King Lear - The Original Classic Edition. Shakespeare William

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 should 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 writ this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no other pretence of danger. Glou. Think you so? 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 satisfaction, and that without any further delay than this very evening. Glou. He cannot be such a monster. Edm. Nor is not, sure. 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 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 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 banish'd! 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 on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc'd obedience of planetary influence; and all

       that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master 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. Fut! 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 villainous 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?

       Edm. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day,

       what should follow these eclipses. Edg. Do you busy yourself with 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? Edm. Come, come! When saw 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 displeasure in him by

       word or countenance

       Edg. None at all.

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       Edm. 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.

       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 arm'd.

       Edg. Arm'd, brother?

       Edm. Brother, I advise you to the best. Go arm'd. 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? 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.

       Scene III. The Duke of Albany's Palace. Enter Goneril and [her] Steward [Oswald].

       Gon. Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool? Osw. 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

       On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,

       I will not speak with him. Say I am sick. If you come slack of former services,

       You shall do well; the fault of it I'll answer. [Horns within.]

       Osw. He's coming, madam; I hear him.

       Gon. Put on what weary negligence you please,

       You and your fellows. I'd have it come to question. If he distaste it, let him to our sister,

       Whose mind and mine I know in that are one, Not to be overrul'd. Idle old man,

       That still would manage those authorities That he hath given away! Now, by my life, Old fools are babes again, and must be us'd

       With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abus'd.

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       Remember what I have said. Osw. Very well, madam.

       Gon. And let his knights have colder looks among you. What grows of it, no matter. Advise your fellows so.

       I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall, That I may speak. I'll write straight to my sister To hold my very course. Prepare for dinner.

       Exeunt. Scene IV. The Duke of Albany's Palace.

       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 raz'd my likeness. Now, banish'd Kent,

       If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn'd, So may it come, thy master, whom thou lov'st,

       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?

       Kent. A man, sir.

       Lear. What dost thou profess? What wouldst thou with us? Kent. I do profess to be no less than I seem, to serve him truly

       that will put me in trust, to love him that