King Lear Page #2

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She's there, and she is yours.

I know no answer.

Sir, will you, with these infirmities

she owns,

unfriended, new-adopted to our hate,

dowered with our curse and strangered

with our oath, take her or leave her?

Pardon me, royal sir,

election makes not up in such conditions.

Then leave her, sir,

for, by the power that made me,

I tell thee all her wealth.

For you, great king.

Avert your liking a more worthier way

than on a wretch whom Nature is ashamed

almost to acknowledge.

This is most strange, that she whom even

but now was your best object,

balm of your age,

should in this trice of time

commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle

so many folds of favour.

I yet beseech your majesty

if for I want that glib and oily art

to speak and purpose not, that you make known

it is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,

no unchaste action or dishonourable step that

hath deprived me of your grace and favour.

But even for want of that

for which I am richer.

Better thou hadst not been born

than not to have pleased me better.

Is it but this, a tardiness in nature

which often leaves the history unspoke

that it intends to do?

My lord of Burgundy,

what say you to the lady?

Will you have her? She is herself a dowry.

Royal Lear, give but that portion

which yourself proposed,

and here I take Cordelia by the hand,

Duchess of Burgundy.

Nothing! I am sworn.

I am sorry that you have so lost a father

that you must lose a husband.

Peace be with Burgundy!

Since that respects of fortune are his love,

I shall not be his wife.

Fairest Cordelia,

that art most rich, being poor,

most choice, forsaken,

and most loved, despised,

thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.

Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.

Gods, gods! 'Tis strange

that from their cold'st neglect

my love should kindle to inflamed respect.

Thy dowerless daughter, King,

thrown to my chance,

Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France.

Thou hast her, France; let her be thine,

for we have no such daughter,

nor shall ever see that face of hers again.

Therefore begone,

without our grace, our love,

our benison!

Come, noble Burgundy.

Bid farewell to your sisters.

The jewels of our father, with washed eyes

Cordelia leaves you. I know you what you are.

And, like a sister, am most loath to call

your faults as they are named.

Prescribe not us our duties.

Let your study be to content your lord,

who hath received you at Fortune's alms.

You have obedience scanted.

And well are worth the want

that you have wanted.

Time shall unfold

what plighted cunning hides.

Come, my fair Cordelia.

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.

That's most certain, and with you,

next month with us.

You see how full of changes his age is.

He always loved our sister most.

'Tis the infirmity of his age. Yet he hath

ever but slenderly known himself.

The best and soundest of his time

hath been but rash.

Such unconstant starts are we like to have

from him as this of Kent's banishment?

Pray you, let us hit together.

If our father carry authority

with such dispositions as he bears,

this last surrender of his

will but offend us.

We shall further think of it.

We must do something, and i' the heat.

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 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

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,

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