King Lear Page #5

---

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.

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 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 whoremaster man,

to lay his goatish disposition

to the charge of a star!

Edgar. Pat he comes.

O these eclipses do portend

these divisions.

How now, brother Edmund!

What serious contemplation are you in?

I am thinking, brother, of a prediction

I read this other day,

what should follow these eclipses.

Do you busy yourself about that?

I promise you, brother, the effects

he writes of succeed unhappily,

as of unnaturalness between the child

and the parent,

death, dearth, dissolution

of ancient amities, divisions in state,

menaces and maledictions against kings

and nobles, and I know not what.

How long have you been

a sectary astronomical?

- When saw you my father last?

- The night gone by.

- Spake you with him?

- Ay, two hours together.

Parted you in good terms?

Found you no displeasure in him

by word nor countenance?

None at all.

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.

- Some villain hath done me wrong.

- That's my fear.

Retire with me to my lodging,

from whence I will fitly bring you

to hear my lord speak. Pray you, go!

There's my key.

If you do stir abroad, go armed.

- Armed, brother?

- Brother, I advise you to the best.

I am no honest man if there be any good

meaning towards you. Pray you, away.

- Shall I hear from you anon?

- I do serve you in this business.

A credulous father and a brother noble,

whose nature is so far from doing harms

that he suspects none.

I see the business:

let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit,

all with me's meet that I can fashion fit.

Did my father strike my gentleman

for chiding of his fool?

Ay, madam.

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!

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes