Part 101

GONERIL. The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look from his age to receive not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, but therewithal the 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.

GONERIL. There is further compliment of leave-taking 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.

REGAN. We shall further think of it.

GONERIL. We must do something, and i’ th’ heat.

[_Exeunt._]

SCENE II. A Hall in the Earl of Gloucester’s Castle

Enter Edmund with a letter.

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? 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 Gloucester.

GLOUCESTER. Kent banish’d thus! and France in choler parted! And the King gone tonight! Prescrib’d his pow’r! Confin’d to exhibition! All this done Upon the gad!—Edmund, how now! What news?

EDMUND. So please your lordship, none.

[_Putting up the letter._]

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 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.

EDMUND. I beseech you, sir, pardon me. It is a letter from my brother that I have not all o’er-read; and for so much as I have perus’d, I find it not fit for your o’er-looking.

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 essay, or taste of my virtue.

GLOUCESTER. [_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 wake 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. Has he never before sounded you in this business?

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

GLOUCESTER. 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?

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 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.

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 surfeits 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 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. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.

Enter Edgar.

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.

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 with 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. 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 nor countenance?

EDGAR. None at all.

EDMUND. 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.

EDGAR. Some villain hath done me wrong.

EDMUND. 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.

EDGAR. Armed, brother?

EDMUND. Brother, I advise you to the best; 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!

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._]

SCENE III. A Room in the Duke of Albany’s Palace

Enter Goneril and Oswald.

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

OSWALD. Ay, 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.

[_Horns within._]

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

GONERIL. 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 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 us’d With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abus’d. Remember what I have said.

OSWALD. Very well, madam.

GONERIL. 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. A Hall in 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 rais’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 King 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 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’st as poor for a subject as he’s for a king, thou art 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 thou 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, sir, 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 an Attendant._]

Enter Oswald.

You, you, sirrah, where’s my daughter?

OSWALD. So please you,—

[_Exit._]

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

[_Exit a Knight._]

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

Re-enter Knight.

How now! where’s that mongrel?

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

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

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

LEAR. He would not?

KNIGHT. 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 of kindness appears as well in the general dependants as in the Duke himself also, and your daughter.

LEAR. Ha! say’st thou so?

KNIGHT. 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 purpose of unkindness: I will look further into’t. But where’s my fool? I have not seen him this two days.

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

LEAR. No more of that; I have noted it well. Go you and tell my daughter I would speak with her.

[_Exit Attendant._]

Go you, call hither my fool.

[_Exit another Attendant._]

Re-enter Oswald.

O, you, sir, you, come you hither, sir: 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 these, my lord; I beseech your pardon.

LEAR. Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?

[_Striking him._]

OSWALD. I’ll not be struck, my lord.

KENT. Nor tripp’d neither, you base football player.

[_Tripping up his heels._]

LEAR. I thank thee, fellow. Thou serv’st me, and I’ll love thee.

KENT. Come, sir, arise, away! I’ll teach you differences: away, away! If you will measure your lubber’s length again, tarry; but away! go to; have you wisdom? So.

[_Pushes Oswald out._]

LEAR. Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee: there’s earnest of thy service.

[_Giving Kent money._]

Enter Fool.

FOOL. Let me hire him too; here’s my coxcomb.

[_Giving Kent his cap._]

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

FOOL. 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 has banish’d two on’s daughters, and did the third a blessing against his will; if thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb. How now, nuncle! Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters!

LEAR. Why, my boy?

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

LEAR. Take heed, sirrah, the whip.

FOOL. Truth’s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when the Lady Brach may stand by the fire and stink.

LEAR. A pestilent gall to me!

FOOL. Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech.

LEAR. Do.

FOOL. Mark it, nuncle: 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.

KENT. This is nothing, fool.

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

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.

LEAR. A bitter fool.

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

LEAR. No, lad; teach me.

FOOL. That lord that counsell’d thee To give away thy land, Come place him here by me, Do thou for him stand. The sweet and bitter fool Will presently appear; The one in motley here, The other found out there.

LEAR. Dost thou call me fool, boy?

FOOL. All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.

KENT. This is not altogether fool, my lord.

FOOL. No, faith; lords and great men will not let me; if I had a monopoly out, they would have part on’t and ladies too, they will not let me have all the fool to myself; they’ll be snatching. Nuncle, give me an egg, and I’ll give thee two crowns.

LEAR. What two crowns shall they be?

FOOL. Why, after I have cut the egg i’ the middle and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou clovest thy crown i’ the middle and gav’st away both parts, thou bor’st thine ass on thy back o’er the dirt: thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav’st thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in this, let him be whipped that first finds it so. [_Singing._] Fools had ne’er less grace in a year; For wise men are grown foppish, And know not how their wits to wear, Their manners are so apish.

LEAR. When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?

FOOL. I have used it, nuncle, e’er since thou mad’st thy daughters thy mothers; for when thou gav’st them the rod, and put’st down thine own breeches, [_Singing._] Then they for sudden joy did weep, And I for sorrow sung, That such a king should play bo-peep, And go the fools among. Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie; I would fain learn to lie.

LEAR. An you lie, sirrah, we’ll have you whipped.

FOOL. I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they’ll have me whipped for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o’thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle: thou hast pared thy wit o’both sides, and left nothing i’ the middle: here comes one o’ the parings.

Enter Goneril.

LEAR. How now, daughter? What makes that frontlet on? Methinks you are too much of late i’ the frown.

FOOL. Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning. Now thou art an O without a figure: I am better than thou art now. I am a fool, thou art nothing. [_To Goneril._] Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue. So your face bids me, though you say nothing. Mum, mum, He that keeps nor crust nor crum, Weary of all, shall want some. [_Pointing to Lear_.] That’s a shealed peascod.

GONERIL. Not only, sir, this your all-licens’d fool, But other of your insolent retinue Do hourly carp and quarrel; breaking forth In rank and not-to-be-endured riots. Sir, I had thought, by making this well known unto you, To have found a safe redress; but now grow fearful, By what yourself too late have spoke and done, That you protect this course, and put it on By your allowance; which if you should, the fault Would not scape censure, nor the redresses sleep, Which, in the tender of a wholesome weal, Might in their working do you that offence Which else were shame, that then necessity Will call discreet proceeding.

FOOL. For you know, nuncle, The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long That it’s had it head bit off by it young. So out went the candle, and we were left darkling.

LEAR. Are you our daughter?

GONERIL. Come, sir, I would you would make use of that good wisdom, Whereof I know you are fraught; and put away These dispositions, which of late transform you From what you rightly are.

FOOL. May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse? Whoop, Jug! I love thee!

LEAR. Doth any here know me? This is not Lear; Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes? Either his notion weakens, his discernings Are lethargied. Ha! waking? ’Tis not so! Who is it that can tell me who I am?

FOOL. Lear’s shadow.

LEAR. I would learn that; for by the marks of sovereignty, knowledge and reason, I should be false persuaded I had daughters.

FOOL. Which they will make an obedient father.

LEAR. Your name, fair gentlewoman?

GONERIL. This admiration, sir, is much o’ the favour Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you To understand my purposes aright: As you are old and reverend, you should be wise. Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires; Men so disorder’d, so debosh’d and bold That this our court, infected with their manners, Shows like a riotous inn. Epicurism and lust Makes it more like a tavern or a brothel Than a grac’d palace. The shame itself doth speak For instant remedy. Be, then, desir’d By her that else will take the thing she begs A little to disquantity your train; And the remainder that shall still depend, To be such men as may besort your age, Which know themselves, and you.

LEAR. Darkness and devils! Saddle my horses; call my train together. Degenerate bastard! I’ll not trouble thee: Yet have I left a daughter.

GONERIL. You strike my people; and your disorder’d rabble Make servants of their betters.

Enter Albany.

LEAR. Woe that too late repents!— [_To Albany._] O, sir, are you come? Is it your will? Speak, sir.—Prepare my horses. Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous when thou show’st thee in a child Than the sea-monster!

ALBANY. Pray, sir, be patient.

LEAR. [_to Goneril._] Detested kite, thou liest. My train are men of choice and rarest parts, That all particulars of duty know; And in the most exact regard support The worships of their name. O most small fault, How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show! Which, like an engine, wrench’d my frame of nature From the fix’d place; drew from my heart all love, And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear! [_Striking his head._] Beat at this gate that let thy folly in And thy dear judgement out! Go, go, my people.

ALBANY. My lord, I am guiltless, as I am ignorant Of what hath moved you.

LEAR. It may be so, my lord. Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful! Into her womb convey sterility! Dry up in her the organs of increase; And from her derogate body never spring A babe to honour her! If she must teem, Create her child of spleen, that it may live And be a thwart disnatur’d torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child! Away, away!

[_Exit._]

ALBANY. Now, gods that we adore, whereof comes this?

GONERIL. Never afflict yourself to know more of it; But let his disposition have that scope That dotage gives it.

Re-enter Lear.

LEAR. What, fifty of my followers at a clap? Within a fortnight?

ALBANY. What’s the matter, sir?