SCENE II.
A Hall in the Earl of Gloster's Castle.
Enter Edmund, with a letter.
Edm.
Thou, nature, art my goddess8 note
; to thy law
My services are bound: Wherefore should I
-- 31 --
Stand in the plague of custom9 note
; and permit
The curiosity of nations1 note
to deprive me2 note
,
-- 32 --
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother3 note
? 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 nature4 note, take
More composition and fierce quality,
-- 33 --
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* note!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate5 note
. I grow; I prosper:—
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
-- 34 --
Enter Gloster.
Glo.
Kent banish'd thus! And France in choler parted!
And the king gone to-night! subscrib'd his power6 note
!
Confin'd to exhibition7 note
! All this done
Upon the gad8 note
!—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.
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
-- 35 --
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 essay or taste of my virtue9 note
.
Glo. [Reads.]
This policy, and reverence of age1 note
,
makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps
our fortunes from us, till our oldness cannot relish
-- 36 --
them. I begin to find an idle and fond2 note 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
-- 37 --
brother, till you can derive from him better testimony
of his intent, you shall run a certain course;
where, if you3 note
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 honour4 note
, and to no other pretence5 note
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 have your satisfaction; and
that without any further delay than this very evening.
Glo.
He cannot be such a monster.
[Edm.6 note
Nor is not, sure.
Glo.
To his father, that so tenderly and entirely
loves him.—Heaven and earth!]—Edmund, seek
-- 38 --
him out; wind me into him7 note
, I pray you: frame
the business after your own wisdom: I would unstate
myself, to be in a due resolution8 note
.
-- 39 --
Edm.
I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the
business9 note
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
nature1 note can reason it thus and thus, yet nature
finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love
-- 40 --
cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities,
mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason;
and the bond cracked between son and father.
[This villain2 note 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!—Strange! strange!
[Exit.
Edm.
This is the excellent foppery of the world3 note
!
-- 41 --
that, when we are sick in fortune, (often the surfeit
of our own behaviour,) we make guilty of our
-- 42 --
disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if
we were villains by necessity; fools, by heavenly
compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers4 note
, 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 to the charge of
a star5 note
! 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 comes6 note
, like the catastrophe of the old
-- 43 --
comedy7 note: My cue is villainous melancholy, with
a sigh like Tom o'Bedlam.—O, these eclipses do
portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi8 note
.
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 you9 note, the effects he writes of,
-- 44 --
succeed unhappily; [as of1 note unnaturalness between
the child and the parent; death, dearth, dissolution
of ancient amities; divisions in state, menaces
and maledictions against king and nobles; needless
diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of
cohorts2 note, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.
Edg.
How long have you3 note 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 heart
of his displeasure; which at this instant so rageth
in him, that with the mischief of your person4 note
it
would scarcely allay.
Edg.
Some villain hath done me wrong.
Edm.
That's my fear5 note. [I pray you, have a continent
-- 45 --
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;* note 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.—
[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.
James Boswell [1821], The plays and poems of William Shakspeare, with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators: comprehending A Life of the Poet, and an enlarged history of the stage, by the late Edmond Malone. With a new glossarial index (J. Deighton and Sons, Cambridge) [word count] [S10201].
