King Lear Page #4

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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 then, 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!

Kent banished thus? And France in choler

parted? And the King gone tonight?

All this done upon the gad!

- Edmund, how now? What news?

- So please your lordship, none.

Why so earnestly seek you

to put up that letter?

- I know no news, my lord.

- What paper were you reading?

- Nothing, my lord.

- No?

What needed, then, this terrible

dispatch of it into your pocket?

Come! Let's see. If it be nothing,

I shall not need spectacles.

I beseech you, sir, pardon me.

It is a letter from my brother

I have not all o'er-read,

and for so much as I have perused,

I find it not fit for your o'er-looking.

Give me the letter, sir.

I hope for my brother's justification

he wrote this but as an essay

or taste of my virtue.

"I begin to find an idle and fond bondage

in the oppression of aged tyranny.

"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,

and live the beloved of your brother Edgar."

Conspiracy! "Sleep till I waked him,

you should enjoy half his revenue..."

- When came this to you? Who brought it?

- It was not brought me, my lord.

There's the cunning of it. I found it

thrown in at the casement of my closet.

You know the character

to be your brother's?

- I would fain think it were not.

- It is his!

It is his hand, my lord, but I hope

his heart is not in the contents.

Abhorred villain! I'll apprehend him.

Abominable villain! Where is he?

I do not well know, my lord.

I dare pawn down my life for him,

that he hath writ this

to feel my affections to your honour,

and to no other pretence of danger.

- Think you so?

- If your honour judge it meet.

I will place you where you shall hear us

confer of this.

- He cannot be such a monster?

- Nor is not, sure.

To his father, who so tenderly

and entirely loves him.

Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him out.

Frame the business after your own wisdom.

I will seek him, sir, presently.

These late eclipses of the sun and moon

portend no good to us.

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

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