Lear. Nothing!

Cor. Nothing.

90

Lear. Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.

Cor. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond; nor more nor less.

Lear. How, how, Cordelia! mend your speech a little,

Lest it may mar your fortunes.
tupes Good my lord,
Cor
You have begot me, bred me, loved me: I
Return those duties back as are right fit,
Obey you, love you, and most honour you
Why have my sisters husbands, if they say
They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall

carry

доо

Half my love with him, half my care and duty:
Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters,
To love my father all.

Lear. Cor.

But goes thy heart with this? Ay, good my lord. So young, and so untender? Cor. So young, my lord, and true. Lear. Let it be so; thy truth, then, be thy

Lear.

dower:

For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;
By all the operation of the orbs

From whom we do exist, and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me

IIO

Hold thee, from this, for ever. (The barbarous

Scythian,

Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.
Kent.

120

Good my liege,

Lear. Peace, Kent! Come not between the dragon and his wrath. I loved her most, and thought to set my rest On her kind nursery. Hence, and avoid my sight! So be my grave my peace, as here I give

Her father's heart from her! Call France; who stirs?

Call Burgundy. Cornwall and Albany, 129 With my two daughters' dowers digest this third: Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.

I do invest you jointly with my power, Pre-eminence, and all the large effects

That troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly With reservation of an hundred knights,

course,

By you to be sustain'd, shall our abode

140

Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain
The name, and all the additions to a king;
The sway, revenue, execution of the rest,
Beloved sons, be yours: which to confirm,
This coronet part betwixt you. [Giving the crown.
Kent.
Royal Lear,
Whom I have ever honour'd as my king,
Loved as my father, as my master follow'd,
As my great patron thought on in my prayers,-
Lear. The bow is bent and drawn, make from
the shaft.

Kent. Let it fall rather, though the fork invade The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly, When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man? Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak, When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound.

150 When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom; And, in thy best consideration, check This hideous rashness: answer my life ment,

| my judge Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least; Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound Reverbs no hollowness.

Lear. Kent, on thy life, no more. Kent. My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it, Thy safety being the motive.

Lear. Out of my sight! Kent. See better, Lear; and let me still remain The true blank of thine eye. Lear. Now, by Apollo,Kent.

To come between our sentence and our power,
Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,
Our potency made good, take thy reward.
Five days we do allot thee, for provision
To shield thee from diseases of the world;
And on the sixth to turn thy hated back
Upon our kingdom: if, on the tenth day following,
Thy banish'd trunk be found in our dominions,
The moment is thy death. Away! by Jupiter,
This shall not be revoked.

Kent. Fare thee well, king: sith thus thou wilt

appear.

Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here. [To Cordelia] The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid,

That justly think'st, and hast most rightly said!
[To Regan and Goneril] And your large speeches
may your deeds approve,

That good effects may spring from words of love.
Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu;
He'll shape his old course in a country new. [Exit.
Flourish. Re-enter GLOUCESTER, with FRANCE,
BURGUNDY, and Attendants.

Glou. Here's France and Burgundy, my noble lord. 191

Lear. My lord of Burgundy,

We first address towards you, who with this king

Hath rivall'd for our daughter: what, in the least,
Will you require in present dower with her,
Or cease your quest of love?

Bur.

Most royal majesty, I crave no more than what your highness offer'd, Nor will you tender less. Lear. Right noble Burgundy, When she was dear to us, we did hold her so; But now her price is fall'n. Sir, there she stands: If aught within that little seeming substance, 201 Or all of it, with our displeasure pieced, And nothing more, may fitly like your grace, She's there, and she is

yours.

Bur.
I know no answer.
Lear. Will you, with those infirmities she

Give but that portion which yourself proposed, And here I take Cordelia by the hand, Duchess of Burgundy.

Lear. Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm. Bur. I am sorry, then, you have so lost a father

That you must lose a husband.

Cor.

Peace be with Burgundy! 250 Since that respects of fortune are his love, I shall not be his wife.

France. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;

Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:
Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.
Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st
neglect

My love should kindle to inflamed respect.
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my
chance,

Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France: 260
Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy
Can buy this unprized precious maid of me.
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:
Thou losest here, a better where to find.

Lear. Thou hast her, France: let her be thine;' for we

Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see
That face of hers again. Therefore be gone
Without our grace, our love, our benison.
Come, noble Burgundy.

[Flourish. Exeunt all but France,
Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia.
France. Bid farewell to your sisters.
Cor. The jewels of our father, with wash'd

eyes

270

Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are; And like a sister am most loath to call

Your faults as they are named. Use well our

what most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father will hence to-night.

Reg. That's most certain, and with you; next month with us. 290 Gon. You see how full of changes his age is; the observation we have made of it hath not been little he always loved our sister most; and with what poor judgement he hath now cast her off appears too grossly.

