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 | 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? base, base? | 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 a whole tribe of fops, | |
| | Got 'tween asleep 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: fine word,--legitimate! | |
| | 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 | |
[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 | 50 |
| | 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.' | 55 |
| | 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? | 60 |
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 | 85 |
| | 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 | 90 |
| | pretence of danger. | |
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 | 110 |
| | 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 | 115 |
| | 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 | 120 |
| | 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 | 125 |
| | 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 | 130 |
| | 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 | 135 |
| | 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-- | 140 |
| | [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. | |
EDMUND | |
I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed | 150 |
| | 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 | 155 |
| | of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what. | |
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 | 175 |
| | hear my lord speak: pray ye, go; there's my key: | |
| | if you do stir abroad, go armed. | |
EDMUND | |
I do serve you in this business. | 185 |
| | [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: | 190 |
| | All with me's meet that I can fashion fit. | |
| | [Exit] |
This edition copyright © 2000 Dana Spradley, Publisher, shakespeare.com. Originally derived from the Complete Moby Shakespeare(tm), which is now in the public domain.
'The First Web Folio Edition' is a trademark of Dana Spradley, Publisher, shakespeare.com. All rights reserved.