Complete Plays, The

by William Shakespeare

  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: