The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works

by William Shakespeare

  FRANCE Come, fair Cordelia.

  Exeunt France and Cordelia

  GONORIL Sister, it is not a little I have to say of what most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father will hence tonight.

  REGAN That’s most certain, and with you. Next month with us.

  GONORIL 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 judgement he hath now cast her off appears too gross.

  REGAN ’Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.

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

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

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

  REGAN We shall further think on’t.

  GONORIL We must do something, and l’th’ heat. Exeunt

  Sc. 2 Enter Edmund the bastard

  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

  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, base bastardy’,

  Who in the lusty stealth of nature take

  More composition and fierce quality

  Than doth within a stale, dull-eyed bed go

  To the creating a whole tribe of fops

  Got ’tween a sleep and wake? Well then,

  Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.

  Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund

  As to the legitimate. Well, my legitimate, if

  This letter speed and my invention thrive,

  Edmund the base shall to th’ legitimate.

  I grow, I prosper. Now gods, stand up for bastards!

  Enter the Duke of Gloucester. Edmund reads a letter

  GLOUCESTER

  Kent banished thus, and France in choler parted,

  And the King gone tonight, subscribed his power,

  Confined to exhibition—all this done

  Upon the gad?—Edmund, how now? What news?

  EDMUND So please your lordship, none.

  GLOUCESTER Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?

  EDMUND I know no news, my lord.

  GLOUCESTER What paper were you reading?

  EDMUND Nothing., my lord.

  GLOUCESTER No? What needs 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.

  EDMUND 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 liking.

  GLOUCESTER 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 this but as an assay or taste of my virtue.

  He gives Gloucester a letter

  GLOUCESTER (reads) ‘This policy 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! ‘Slept 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?

  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 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 not in the contents.

  GLOUCESTER Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business? 70

  EDMUND Never, my lord; but I have often heard him maintain it to be fit that, sons at perfect age and fathers declining, his father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage the revenue.

  GLOUCESTER O villain, villain—his very opinion in the tetter! Abhorred villain, unnatural, detested, brutish villain—worse than brutish! Go, sir, seek him, ay, apprehend him. Abominable villain! 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 this 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 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 pilot, 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 your business after your own wisdom. I would unstate myself to be in a due resolution.

  EDMUND I shall seek him, sir, presently, convey the business as I shall see 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 thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities mutinies, in countries discords, palaces treason, the bond cracked between son and father. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing. Do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished, his offence honesty! Strange, strange! Exit

  EDMUND 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 by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treacherers 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 stars! 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 of the firmament twinkled on my bastardy. Edgar ...

  Enter Edgar

  and on’s cue out he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy; mine is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like them of Bedlam.—O, these eclipses do portend these divisions.

  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.
r />   EDGAR Do you busy yourself about that?

  EDMUND I promise you, the effects he writ 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 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 scarce allay.

  EDGAR Some villain hath done me wrong.

  EDMUND That’s my fear, brother. I advise you to the best. Go armed. I 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 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

  Sc. 3 Enter Gonoril and Oswald, her gentleman

  GONORIL

  Did my father strike my gentleman

  For chiding of his fool?

  OSWALD Yes, madam.

  GONORIL

  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.

  ⌈Hunting horns within⌉

  OSWALD He’s coming, madam. I hear him.

  GONORIL

  Put on what weary negligence you please,

  You and your fellow servants. I’d have it come in

  question.

  If he dislike it, let him to our sister,

  Whose mind and mine I know in that are one,

  Not to be overruled. 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 checks as flatteries, when they are seen abused.

  Remember what I tell you.

  OSWALD Very well, madam.

  GONORIL

  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. Go prepare for dinner.

  Exeunt severally

  Sc. 4 Enter the Earl of Kent, disguised

  KENT

  If but as well I other accents borrow

  That can my speech diffuse, my good intent

  May carry through itself to that full issue

  For which I razed my likeness. Now, banished Kent,

  If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemned,

  Thy master, whom thou lov’st, shall find thee full of

  labour.

  Enter King Lear and servants from hunting

  LEAR Let me not stay a jot for dinner. Go get it ready.

  ⌈Exit one⌉

  (To Kent) 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 is honest, to converse with him that is wise and says little, to fear judgement, to fight when I cannot choose, and to eat no fish.

  LEAR What art thou?

  KENT A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the King.

  LEAR If thou be as poor for a subject as he is for a king, thou’rt poor enough. What wouldst thou?

  KENT Service.

  LEAR Who wouldst thou serve?

  KENT You.

  LEAR Dost thou know me, fellow?

  KENT No, sir, but you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master.

  LEAR What’s that?

  KENT Authority.

  LEAR What services canst do?

  KENT I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message bluntly. That which ordinary men are fit for I am qualified in; and the best of me is diligence.

  LEAR How old art thou?

  KENT Not so young to love a woman for singing, nor so old to dote on her for anything. I have years on my back forty-eight.

  LEAR Follow me. Thou shalt serve me, if I like thee no worse after dinner. I will not part from thee yet.—Dinner, ho, dinner! Where’s my knave, my fool? Go you and call my fool hither.

  ⌈Exit one⌉

  Enter Oswald the steward

  You, sirrah, where’s my daughter?

  OSWALD So please you—

  Exit

  LEAR What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll back.

  Exeunt Servant ⌈and Kent⌉

  Where’s my fool? Ho, I think the world’s asleep.

  Enter the Earl of Kent ⌈and a Servant⌉

  How now, where’s that mongrel?

  KENT He says, my lord, your daughter is not well.

  LEAR Why came not the slave back to me when I called him?

  SERVANT Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner he would not.

  LEAR A would not?

  SERVANT My lord, I know not what the matter is, but to my judgement your highness is not entertained with that ceremonious affection as you were wont. There’s a great abatement appears as well in the general dependants as in the Duke himself also, and your daughter.

  LEAR Ha, sayst thou so?

  SERVANT I beseech you pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken, for my duty cannot be silent when I think your highness wronged.

  LEAR Thou but rememberest me of mine own conception. I have perceived a most faint neglect of late, which I have rather blamed as mine own jealous curiosity than as a very pretence and purport of unkindness. I will look further into’t. But where’s this fool? I have not seen him these two days.

  SERVANT Since my young lady’s going into France, sir, the fool hath much pined away.

  LEAR No more of that, I have noted it. Go you and tell my daughter I would speak with her. ⌈Exit one⌉ Go you, call hither my fool. ⌈Exit one⌉

  Enter Oswald the steward ⌈crossing the stage⌉

  O you, sir, you, sir, come you hither. Who am I, sir?

  OSWALD My lady’s father.

  LEAR My lady’s father? My lord’s knave, you whoreson dog, you slave, you cur!

  OSWALD I am none of this, my lord, I beseech you pardon me.

  LEAR Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?

  ⌈Lear strikes him⌉

  OSWALD I’ll not be struck, my lord—

  KENT (tripping him) Nor tripped neither, you base football player.

  LEAR (to Kent) I thank thee, fellow. Thou serv’st me, and I’ll love thee.

  KENT (to Oswald) Come, sir, I’ll teach you differences. Away, away. If you will measure your lubber’s
length again, tarry; but away if you have wisdom.

  Exit Oswald

  LEAR Now, friendly knave, I thank thee.

  Enter Lear’s Fool

  There’s earnest of thy service.

  He gives Kent money

  FOOL Let me hire him, too. (To Kent) Here’s my coxcomb.

  LEAR How now, my pretty knave, how dost thou?

  FOOL (to Kent) Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.

  KENT Why, fool?

  FOOL Why, for taking one’s part that’s out of favour. Nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou’lt catch cold shortly. There, take my coxcomb. Why, this fellow hath banished two on’s daughters and done the third a blessing against his will. If thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb. (To Lear) How now, nuncle? Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters.

  LEAR Why, my boy?

  FOOL If I gave them my living I’d keep my coxcombs myself. There’s mine; beg another off thy daughters.

  LEAR Take heed, sirrah—the whip.

  FOOL Truth is a dog that must to kennel. He must be whipped out when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink.

  LEAR A pestilent gall to me!

  FOOL ⌈to Kent⌉ Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech.

  LEAR Do.

  FOOL Mark it, uncle.

  Have more than thou showest,

  Speak less than thou knowest,

  Lend less than thou owest,

  Ride more than thou goest,

  Learn more than thou trowest,

  Set less than thou throwest,

  Leave thy drink and thy whore,

  And keep in-a-door,

  And thou shalt have more

  Than two tens to a score.

  LEAR This is nothing, fool.

  FOOL Then, like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer, you gave me nothing for’t. Can you make no use of nothing, uncle?

  LEAR Why no, boy. Nothing can be made out of nothing.

  FOOL (to Kent) Prithee, tell him so much the rent of his land comes to. He will not believe a fool. 130

  LEAR A bitter fool.

  FOOL Dost know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet fool?