SCENE II.
A castle belonging to the earl of Gloster.
Enter Edmund, with a letter.
Edm.
5 note
Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound: Wherefore should I
6 note
Stand in the plague of custom; and permit
-- 370 --
7 note
The curiosity of nations 8 note
to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
9 noteLag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
-- 371 --
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?
1 noteWho, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality,
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating of 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
2 note
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:—
-- 372 --
3 noteNow, gods, stand up for bastards!
Enter Gloster.
Glo.
Kent banish'd thus! And France in choler parted!
And the king gone to-night! 4 note
subscrib'd his power!
Confin'd to 5 noteexhibition! 6 note
All this done
Upon the gad!—Edmund! How now? what news?
-- 373 --
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 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 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 7 note
taste of my virtue.
Glo. reads.]
8 note
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 9 noteidle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged
tyranny; who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is
-- 374 --
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 wak'd 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 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
-- 375 --
writ this to feel my affection to your honour, and to
no other 1 note
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.
2 noteNor is not, sure.
Glo.
To his father, that so tenderly and entirely
loves him.—Heaven and earth!—Edmund, seek
him out; 3 note
wind me into him, I pray you: frame
the business after your own wisdom: 4 note
I would unstate
myself, to be in a due resolution.
-- 376 --
Edm.
I will seek him, sir, presently; 5 note
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 6 notethe wisdom of nature
can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
scourg'd by the sequent 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. 7 note*This villain
of mine comes under the prediction; there's son
against father: the king falls from bias of nature;
-- 377 --
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.
8 note
This is the excellent foppery of the world!
-- 378 --
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
villains by necessity; fools, by heavenly compulsion;
knaves, thieves, 9 note
and treachers, by spherical predominance;
-- 379 --
drunkards, lyars, and adulterers, by an inforc'd
obedience of planetary influence; and all that
we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: 1 noteAn admirable
evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star!2 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 3 note
pat 4 note
he comes, like the catastrophe of the
-- 380 --
old comedy: My cue is villainous melancholy,
with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam.—O, these eclipses
do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, me—
Edg.
How now, brother Edmund? What serious
contemplation are you in?
Edm.
I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I
-- 381 --
read this other day, what should follow these
eclipses.
Edg.
Do you busy yourself with that?
Edm.
5 noteI promise you, the effects he writes of,
succeed unhappily; 6 note*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 cohorts7 note, nuptial
breaches, and I know not what.
Edg.
8 noteHow 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,
until some little time hath qualified the heat
of his displeasure; which at this instant so rageth in
-- 382 --
him, 1 note
that with the mischief of your person it
would scarcely allay.
Edg.
Some villain hath done me wrong.
Edm.
That's my fear.2 note* 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 arm'd.
Edg.
Arm'd, brother?*
Edm.
Brother, I advise you to the best; go arm'd;
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.
-- 383 --
Samuel Johnson [1778], The plays of William Shakspeare. In ten volumes. With the corrections and illustrations of various commentators; to which are added notes by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. The second edition, Revised and Augmented (Printed for C. Bathurst [and] W. Strahan [etc.], London) [word count] [S10901].
