Edm.
Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in ^note the plague ^note of custom, and permit
The curiosity ^note of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base? ^note
When my dimensions ^note 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? ^note
Who in the lusty stealth of nature take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale ^note, tired ^note bed,
Go to the creating ^note a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep ^{note note} and wake? Well then, ^note
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 ^note
Shall top the ^note legitimate. ^note I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

^noteEnter Gloucester.

Glou.
Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted!
And the king gone to-night! subscribed ^note his power!
Confined to exhibition! All this done ^note
Upon the gad! ^note Edmund, how now! what news? ^note

Edm.

So please your lordship, none.

Glou.

Why ^note so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?

Edm.

I know no news, my lord.

Glou.

What paper were you reading?

Edm.

Nothing, my lord.

Glou.

No? What needed ^note then that terrible ^note dispatch of it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath not such need to hide ^note itself. Let's see: come, if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.

Edm. ^note

I beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read; and ^note for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking ^note.

Glou.

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 ^note. ^note

Glou.

Let's see, let's see.

Edm.

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

Glou. [Reads ^note]

‘This policy and reverence ^note of age ^note makes the world bitter to the best ^note 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 ^note 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.’

Hum! Conspiracy!—‘Sleep ^note till I waked ^note him, you should enjoy half his revenue!’—My son Edgar! Had he a hand to write this? a heart and brain ^note to breed it in? When came this to you ^note? 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.

Glou.

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 ^note that, I would fain think it were not. ^note

Glou.

It is his. ^note

Edm.

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

Glou.

Hath ^note he never heretofore ^note sounded you in this business?

Edm.

Never, my lord: but I have heard him oft ^note maintain it to be fit, that, sons at ^note perfect ^note age, and fathers declining ^note,

the father ^note should be as ward ^note to the son, and the son manage his ^note revenue.

Glou.

O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter! Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than brutish! Go, sirrah ^note, seek him; ay, ^note apprehend him: abominable villain! Where is he?

Edm.

I do not well know, my lord ^note. If it shall please you to suspend your indignation against my brother till you can derive from him better testimony of his ^note intent, you should ^note run a certain course; where, if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your own ^note honour and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life for him that ^note he hath wrote ^note this to feel my affection to your honour and to no further ^note pretence of danger.

Glou.

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 ^note assurance have your satisfaction, and that without any further delay than this very evening.

Glou.

He cannot be such a monster— ^note

Edm.

Nor is not, sure.

Glou.

To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him. Heaven and earth! ^note Edmund, seek him out; wind me ^note into him, I pray you: frame ^note the ^note business after your own wisdom. I would unstate myself, to be in a due resolution.

Edm.

I will ^note seek him, sir, presently, convey the business as I shall find ^note means, and acquaint you withal.

Glou.

These late eclipses ^note in the sun and moon ^note portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature ^{note note} can reason it ^note thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent ^note effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord ^note; in palaces ^note, treason ^note; and the bond ^note cracked 'twixt ^note 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. ^note Find out this villain ^note, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty ^note! 'Tis strange. ^note

Edm.

This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit ^note of our own behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon and the stars ^note: as if we were villains by ^note necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves and treachers ^note, by spherical ^note 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 ^note to the charge ^note of a star ^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 ^note. Tut ^note, I should have been that ^note I am, had the maidenliest ^note star in ^note the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing ^note. Edgar—

And pat ^note he comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue ^note is villanous melancholy, with a sigh ^note like Tom o' ^note Bedlam. O, these eclipses do portend ^note these divisions! ^note fa, ^notesol, la, mi. ^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 ^note.

Edg.

Do you busy yourself about ^note that?

Edm.

I promise you ^note, the effects he writ ^note of succeed

unhappily; as of unnaturalness between the child and the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities ^note; divisions in state, menaces and maledictions against king and nobles; needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts ^note, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.

Edg.

How long have you been a sectary astronomical?

Edm.

Come, come; ^note when saw you my father last?

Edg.

Why, the ^note night gone by.

Edm.

Spake you with him?

Edg.

Ay, ^note two hours together.

Edm.

Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him by word or ^note countenance?

Edg.

None at all.

Edm.

Bethink yourself wherein you may ^note have offended him: and at my entreaty forbear his presence till ^note some little time hath qualified the heat of his displeasure, which at this instant so rageth in him that with ^note the mischief of your person ^note it would scarcely ^note 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 ye ^note, go; there's my key: if you do stir abroad, go armed.

Edg.

Armed, brother!

Edm.

Brother, ^note I advise you to the best: go armed ^note: I am no honest man if there be any good meaning towards ^note

you: I have told you what I have seen and heard; but faintly, ^note nothing like the image and horror of it: pray you, away.

Edg.
Shall I hear from you anon? ^note

Edm.
I do ^note serve you in this business. [Exit Edgar. ^note
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 ^note meet that I can fashion fit. [Exit. ^note

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