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 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 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 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 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 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 offence,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 the 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'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 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 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;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.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 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 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 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;go armed:Iam 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 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.
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 OSWALD,her steward GONERIL Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool?OSWALD Yes,madam.GONERIL 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.OSWALD He's coming,madam;I hear him.
Horns within GONERIL Put on what weary negligence you please,You and your fellows;I'll have it come to question:
If he dislike it,let him to our sister,Whose mind and mine,I know,in that are one,Not to be over-ruled.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 used With cheques as flatteries,--when they are seen abused.