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 courtesy 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 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 lustly 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,
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! (taking letter from pocket)
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:—
Now, gods, stand up for bastards! (retires to R.) Enter Gloster, L.

Gloster.
Kent banish'd thus! And France in choler parted!
And the king gone to-night! subscrib'd his power!
Confined to exhibition! All this done
Upon the gad!—Edmund! How now; what news?

Edmund.

So please your lordship, none.

Gloster.

Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?

Edmund.

I know no news, my lord.

Gloster.

What paper were you reading?

Edmund.

Nothing, my lord.

Gloster.

No! what needed then that terrible despatch of it into your pocket? Let's see.

Edmund.

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 overlooking.

Gloster.

Give me the letter, sir.

Edmund.

I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as I in part understand them, are to blame.

Gloster.

Let's see, let's see.

Edmund.

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

Gloster. (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 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?

Edmund.

It was not brought me, my lord; there's the cunning of it; I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet.

Gloster.

You know the character to be your brother's?

Edmund.

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.

Gloster.

It is his?

Edmund.

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

*Gloster.

Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business?*

*Edmund.

Never, my lord: but I have often heard him maintain it to be fit, that sons at perfect age, and fathers declined, the father should be a ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.*

Gloster.

O villain, villain! *His very opinion in the letter.* Unnatural villain!—Go, sirrah, seek him; I'll apprehend him:—abominable villain!—Where is he?

Edmund.

If your honor 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.

Gloster.

To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him.—Heaven and earth!—Edmund, seek him out; wind me into him, I pray you; frame the business after your own wisdom.

Edmund.

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

Gloster.

These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked between 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!—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!

Edmund.

This is the excellent foppery of the world! 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, and treachers, 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 licentious man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!—Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar—and pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: My cue is villainously melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o'Bedlam.—O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi.