That justly think'st, and hast most rightly said! - | Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle [Exit. Flourish. Re-enter GLOUCESTER; with FRANCE, So many folds of favour! Sure, her offence Should never plant in me. I yet beseech your majesty,- intend, GLO. Here's France and Burgundy, my noble I'll do't before I speak, that you make known lord. It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness, That hath depriv'd me of your grace and favour; LEAR. Better thou Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France : time (*) First folio, in. (+) First folio omits, best. (*) First folio, wilt. (+) First folio, King. (1) First folio, The best, the. a It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,-] Mr. Collier's annotator changes this to, no vicious blot, nor other foulness," which is certainly a very plausible substitution. (1) First folio, respect and Fortunes. b When it is mingled with respects,-] The folio reads, "When it is mingled with regards," &c. By "respects" is meant considerations, scruples, &c. Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind, Thou losest here, a better-where to find. been but rash; then must we look to receive from his age,* not alone the imperfections of longLEAR. Thou hast her, France: let her be engraffed condition, but, therewithal, the unruly thine; for we Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see [Flourish. Exeunt LEAR, BURGUNDY, CORNWALL, ALBANY, GLOUCESTER, 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 loth to call Your faults as they are nam'd. Use* well our father: To your professed bosoms I commit him : I would prefer him to a better place. GON. Prescribe not us our duties.t Let your study Come, my fair Cordelia. [Exeunt FRANCE and CORDELIA. GON. Sister, it is not 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 bath ever but slenderly known himself. GON. The best and soundest of his time hath (*) First folio, Love. (1) Old text, covers. a (+) First folio, dutie. (§) First folio, at last with shame. (1) First folio omits, not. - though unkind,-] Unkind here signifies unnatural, unless France is intended to mean, "though unkinn'd," i.e. though forsaken by your kindred. b A better where to find.] In note (a), p. 120, Vol. I. otherwhere is explained other place; but where in these compounds had perhaps a significance now lost. See the old ballad, "I HAVE HOUSE AND LAND IN KENT". "Wherefore cease off, make no delay, For I cannot come every day to woo." The jewels-] Rowe and Capell read, perhaps rightly, "Ye jewels." Mr. Collier's annotator, too, proposes the same alteration. 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 leavetaking between France and him. Pray you, let us hit together: if our father carry authority with such disposition 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. When my dimensions are as well compact, Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, what plighted cunning hides;) Plighted, or, as the quartos give it, pleated cunning, means involved, complicated cunning. e-plague of cusiom,-] Plague may here possibly signify place, or boundary, from plaga; but it is a very suspicious word. f To deprive me,-] To deprive, in Shakespeare's day, was sometimes synonymous to disinherit, as Steevens has shown, and also to take away, as in "Hamlet," Act I. Scene 4,"And there assume some other horrible form, Which might deprive your sov'reignty of reason," &c. g Shall top the legitimate.) In the old editions we find tooth' and to'th'. The present reading was first promulgated in Edwards' "Canons of Criticism," having been communicated to the author of that pungent satire by Capell. (See "Notes and various Readings to Shakespeare," by the latter, 1. 146.) Confin'd to exhibition! All this done Upon the gad!-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? is still employed in our universities. b Upon the gad!--] Perhaps means, upon the spur or point; at the instant. EDM. I know no news, my lord. GLO. 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. EDM. I beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'erread; and for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your o'er-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 essay 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.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 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 heretoforet sounded you in this business? EDM. 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. 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 have your satisfaction; and that without any further delay than this very evening. GLO. He cannot be such a monster. 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 '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!d Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty! -'T is strange! [Exit. EDM. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, (often (*) First folio, Has. (+) First folio, before. (1) First folio, declined. a An essay or taste of my virtue.] Essay was commonly used in old language for assay, as taste not unfrequently was for test. See note (a), p. 763, Vol. II. b An idle and fond bondage-) That is, a vain and foolish bondage. (*) First folio, shold. C EDM. Nor is not, sure. GLO. To his father, that so tenderly and entirely loves him! -Heaven and earth!] These lines are only found in the quarto copies. d This villain of mine disquietly to our graves.] This passage is omitted in the quartos, 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 armed. the surfeit of our own behaviour) 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 whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail; ❘ good meaning toward you: I have told you what 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-and || pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam. Enter EDGAR. 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? EDG. Armed, brother? EDM. Brother, I advise you to the best; go armed; I am no honest man, if there be any I have seen and heard but faintly; nothing like A credulous father, and a brother noble, All with me's meet, that I can fashion fit. [Exit. SCENE III.-A Room in the Duke of Albany's Palace. Enter GONERIL, and OSWALD her Steward. GON. Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool? Osw. Ay, madam. GON. By day and night he wrongs me; every He flashes into one gross crime or other, EDM. Come, come; when saw you my father On every trifle. - When he returns from hunting, last? I will not speak with him; say I am sick :- [Horns without. GON. Put on what weary negligence you please, You and your fellows; I'd have it come to If he distaste it, let him to my sister, That still would manage those authorities, (*) First folio omits, go armed. happily. When saw you my Father last?" b That's my fear.] In the quartos, the remainder of this speech, and Edgar's reply, are omitted. Not to be over-rul'd.) This, and the four following lines, are omitted in the folio. F |