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  • Title: King Lear (Modern, Extended Folio)
  • Editor: Michael Best
  • Textual editors: James D. Mardock, Eric Rasmussen
  • Coordinating editor: Michael Best

    • ISBN: 978-1-55058-463-9

    Copyright Michael Best. This text may be freely used for educational, non-profit purposes; for all other uses contact the Editor.
    Author: William Shakespeare
    Editor: Michael Best
    Not Peer Reviewed

    King Lear (Modern, Extended Folio)

    [Scene 2 in Quarto]
    1.2
    Enter [the] Bastard [with a letter].
    335Bastard
    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
    340Lag 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"?
    345Who, 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,
    350Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.
    Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund
    As to th'legitimate. Fine word, "legitimate."
    Well, my "legitimate," if this letter speed
    And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
    355Shall to th'legitimate. I grow, I prosper.
    Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
    Enter Gloucester.
    Gloucester
    Kent banished thus? and France in choler parted?
    And the King gone tonight, prescribed his power,
    360Confined to exhibition? All this done
    Upon the gad?--Edmund, how now? What news?
    Bastard
    [Pockets the letter.] So please your lordship, none.
    Gloucester
    Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
    Bastard
    I know no news, my lord.
    365Gloucester
    What paper were you reading?
    Bastard
    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 370nothing I shall not need spectacles.
    Bastard
    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 perused, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking.
    375Gloucester
    Give me the letter, sir.
    Bastard
    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!
    380Bastard
    I hope for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an assay, or taste of my virtue.
    [He gives Gloucester the letter.]
    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 385and 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.
    390Hum, 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 you to this? Who brought it?
    Bastard
    It was not brought me, my lord, there's the 395cunning of it. I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet.
    Gloucester
    You know the character to be your brother's?
    Bastard
    If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it were his; but in respect of that I would fain think it 400were not.
    Gloucester
    It is his?
    Bastard
    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?
    405Bastard
    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 410letter. Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain, worse than brutish. Go sirrah, seek him. I'll apprehend him, abominable villain. Where is he?
    Bastard
    I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please you to suspend your indignation against my brother till you can 415derive 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 honor and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life for him that 420he hath writ this to feel my affection to your honor, and to no other pretense of danger.
    Gloucester
    Think you so?
    Bastard
    If your honor judge it meet, I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an 425auricular assurance have your satisfaction--and that without any further delay than this very evening.
    Gloucester
    He cannot be such a monster.
    427.1Bastard
    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 430myself to be in a due resolution.
    Bastard
    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 435reason 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 440prediction--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 445thee nothing. Do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished; his offence, honesty. 'Tis strange.
    Exit
    Bastard
    This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune--often the surfeits of our own behavior--we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the 450moon, and 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 455thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on 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." I should 460have 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 villanous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom 465o'Bedlam. --Oh, these eclipses do portend these divisions. Fa, sol, la, me.
    Edgar
    How now, brother Edmund. What serious contemplation are you in?
    Bastard
    I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this 470other day, what should follow these eclipses.
    Edgar
    Do you busy yourself with that?
    Bastard
    I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily, 473.1as 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. 473.5
    Edgar
    How long have you been a sectary astronomical?
    Bastard
    Come, come. When saw you my father last?
    475Edgar
    The night gone by.
    Bastard
    Spake you with him?
    Edgar
    Ay, two hours together.
    Bastard
    Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him, by word, nor countenance?
    480Edgar
    None at all.
    Bastard
    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 485mischief of your person it would scarcely allay.
    Edgar
    Some villain hath done me wrong.
    Bastard
    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 490fitly bring you to hear my lord speak. Pray ye go. There's my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed.
    Edgar
    Armed, brother?
    Bastard
    Brother, I advise you to the best. I am no honest man if there be any good meaning toward you. I have told 495you 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?
    Exit [Edgar].
    Bastard
    [Calling after him] I do serve you in this business.
    A credulous father and a brother noble,
    500Whose 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.
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