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When it is mingled with respects,' that stand
Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dowry.

Bur.

Royal Lear,

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! 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;
Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy

Shall 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 benizon.

Come, noble Burgundy.

[Flourish. Exeunt LEAR, BURGUndy, Cornwall, ALBANY, GLOSTER, and Attendants.

France. Bid farewell to your sisters.

Cor. The jewels of our father, with washed eyes Cordelia leaves you; I know you what you are;

1 i. e. with cautious and prudential considerations.-The folio has regards.

2 Here and where have the power of nouns.

And, like a sister, am most loath to call

Your faults, as they are named. Use well our father; To your professed1 bosoms I commit him.

But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,

I would prefer him to a better place.

So farewell to you both.

Let your study

Gon. Prescribe not us our duties. Reg. Be, to content your lord; who hath received you At fortune's alms. You have obedience scanted, And well are worth the want that you have wanted.2 Cor. Time shall unfold what plaited 3 cunning hides; Who cover faults, at last shame them derides. Well may you prosper!

France. Come, my fair Cordelia.

[Exeunt FRANCE and CORDELIA. Gon. Sister, it is not a little I have to say, of 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.

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 judgment he hath now cast her off, appears too grossly. Reg. 'Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.

1 We have here professed for professing. It has been elsewhere observed that Shakspeare often uses one participle for another.

2 Thus the folio. The quartos read:

"And well are worth the worth that you have wanted."

The meaning of the passage, as it now stands in the text, is, " You well deserve to want that dower, which you have lost by having failed in your obedience.

3 That is, complicated, intricate, involved, cunning. 4 The quartos read:

"Who covers faults, at last shame them derides."

The folio has:

"Who covers faults, at last with shame derides." Mason proposed to read :--

"Who covert faults, at last with shame derides." The word who referring to Time.

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 long-engrafted 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 leave-taking between France and him. 'Pray you, let us hit togeth

er.

If our father carry authority with such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us. Reg. We shall further think of it.

Gon. We must do something, and i'the heat.2

[Exeunt.

SCENE II. A Hall in the Earl of Gloster's Castle.

Enter EDMUND, with a letter.

3

Edm. Thou, nature, art my goddess; 3 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,

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For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
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,

1 i. e. temper; qualities of mind confirmed by long habit.

2 We must strike while the iron's hot.

3 Edmund calls nature his goddess, for the same reason as we call a bastard a natural son.

4 "Wherefore should I submit tamely to the plague (i. e. the evil) or Injustice of custom?"

5 The nicety of civil institutions, their strictness and scrupulosity.

To deprive is equivalent to disinherit. Holinshed speaks of the line of Henry before deprived.

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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 GLOSTER.

Glo. Kent banished thus! and France in choler

parted!

And the king gone to-night! subscribed1 his power! Confined to exhibition!

Upon the gad! 3.

news?

All this done

Edmund! how now? what

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 despatch of it into your pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself. Come, if it

Let's see.

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; for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your overlooking.

Glo. Give me the letter, sir.

1 To subscribe is to yield, to surrender.

2 Exhibition is an allowance, a stipend.

3 i. e. in haste, equivalent to upon the spur. A gad was a sharp-pointed piece of steel, used as a spur to urge cattle forward; whence goaded forward. Mr. Nares suggests, that to gad and gadding, originate from being on the spur to go about.

Edm. 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 taste of my virtue.

1

Glo. [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 forever, 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?

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;

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1 “As an essay," &c. means as a trial or taste of my virtue. "To assay, or rather essay, of the French word essayer," says Baret. 2 i. e. weak and foolish.

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