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The Earl of Gloucester's castle.
[Enter EDMUND, with a letter]
EDMUND
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Thou na|ture, art | my god|dess, to | thy law
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My serv|ices | are bound,| wherefore | should I
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Stand in | the plague | of cust|om, and | permit
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The cu|rios|ity of na|tions, to de/prive me?
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For that | I am | some* twelve,| or four|teen
moonshines
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Lag of | a broth|er? Why | bastard?| Wherefore
base? (hex with prev)
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When my | dimen|sions are | as well | *compact,
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My mind | as gene|rous, and | my shape | as true
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As hon|est madam's | issue?| Why brand | they us
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With base?| With base|ness bast|ardy?/ Base,
base?
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Who in | the lust|y stealth | of na|ture, take
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More* com|posi|tion, and / fierce qual|ity,
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Than doth | within | a dull stale tir|ed bed
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Go to | the creat|ing a / whole tribe | of fops
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Got 'tween | asleep,| and wake?| Well | then,
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Legi|timate Ed|gar, I | must have | your land,
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Our fath|er's love,| is to the | bastard |
Edmund,
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As to the | legi|timate: fine | word:
le|gitimate.
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Well, my | legi|timate, if | this let|ter speed,
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And my | invent|ion thrive,| Edmund | the base
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Shall top | the legi|timate: I | grow, I |
prosper:
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Now gods, stand | up for | bastards.|
[Enter GLOUCESTER]
GLOUCESTER
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Kent^ban|ished thus?| And France | in cho|ler
par||ted?
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And the / king gone | tonight?| Prescribed | his
power,
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Confined | to ex|hibi|tion? All | this done
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Upon | the gad?| Edmund,| how now?| What news?
EDMUND
So please your lordship, none.
GLOUCESTER
Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
EDMUND
I know no news, my lord.
GLOUCESTER
What paper were you reading?
EDMUND
Nothing my lord.
GLOUCESTER
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.
EDMUND
I beseech you sir, pardon me; it is a letter from my brother, that I have
not all ore-read; and for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for
your ore-looking.
GLOUCESTER
Give me the letter, sir.
EDMUND
I shall offend, either to detain, or give it:
The contents, as in part I understand them,
Are to blame.
GLOUCESTER
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.
GLOUCESTER
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 half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother.
Edgar.
Hum? Conspiracy? Sleep till I wake 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 you to this? 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.
GLOUCESTER
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.
GLOUCESTER
It is his.
EDMUND
It is his hand, my lord: but I hope his heart is not in the contents.
GLOUCESTER
Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business?
EDMUND
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.
GLOUCESTER
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?
EDMUND
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 honor, 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 honor, and to no further pretence of danger.
GLOUCESTER
Think you so?
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.
GLOUCESTER
He cannot be such a monster. 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.
EDMUND
I will seek him sir, presently: convey the business as I shall find means,
and acquaint you withal.
GLOUCESTER
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
offense, honesty. 'Tis strange.
[Exit]
EDMUND
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in
fortune, often the surfeit of our own behavior, we make guilty of our
disasters, the sun, the moon, and 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 his tail, and my nativity was under Ursa major, so that it
follows, I am rough and lecherous. I should have been that I am, had the
maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
[enter EDGAR]
Pat: he comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villanous
melancholy, with a sigh like Tom of Bedlam. --O these eclipses do portend
these divisions. Fa, sol, la, mi.
EDGAR
How now, brother Edmund, what serious contemplation are you in?
EDMUND
I am thinking brother of a prediction I read this other day, what should
follow these eclipses.
EDGAR
Do you busy yourself about that?
EDMUND
I promise you, the effects he writes of, succeed unhappily.
When saw you my father last?
EDGAR
The night gone by.
EDMUND
Spake you with him?
EDGAR
Aye, two hours together.
EDMUND
Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him, by word, or
countenance?
EDGAR
None at all.
EDMUND
Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him: and at my entreaty
forbear his presence, until 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.
EDGAR
Some villain hath done me wrong.
EDMUND
That's my fear, I pray you have a continent forbearance till the spied 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.
EDGAR
Armed, brother?
EDMUND
Brother, I advise you to the best, 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.
EDGAR
Shall I hear from you anon?
EDMUND
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I do | serve you | in this | business:|
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A cred|ulous fath|er, and | a broth|er noble,
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Whose^na|ture is / so far | from do|ing harms,
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That he sus|pects none: on | whose^fool|ish
hon|esty
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My prac|tices / ride eas|y: I | see the |
business. (hex with prev)
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Let me,| if not | by birth,| have lands | by wit,
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All with | me's^meet,| that I | can fash|ion fit.
[Exit]