Lear. Sir,

Will you with these infirmities she owes,*

Unfriended, new adopted to our hate,

Dower'd with our curse, and stranger'd with our oath,
Take her, or leave her?

Bur. Pardon me, royal Sir;

Election makes not upt on such conditions.

Lear. Then leave her, Sir; for by the power that made me,

I tell you all her wealth.-For you, great king,

I would not from your love make such a stray,

To match you where I hate; therefore beseech you
To avert your liking a more worthier way,
Than on a wretch whom nature is ashamed
Almost to acknowledge hers.

France. This is most strange !

That she, that even but now was your best object,
The argument of your praise, balm of your age,

Most best, most dearest, should in this trice of time
Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle

So many folds of favour! Sure, her offence

Must be of such unnatural degree,

That monsters it, or your 'fore-vouch'd affection
Fall into taint: which to believe of her,

Must be a faith, that reason without miracle
Could never plant in me.

Cor. I yet beseech your majesty

(If for I want that glib and oily art,

[TO FRANCE.

To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend,
I'll do't before I speak), that you make known

It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,

No unchaste action, or dishonour'd step,

That hath deprived me of your grace and favour:
But even for want of that, for which I am richer;
A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue

That I am glad I have not, though not to have it,
Hath lost me in your liking.

Lear. Better thou

Hadst not been born, than not to have pleased me better.
France. Is it but this? a tardiness in nature,

Which often leaves the history unspoke,

That it intends to do?-My lord of Burgundy,
What say you to the lady ? Love is not love,
When it is mingled with respects, I that stand
Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dowry.

Bur. Royal Lear,

Give but that portion which yourself proposed,
And here I take Cordelia by the hand,

Duchess of Burgundy.

✦ Prudential cautiousness, that does not regard love as love, wholly and alone.

Lear. Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.

Bur. I am sorry then, you have so lost a father, That you must lose a husband.

Cor. Peace be with Burgundy!

Since that respects of fortune are his love,

I shall not be his wife.

France. Fairest Cordelia, thou art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised:

Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon :

Be it lawful, I take up what's cast away.

Gods, gods! 'tis strange, that from their cold'st neglect
My love should kindle to inflamed respect.

Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France:
Not all the dukes of wat'rish Burgundy

Shall buy this unprized precious maid of me.

Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind;

Thou losest here, a better where to find.

Lear. Thou hast her, France: let her be thine; for we
Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see

That face of hers again :-Therefore be gone,
Without our grace, our love, our benison.t-
Come, noble Burgundy.

[Flourish. Exeunt LEAR, BURGUNDY, CORNWALL,
ALBANY, GLOSTER, and Attendants.

France. Bid farewell to your sisters.

Cor. The jewels of our father, with wash'd eyes Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are;

And, like a sister, am most loath to call

Your faults, as they are named. Use well our father:

To your professed bosoms I commit him:

But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,

I would prefer him to a better place.

So farewell to you both.

Gon. Prescribe not us our duties.
Reg. Let your study

Be, to content your lord; who hath received you
At fortune's alms. You have obedience scanted,
And well are worth the want that you have wanted.
Cor. Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides;
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.
Well may you prosper!

France. Come, my fair Cordelia.

[Exeunt FRANCE and CORDELIA. Gon. Sister, it is not a little I have to say, of what most nearly appertains to us both. I think, our father will hence to-night. Reg. That's most certain, and with you; next month with us. Gon. You see how full of changes his age is; the observation we have made of it hath not been little he always loved our sister most; and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off, appears too grossly

Reg. 'Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.

Gon. The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look to receive from his age, not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, * but therewithal, the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.

Reg. Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent's banishment.

Gon. There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and him. Pray you, let us hit together: If our father carry authority with such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us.

Reg. We shall further think of it.

Gon. We must do something, and i' the heat. †

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.—A Hall in the Earl of GLOSTER'S Castle.

Enter EDMUND, with a Letter.

Edm. 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,

For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
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
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,
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,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Enter GLOSTER.

Glo. Kent banish'd thus! And France in choler parted!
And the king gone to-night! subscribed This power!
Confined to exhibition!** All this done

Upon the gad!tt- -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. I know no news, my lord.

Glo. What paper were you reading?
Edm. Nothing, my lord.

Glo. No? What needed then that terrible despatch 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.

Edm. I beseech you, Sir, pardon me: it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'er-read: for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your over-looking.

Glo. Give me the letter, Sir.

Edm. I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.

Glo. Let's see, let's see.

Edm. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an assay or taste of my virtue.

Glo. [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 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 enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, Edgar.-Humph-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 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; but, I hope, his heart is not in the contents.

Glo. Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business? Edm. Never, my lord: But I have often heard him 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.

Glo. 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?

:

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 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 writ this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no other pretence ‡ of danger.

Glo. 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

*Weak and foolish.

† Whereas,

+ Design.

have your satisfaction; and that without any further delay than

this very evening.

Glo. He cannot be such a monster.

Edm. Nor is not, sure.

Glo. 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.

Glo. 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 between 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!Strange! 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 villians 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. §

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

*Give up rank and fortune, to be certain of the truth.

Edmund sings these notes as being unnatural and offensive in music, and therefore apt for portents,