TPTT The Tragedy of King Lear: ACT I
Introduction
ACT I
SCENE I. King Lear's palace.
SCENE II. The Earl of Gloucester's castle.
SCENE III. The Duke of Albany's palace.
SCENE IV. A hall in the same.
SCENE V. Court before the same.
ACT II
ACT III
ACT IV
ACT V
About the Play
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SCENE II. The Earl of Gloucester's castle.
Enter EDMUND, with a letter
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 curiosity of nations to deprive me,
5     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
10    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,
15    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,
20    And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
      Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
      Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
Enter GLOUCESTER
GLOUCESTER
      Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted!
      And the king gone to-night! subscribed his power!
25    Confined to exhibition! All this done
      Upon the gad! Edmund, how now! what news?
EDMUND
      So please your lordship, none.
Putting up the letter
GLOUCESTER
      Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
EDMUND
      I know no news, my lord.
GLOUCESTER
30    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,
35    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 o'er-read;
      and for so much as I have perused, I find it not
      fit for your o'er-looking.
GLOUCESTER
40    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
45    this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.
GLOUCESTER
      (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
50    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
55    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
60    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
65    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
70    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
75    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!
80    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
85    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
90    affection to your honour, and to no further
      pretence of danger.
GLOUCESTER
      Think you so?
EDMUND
      If your honour judge it meet, I will place you
      where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an
95    auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and
      that without any further delay than this very evening.
GLOUCESTER
      He cannot be such a monster--
EDMUND
      Nor is not, sure.
GLOUCESTER
      To his father, that so tenderly and entirely
100   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.
EDMUND
      I will seek him, sir, presently: convey the
105   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,
110   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
115   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
120   lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the
      noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his
      offence, honesty! 'Tis strange.
Exit
EDMUND
      This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
      when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeit
125   of our own behavior,--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,
130   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
135   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
140   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.
EDGAR
145   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
150   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
155   diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation
      of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.
EDGAR
      How long have you been a sectary astronomical?
EDMUND
      Come, come; when saw you my father last?
EDGAR
      Why, the night gone by.
EDMUND
160   Spake you with him?
EDGAR
      Ay, two hours together.
EDMUND
      Parted you in good terms? Found you no
      displeasure in him by word or countenance?
EDGAR
      None at all.
EDMUND
165   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
170   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
175   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; go armed: I
180   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
185   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 practises ride easy! I see the business.
190   Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
      All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.
Exit
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