Reg. 'Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.

Gon. The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look to receive from his age, not alone the imperfections of longengraffed condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.

Reg. Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent's banishment. Gon. There is further compliment of leavetaking between France and him. Pray you, let's hit together: if our father carry authority with such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us. 310

Reg. We shall further think on't.
Con. We must do something, and i' the heat.
[Exeunt.
SCENE II. The Earl of Gloucester's castle.

Enter EDMUND, with a letter.

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 curiosity of nations to deprive me,

For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines

11

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 lusty 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,
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
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Enter GLOUCESTER.

Glou. Kent banish'd thus! and France choler parted!

20

in

And the king gone to-night! subscribed his power!

Confined to exhibition! All this done
Upon the gad! Edmund, how now! what news?
Edm. So please your lordship, none.
[Putting up the letter.
Glou. Why 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, 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'erread; and for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking. 40

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.

Glou. 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. Glou. [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.' Hum-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. 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 that, I would fain think it were not. Glou.

It is his.

70

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

Glou. Hath he never heretofore 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 ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.

Glou. 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 shall 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 wrote this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no further pretence of danger.

Glou. Think you so?

Glou. 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. 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.

Glou These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord, in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt 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! 'Tis strange.

[Exit

Edm 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 whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! 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 comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villanous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam. O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.

Edg. How now, brother Edmund! what serious contemplation are you in?

151

Edm. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses.

Edg. Do you busy yourself about that? Edm. I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily; 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 cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.

Edg. How long have you been a sectary astronomical?

Come, come; when saw you my father

Why, the night gone by. Edm. Spake you with him?

Edg. Ay, two hours together.

170

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 heat of his displeasure; which at this instant so rageth in him, that with the mischief of your person it would scarcely allay.

180

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, 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: 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.

If

199

SCENE III. The Duke of Albany's palace. Enter GONERIL, and OSWALD, her steward. Gon. Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool?

Ostv. Yes, madam.

Gon. By day and night he wrongs me; every hour

He flashes into one gross crime or other,
That sets us all at odds: I'll not endure it:
His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us
On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,
I will not speak with him; say I am sick:
you come slack of former services,
You shall do well; the fault of it I'll answer.
Osw. He's coming, madam; I hear him.
[Horns within.
Gon. Put on what weary negligence you please,
You and your fellows; I'ld have it come to ques-
tion:

If he dislike it, let him to our sister,
Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one,
Not to be over-ruled.
Idle old man,

ΙΟ

That still would manage those authorities
That he hath given away! Now, by my life,
Old fools are babes again; and must be used
With checks as flatteries,-when they are seen
abused.

20

Remember what I tell you.
Osz.
Well, madam.
Gon. And let his knights have colder looks
among you;

SCENE IV. A hall in the same.

Enter KENT, disguised.

Kent. If but as well I other accents borrow, That can my speech defuse, my good intent May carry through itself to that full issue

For which I razed my likeness. Now, banish'd Kent,

If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn'd,

So may it come, thy master, whom thou lovest,
Shall find thee full of labours.

Horns within. Enter LEAR, Knights,
and Attendants.

Lear. Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it ready. [Exit an Attendant.] How now! what art thou? 10

Knight. My lord, I know not what the matter is; but, to my judgement, your highness is not entertained with that ceremonious affection as you were wont; there's a great abatement of kindness appears as well in the general dependants as in the duke himself also and your daughter.

Lear. Ha! sayest thou so?

Knight. I beseech you, pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken; for my duty cannot be silent when I think your highness wronged.

71

Lear. Thou but rememberest me of mine own conception: I have perceived a most faint neglect of late; which I have rather blamed as mine own jealous curiosity than as a very pretence and purpose of unkindness: I will look further into 't. But where's my fool? I have not seen him this two days.

Knight. Since my young lady's going into France, sir, the fool hath much pined away.

80

Lear. No more of that; I have noted it well. Go you, and tell my daughter I would speak with her. [Exit an Attendant.] Go you, call hither my fool. [Exit an Attendant.

Lear. My lady's father'! my lord's knave: you whoreson dog! you slave! you cur!

Osw. I am none of these, my lord; I beseech your pardon.

Kent. No, sir; but you have that in countenance which I would fain call master. 30 Lear. What's that?

91

Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal? [Striking him. Osw. I'll not be struck, my lord. Kent. Nor tripped neither, you base foot-ball player. [Tripping up his heels. Lear. I thank thee, fellow; thou servest me, and I'll love thee.

Kent. Come, sir, arise, away! I'll teach you differences: away, away! If you will measure your lubber's length again, tarry: but away! go to; have you wisdom? so. [Pushes Oswald out. Lear. Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee: there's earnest of thy service. [Giving Kent money.