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 from his age, not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, but therewithal, the unruly waywardness 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 hit 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.

Gon. We must do something, and i' the heat. †

[Exeunt.

SCENE II-A Hall in the Earl of GLOSTER's Castle.
Enter EDMUND, with a Letter.

Edm. 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, 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 GLOSTER.

Glo. Kent banish'd thus! And France in choler parted!
And the king gone to-night! subscribed This power!
Confined to exhibition!** All this done

Upon the gad!t-Edmund! How now? what news?
Edm. So please your lordship, none.

[Putting up the letter. Glo. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter? Edm. I know no news, my lord.

Glo. What paper were you reading?
Edm. Nothing, my lord.

* Qualities of mind.
Submit to the injustice.
Surrendered.

+ Strike while the iron's hot.
The niceties.

** Allowance.

Behind. ++ Sudden.

Glo. No? What needed then that terrible despatch 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.

Edm. I beseech you, Sir, pardon me: it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read: for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your 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 to blame.

Glo. Let's see, let's see.

Edm. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an assay or taste of my virtue.

Glo. [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.-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?

Edm. 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. Glo. It is his.

Edm. It is his hand, my lord; but, I hope, his heart is not in the contents.

Glo. Hath he never heretofore sounded you in 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 he?

Edm. 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 writ this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no other pretence of danger.

Glo. Think you so ?

Edm. If your honour judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular assurance

*Weak and foolish.

+ Whereas.

* Design.

have your satisfaction; and that without any further delay than this very evening.

Glo. He cannot be such a monster.

Edm. Nor is not, sure.

Glo. 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, friendship 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 disquietly to our graves!-Find out this villain, Edmund, it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully:-And the noble and true-hearted Kent banish'd! his offence, honesty !Strange! strange! [Exit.

Edm. This is the excellent foppery 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 villians 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.-0, these eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi. §

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.

Edg. 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

* Give up rank and fortune, to be certain of the truth.

+ Manage.

+ Traitors.

Edmund sings these notes as being unnatural and offensive in music, and therefore apt for portents,

and maledictions against king and nobles; needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of courts, 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. Spake you with him?

Edg. Ay, two hours together.

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.

Edm. 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 you, go; there's my 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.-
A credulous father, and a brother noble,
Whose nature is so far from doing harms,

That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty

[Exit EDGAR.

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.

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,

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.
Stew. He's coming, madam; I hear him.
Gon. Put on what weary negligence you please,

* Temperate.

[Horns within.

You and your fellows; I'd have it come to question:
If he dislike it, let him to my sister,

Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one,
Not to be over-ruled. Idle old man,

That still would manage those authorities,
That he hath given away!-Now, by my life,
Old fools are babes again; and must be used

With checks, as * flatteries, when they are seen abused,
Remember what I have said.

Stew. Very well, madam.

Gon. And let his knights have colder looks among you
What grows of it, no matter; advise your fellows so:
I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall,
That I may speak: I'll write straight to my sister,
To hold my very course:-Prepare for dinner.

SCENE IV-A Hall in the same.

Enter 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, banish'd Kent,
If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn'd,
(So may it come!) thy master, whom thou lov'st,
Shall find thee full of labours.

[Exeunt.

Horns within.-Enter LEAR, KNIGHTS, and Attendants. Lear. Let me not stay a jot for dinner: go, get it ready. [Exit an Attendant.] 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 judgment; 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 as poor for a subject, as he is for a king, thou art 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 thou do?

Kent. I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message bluntly: that which

* (Well as).

+ Disguise.

Keep company.

I. e. (the play being written in Elizabeth's time) to be a good subject, a good Protestant.