on what weary negligence you please,

  You and your fellows. I’d have it come to question.

  If he distaste it, let him to my sister,

  Whose mind and mine I know in that are one.

  Remember what I have said.

  OSWALD Well, madam.

  GONERI,

  And let his knights have colder looks among you.

  What grows of it, no matter. Advise your fellows so.

  I’ll write straight to my sister to hold my course.

  Prepare for dinner.

  Exeunt severally

  1.4 Enter the Earl of Kent, disguised

  KENT

  If but as well I other accents borrow

  That can my speech diffuse, my good intent

  May carry through itself to that full issue

  For which I razed my likeness. Now, banished Kent,

  If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemned,

  So may it come thy master, whom thou lov’st,

  Shall find thee full of labours.

  Horns within. Enter King Lear and attendants from hunting

  LEAR Let me not stay a jot for dinner. Go get it ready.

  ⌈Exit one⌉

  (To Kent) How now, what art thou?

  KENT A man, sir.

  LEAR What dost thou profess? What wouldst thou with us?

  KENT I do profess to be no less than I seem, to serve him truly that will put me in trust, to love him that is honest, to converse with him that is wise and says little, to fear judgement, to fight when I cannot choose, and to eat no fish.

  LEAR What art thou?

  KENT A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the King.

  LEAR If thou be‘st as poor for a subject as he’s for a king, thou’rt poor enough. What wouldst thou?

  KENT Service.

  LEAR Who wouldst thou serve?

  KENT You.

  LEAR Dost thou know me, fellow?

  KENT No, sir, but you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master.

  LEAR What’s that?

  KENT Authority.

  LEAR What services canst do?

  KENT I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message bluntly. That which ordinary men are fit for I am qualified in; and the best of me is diligence.

  LEAR How old art thou?

  KENT Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor so old to dote on her for anything. I have years on my back forty-eight.

  LEAR Follow me. Thou shalt serve me, if I like thee no worse after dinner. I will not part from thee yet. Dinner, ho, dinner! Where’s my knave, my fool? Go you and call my fool hither. ⌈Exit one⌉

  Enter Oswald the steward

  You, you, sirrah, where’s my daughter?

  OSWALD So please you—

  Exit

  LEAR What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll back.

  Exit a knight

  Where’s my fool? Ho, I think the world’s asleep.

  Enter a Knight

  How now? Where’s that mongrel?

  KNIGHT He says, my lord, your daughter is not well.

  LEAR Why came not the slave back to me when I called him?

  KNIGHT Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner he would not.

  LEAR A would not?

  KNIGHT My lord, I know not what the matter is, but to my judgement your highness is not entertained with that ceremonious affection as you were wont. There’s a great abatement of kindness appears as well in the general dependants as in the Duke himself also, and your daughter.

  LEAR Ha, sayst thou so?

  KNIGHT I beseech you pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken, for my duty cannot be silent when I think your highness wronged.

  LEAR Thou but rememberest me of mine own conception. I have perceived a most faint neglect of late, which I have rather blamed as mine own jealous curiosity than as a very pretence and purpose of unkindness. I will look further into’t. But where’s my fool? I have not seen him these two days.

  KNIGHT Since my young lady’s going into France, sir, the fool hath much pined away.

  LEAR No more of that, I have noted it well. Go you and tell my daughter I would speak with her. ⌈Exit one⌉ Go you, call hither my fool. ⌈Exit one⌉<
br />
  Enter Oswald the steward ⌈crossing the stage⌉

  O you, sir, you, come you hither, sir, who am I, sir? OSWALD My lady’s father.

  LEAR My lady’s father? My lord’s knave, you whoreson dog, you slave, you cur!

  OSWALD I am none of these, my lord, I beseech your pardon.

  LEAR Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?

  ⌈Lear strikes him⌉

  OSWALD I’ll not be strucken, my lord.

  KENT ⌈tripping him⌉ Nor tripped neither, you base football player.

  LEAR (to Kent) I thank thee, fellow. Thou serv’st me, and

  I’ll love thee.

  KENT (to Oswald) Come, sir, arise, away. I’ll teach you differences. Away, away. If you will measure your lubber’s length again, tarry; but away, go to. Have you wisdom? So. Exit Oswald

  LEAR Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee.

  Enter Lear’s Fool

  There’s earnest of thy service.

  He gives Kent money

  FOOL Let me hire him, too. (To Kent) Here’s my coxcomb.

  LEAR How now, my pretty knave, how dost thou?

  FOOL (to Kent) Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.

  LEAR Why, my boy?

  FOOL Why? For taking one’s part that’s out of favour. (To Kent) Nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou’lt catch cold shortly. There, take my coxcomb. Why, this fellow has banished two on’s daughters and did the third a blessing against his will. If thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb. (To Lear) How now, nuncle? Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters.

  LEAR Why, my boy?

  FOOL If I gave them all my living I’d keep my coxcombs myself. There’s mine; beg another off thy daughters.

  LEAR Take heed, sirrah—the whip.

  FOOL Truth’s a dog must to kennel. He must be whipped out when the Lady Brach may stand by th’ fire and stink.

  LEAR A pestilent gall to me!

  FOOL ⌈to Kent⌉ Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech.

  LEAR Do.

  FOOL Mark it, nuncle:Have more than thou showest,

  Speak less than thou knowest,