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 curtesie 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 gen'rous, 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 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 th' legitimate. Fine word—legitimate—
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base,
Shall be th' legitimate—I grow, I prosper;
Now, Gods, stand up for bastards! To him, enter Gloster.

Glo.
Kent banish'd thus! and the king gone to-night!
Edmund, how now? what news?
What paper were you reading?

Edm.

Nothing, my lord.

Glo.

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.

Edm.

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 perus'd, I find it not fit for your o'erlooking.

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 virtue.

Glo. reads.]

This policy and reverence of ages 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; which 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 wak'd him, you should enjoy half his revenue, for ever, and live the beloved of your brother Edgar.— Hum—Conspiracy!—sleep, till I wake 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; I hope his heart is not in the contents.* ^note

Glo.

Has he never before sounded you, in this business?

Edm.

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 a 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 should 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 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—Heav'n 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; tho' the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourg'd by the frequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack'd 'twixt son and father. 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. 'Tis strange!

Edm.

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, (often the surfeits of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools, by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous, by spherical predominance; drunkards, lyars, and adulterers, by an inforc'd 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 on the charge of a star! I should have been what I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my basterdizing.* ^note

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 portend these divisions!

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. When saw you my father, last?

Edg.

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 have offended him; and, at my intreaty, forbear his presence, until 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 flower: 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 arm'd.

Edg.

Arm'd, brother!

Edm.

Brother, I advise you to the best; I am no honest man, if there be good meaning toward 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.
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.

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