On thine allegiance hear me !—
Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow
(Which we durst never yet) and with strained pride
To come betwixt our sentence and our power
(Which nor our nature nor our place can bear);
Our potency made good, take thy reward.
Five days we do allot thee, for provision
To shield thee from diseases of the world;
And on the sixth to turn thy hated back
Upon our kingdom: if on the tenth day following
Thy banished trunk be found in our dominions,
The moment is thy death. Away! by Jupiter,
This shall not be revoked.

Kent. Fare thee well, King: since thus thou

wilt appear,

Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here.The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid, [TO CORDELIA.

That justly think'st, and hast most rightly said.And your large speeches may your deeds approve, [TO REGAN and GONERIL.

That good effects may spring from words of love.—
Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu:
He'll shape his old course in a country new. [Exit.

I tell

you

all her wealth.-For you, great king,
[TO FRANCE.

I would not from your love make such a stray,
To match you where I hate: therefore beseech you
To avert your liking a more worthier way,
Than on a wretch whom nature is ashamed
Almost to acknowledge hers.
France. This is most strange!
That she, that even but now was your best object,
The argument of your praise, balm of your age,
Most best, most dearest, should in this trice of time
Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle
So many folds of favour! Sure her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree

That monsters it, or your fore-vouched affection
Fall into taint: which to believe of her,
Must be a faith that reason, without miracle,
Could never plant in me.

Cor. I yet beseech your majesty
(If for I want that glib and oily art,
To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend,
I'll do 't before I speak), that you make known
It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
No unchaste action or dishonoured step,
That hath deprived me of your grace and favour:
But even for want of that for which I am richer:

Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see
That face of hers again :-therefore, be gone,
Without our grace, our love, our benizon.-
Come, noble Burgundy.

[Flourish. Exeunt LEAR, BURGUNDY, CORN-
WALL, ALBANY, GLOSTER, and Attendants.
France. Bid farewell to your
sisters.
Cor. 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. Use well our father:
To your professed bosoms I commit him :
But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,
I would prefer him to a better place.

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.

Cor. Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides:

Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.
Well may you prosper!
France.

Come, my fair Cordelia.

[Exeunt FRANCE and CORDELIA. Gon. Sister. it is not a little I have to say, of what most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father will hence to-night.

Reg. That's most certain, and with you: next month with us.

Gon. You see how full of changes his age is: the observation we have made of it hath not been little. He always loved our sister most: and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off, appears too grossly.

Reg. "Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.

Gon. The best and soundest of his time bath been but rash: then must we look to receive from his age, not alone the imperfections of long-engrafted condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.

Reg. Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him, as this of Kent's banishment.

Gon. There is further compliment of leave taking between France and him. 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.

Reg. We shall further think of it. Gon. We must do something, and i' the heat. [Exeunt.

SCENE II-A Hall in the EARL OF GLOSTER'S Castle.

Enter EDMUND, with a letter.

Edm. 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 GLOSTER.

Glo. Kent banished thus; and France in choler
parted!

And the king gone to-night: subscribed his power:
Confined to exhibition! All this done
Upon the gad!-Edmund! how now ? what news?
Edm. So please your lordship, none.

[Putting up the letter.

Glo. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?

Edm. I know no news, my lord.

Glo. What paper were you reading?
Edm. Nothing, my lord.

Glo. No? what needed, then, that terrible despatch 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.

Edm. I beseech you, sir, pardon me. It is a letter from my brother, that I have not all o'erread: for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your over-looking.

Glo. Give me the letter, sir.

Edm. I shall offend either to detain or give it. The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.

Glo. Let's see, let's see.

Edm. I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an assay or taste of my virtue.

GLOSTER reads.

"This policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter in 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,

Glo. You know the character to be your brother's?

Edm. 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.

Glo. It is his.

Edm. It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the contents.

Glo. Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business?

Edm. Never, my lord: but I have often heard him maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his

revenue.

Glo. O villain, villain !-His very opinion in the letter!-Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain! worse than brutish!-Go, sırrah, seek him; I'll apprehend him.-Abominable villain !-Where is he?

Edm. 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 shall 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.

Glo. Think you so?

Edm. 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.

Glo. He cannot be such a monster.
Edm. Nor is not, sure.

Glo. 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.

Edm. I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal.

Glo. 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 affects:-love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked between 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!-Strange! strange! [Exit.

Edm. This is the excellent foppery of the world! that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeit of our own behaviour), we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the 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! 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!-Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar

Enter EDGAR.

And pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy. My cue is villanous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam.-O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.

Edg. How now, brother Edmund? What serious contemplation are you in?

Edm. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses.

Edg. Do you busy yourself with that? Edm. 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.

Edg. How long have you been a sectary astronomical?

Edm. Come, come; when saw you my father last?
Edg. Why, the night gone by.
Edm. Spake you with him?

Edg. Ay, two hours together.

Edm. Parted you in good terms? found you no displeasure in him, by word or countenance? Edg. None at all.

Edm. Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended him and at my entreaty forbear his presence till 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.

Edg. Some villain hath done me wrong.

Edm. 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 you, go; there's my key. If you do stir abroad, go armed. Edg. Armed, brother?

Edm. Brother, I advise you to the best. I am no honest man if there be any good meaning towards you: I have told you what I have seen and heard but faintly: nothing like the image and horror of it. Pray you, away.

Edg. Shall I hear from you anon?
Edm. 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 Steward.

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

Stew. Ay, madam.

Gon. 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.
Stew. He's coming, madam; I hear him.
[Horns within.
Gon. Put on what weary negligence you please,
You and your fellows; I'd have it come to
question:

If he dislike it, let him to my 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 used
With checks, as flatteries,-when they are seen
abused.

Remember what I have said.

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 judgment; 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 as poor for a subject as he is 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 hither. Enter Steward.

You, you, sirrah, where 's my daughter?
Stew. So please you,―

fool

[Exit.

Lear. What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll back. Where's my fool, ho?—I think the world's asleep.-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 judgment, 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 dependents as in the duke himself also, and your daughter.

Lear. Ha! sayst 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 is 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.-Go you, call hither my fool.

Re-enter Steward.

O, you, sir, you sir, come you hither. Who am I, sir?

Stew. My lady's father.

Lear. My lady's father! my lord's knave: you whoreson dog! you slave! you cur! Stew. I am none of this, my lord: I beseech you pardon me.

Lear. Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal? [Striking num.

Stew. I'll not be struck, my lord.