To come between our sentence and our power,
Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,
Our potency made good, take thy reward.
Five days we do allot thee, for provision
To shield thee from diseases of the world;
And on the sixth to turn thy hated back
Upon our kingdom: if, on the tenth day following,
Thy banish’d trunk be found in our dominions,
The moment is thy death. Away! by Jupiter,
This shall not be revoked.
Kent
Fare thee well, king: sith thus thou wilt appear,
Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here.
To Cordelia
The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid,
That justly think’st, and hast most rightly said!
To Regan and Goneril
And your large speeches may your deeds approve,
That good effects may spring from words of love.
Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu;
He’ll shape his old course in a country new.
Exit
Flourish. Re-enter Gloucester, with King Of France, Burgundy, and Attendants
Gloucester
Here’s France and Burgundy, my noble lord.
King Lear
My lord of Burgundy.
We first address towards you, who with this king
Hath rivall’d for our daughter: what, in the least,
Will you require in present dower with her,
Or cease your quest of love?
Burgundy
Most royal majesty,
I crave no more than what your highness offer’d,
Nor will you tender less.
King Lear
Right noble Burgundy,
When she was dear to us, we did hold her so;
But now her price is fall’n. Sir, there she stands:
If aught within that little seeming substance,
Or all of it, with our displeasure pieced,
And nothing more, may fitly like your grace,
She’s there, and she is yours.
Burgundy
I know no answer.
King Lear
Will you, with those infirmities she owes,
Unfriended, new-adopted to our hate,
Dower’d with our curse, and stranger’d with our oath,
Take her, or leave her?
Burgundy
Pardon me, royal sir;
Election makes not up on such conditions.
King Lear
Then leave her, sir; for, by the power that made me,
I tell you all her wealth.
To King Of France
For you, great king,
I would not from your love make such a stray,
To match you where I hate; therefore beseech you
To avert your liking a more worthier way
Than on a wretch whom nature is ashamed
Almost to acknowledge hers.
King Of France
This is most strange,
That she, that even but now was your best object,
The argument of your praise, balm of your age,
Most best, most dearest, should in this trice of time
Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle
So many folds of favour. Sure, her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree,
That monsters it, or your fore-vouch’d affection
Fall’n into taint: which to believe of her,
Must be a faith that reason without miracle
Could never plant in me.
Cordelia
I yet beseech your majesty,—
If for I want that glib and oily art,
To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend,
I’ll do’t before I speak,— that you make known
It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
No unchaste action, or dishonour’d step,
That hath deprived me of your grace and favour;
But even for want of that for which I am richer,
A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue
As I am glad I have not, though not to have it
Hath lost me in your liking.
King Lear
Better thou
Hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better.
King Of France
Is it but this,— a tardiness in nature
Which often leaves the history unspoke
That it intends to do? My lord of Burgundy,
What say you to the lady? Love’s not love
When it is mingled with regards that stand
Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dowry.
Burgundy
Royal Lear,
Give but that portion which yourself proposed,
And here I take Cordelia by the hand,
Duchess of Burgundy.
King Lear
Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.
Burgundy
I am sorry, then, you have so lost a father
That you must lose a husband.
Cordelia
Peace be with Burgundy!
Since that respects of fortune are his love,
I shall not be his wife.
King Of 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! ’tis strange that from their cold’st neglect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:
Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy
Can buy this unprized precious maid of me.
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:
Thou losest here, a better where to find.
King 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.
Flourish. Exeunt all but King Of France, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia
King Of France
Bid farewell to your sisters.
Cordelia
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:
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 duties.
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 plaited cunning hides:
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.
Well may you prosper!
King Of France
Come, my fair Cordelia.
Exeunt King Of France and Cordelia
Goneril
Sister, it is not a little I have to say of what most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father will hence to-night.
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 not been little: he always loved our sister most; and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off appea
rs 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 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.
Regan
Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent’s banishment.
Goneril
There is further compliment of leavetaking 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.
Regan
We shall further think on’t.
Goneril
We must do something, and i’ the heat.
Exeunt
SCENE II. THE EARL OF GLOUCESTER’S CASTLE.
Enter Edmund, with 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 moon-shines
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, 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 Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,— legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
Enter Gloucester
Gloucester
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?
Edmund
So please your lordship, none.
Putting up the letter
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 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.
Edmund
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.
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 to blame.
Gloucester
Let’s see, let’s see.
Edmund
I hope, for my brother’s justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.
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 half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, Edgar.’
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?
Edmund
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?
Edmund
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.
Edmund
It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the contents.
Gloucester
Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business?
Edmund
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.
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 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.
Gloucester
Think you so?
Edmund
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 —
Edmund
Nor is not, sure.
Gloucester
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.
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 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
Edmund
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,— often the surfeit of our own behavior,— 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 whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to 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. 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 old comedy: my cue is villanous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o’ Bedlam. O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.
Edgar
How now, brother Edmund! what serious contemplation are you in?
Edmund
I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses.
Edgar
Do you busy yourself about that?
Edmund
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.
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 no displeasure in him by word or countenance?
Edgar
None at all.
Edmund
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.
Edgar
Some villain hath done me wrong.
Edmund
That’s my fear. I pray you, have a continent forbearance till the spied 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!
Edmund
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.
Edgar
Shall I hear from you anon?
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 practises ride easy! I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
Complete Plays, The Page 99