Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base ? To him, Enter Glo'ster. : Glo. Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted! And the King gone to night! subscrib'd his pow'r! Confin'd to exhibition! all is gone Upon the gad! - Edmund, how now? what news? Edm. So please your lordship, none. [Putting up the letter. Glo. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter? Edm. Nothing, my lord. Glo. No! what needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath not fuch need to hide it self. Let's fee; 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 overlooking. : Glo. Give me the letter, Sir. contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame. Glo Glo. Let's fee, let's fee. Edm. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay, or taste of my virtue. Glo. [reads.] This policy and reverence of ages 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 oppreffion of aged tyranny; which fways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would fleep, till I wak'd him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother Edgar. Hum - Conspiracy! - fleep, 'till I wake him - you should enjoy half his revenue - My fon 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; I hope, his heart is not in the contents. Glo. Has he never before founded you in this business? Edm. Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that fons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as a ward to the fon, and the fon manage his revenue. Glo. O villain, villain! his very opinion in the letter. Abhorred villain! unnatural, detefted, brutish villain! worse than brutish! Go, firrah, 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 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 writ this to feel my affection to your Honour, and to no other pretence of danger. Glo. Think you fo? 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 fatisfaction: and that, without any further delay than this very evening. Glo. He cannot be such a monster. Edm. Nor is not, fure. Glo. To his Father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him- Heav'n and Earth! Edmund, seek him out; wind me into him, I pray you; frame the business after your own wisdom. I would unstate my felf, to be in a due resolution. Edm. I will feek him, Sir, presently: convey the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal. Glo. These late eclipses in the fun and moon portend no good to us; tho' the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds it self 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. This villain of mine comes under the prediction, there's son against father; the King falls from biass 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 banish'd! his offence, Honesty. 'Tis strange. [Exit. Manet Edmund. Edm. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are fick in fortune, (often the furfeits of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters, the fun, the moon and stars; as if we were villains on neceffity; 1 fools, by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treacherous, by spherical predominance; drunkards, lyars, and adulterers, by an inforc'd obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evafion of whoremaster Man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! my father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Urfa major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. I should have been what I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. To him, Enter Edgar. Pat! he comes, like the Catastrophe of the old comedy; my cue is villainous Melancholy, with a figh like Tom o' Bedlam - O, these eclipses portend these divisions! fa, fol, la, me 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. Edg. Do you bufie your felf with that? Edm. I promise you, the effects, he writes of, fuc ceed unhappily. When faw you my father last? Edg. The night gone by. Edm. Spake you with him? Edg. Ay, two hours together. Edm. Parted you in good terms, found you no dif pleasure in him, by word or countenance ? Edg. None at all. Edm. Bethink your self, wherein you have offended him: and, at my intreaty, forbear his presence, until some little time hath qualified the heat of his displea. fure; which at this instant so rageth in him, that with the mischief of your person it would scarcely allay. Edg. Some villain hath done me wrong. Edm. That's my fear; I pray you, have a continent forbearance 'till the fpeed of his rage goes flower; and, as I say, retire with me to my lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to hear my lord speak: pray you, you, go, there's my key: if you do ftir abroad, g arm'd. Edg. Arm'd, brother! Edm. Brother, I advise you to the best; I am no honest man, if there be any good meaning toward 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? : : Gon. [Exit [Exit. SCENE, the Duke of Albany's Palace. Enter Gonerill and Steward. ID my father strike my gentleman for chid Ding of his fool? Stew. Ay, 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 If you come slack of former services, You You shall do well; the fault of it I'll answer. Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one, That (4) Idle old Man,] The following Lines, as they are fine in themselves, and very much in Character for Gonerill, I have re fter'd |