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Do love you more than words can wield the matter,
Dearer than eye-sight, space and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour:
As much as child e'er lov'd, or father found.
A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable;
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.

silent.

Cor. What shall Cordelia do? Love, and be [Aside. Lear. Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,

With shadowy forests and with champains rich'd,
With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,
We make thee lady: To thine and Albany's issue
Be this perpetual.-What says our second daughter,
Our dearest Regan, wife to Cornwall? Speak.

Reg. I am made of that self metal as my sister,
And prize me at her worth. In my true heart
I find, she names my very deed of love;
Only she comes too short, - that I profess

Myself an enemy to all other joys,

Which the most precious square of sense possesses; And find, I am alone felicitate

In your dear highness' love.

Cor.

Then poor Cordelia! [Aside.

And yet not so; since, I am sure, my love's

More richer than my tongue.

Lear. To thee, and thine, hereditary ever, Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom; No less in space, validity, and pleasure, Than that confirm'd on Goneril. - Now, our joy, Although the last, not least; to whose young love The vines of France, and milk of Burgundy, Strive to be interess'd; what can you say, to draw A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.

Cor. Nothing, my lord. Lear. Nothing?

Cor. Nothing.

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Ay, good my lord.

Lear. So young, and so untender ?

Cor. So young, my lord, and true.

Lear. Let it be so, - Thy truth then be thy

dower:

For, by the sacred radiance of the sun;
The mysteries of Hecate, and the night;
By all the operations of the orbs,
From whom we do exist, and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me

Hold thee, from this, for ever.

The barbarous

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Lear. Peace, Kent!
Come not between the dragon and his wrath :
I lov'd her most, and thought to set my rest
On her kind nursery. - Hence, and avoid my
sight! -
[TO CORDELIA.
So be my grave my peace, as here I give
Her father's heart from her! - Call France; -
Who stirs?

Call Burgundy. - Cornwall, and Albany,
With my two daughters' dowers digest this third:
Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.
I do invest you jointly with my power,
Pre-eminence, and all the large effects

That troop with majesty. - Ourself, by monthly

course,

With reservation of an hundred knights,

By you to be sustain'd, shall our abode

Make with you by due turns. Only we still

retain

The name, and all the additions to a king;
The sway,

Revenue, execution of the rest,

Beloved sons, be yours: which to confirm,
This coronet part between you. Giving the crown.

Kent.

Royal Lear,

Whom I have ever honour'd as my king,
Lov'd as my father, as my master follow'd,
As my great patron thought on in my prayers, -

Lear. The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft.

Kent. Let it fall rather, though the fork invade The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly, When Lear is mad. What would'st thou do, old man?

Think'st thou, that duty shall have dread to speak, When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound,

When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom;
And, in thy best consideration, check
This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgment,
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least;
Nor are those empty-hearted, whose low sound
Reverbs no hollowness.

Lear.

Kent, on thy life, no more.

Kent. My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thine enemies; nor fear to lose it,

Thy safety being the motive.

Lear.

Out of my sight!

Kent. See better, Lear; and let me still remain

The true blank of thine eye.

Lear. Now, by Apollo,

Now, by Apollo, king, | I would not from your love make such a stray,

O, vassal! miscreant!

Kent.

Thou swear'st thy gods in vain.

Lear.

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And, on the sixth, to turn thy hated back

lowing,

To match you where I hate; therefore beseech you
To avert your liking a more worthier way,
Than on a wretch whom nature is asham'd
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-vouch'd affection
Fall into taint: which to believe of her,
Must be a faith, that reason without miracle
Could never plant in me.

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Upon our kingdom: if, on the tenth day fol- No unchaste action, or dishonour'd step,

Thy banish'd trunk be found in our dominions,

The moment is thy death Away! by Jupiter,

This shall not be revok'd.

That hath depriv'd me of your grace and favour:
But even for want of that, for which I am richer;
A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue
That I am glad I have not, though, not to have it,

Kent. Fare thee well, king: since thus thou wilt Hath lost me in your liking.

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Better thou

Had'st not been born, than not to have pleas'd me

better.

France. Is it but this? a tardiness in nature,
Which often leaves the history unspoke,
That it intends to do? - My lord of Burgu ady,
What say you to the lady? Love is not love
When it is mingled with respects, that stand
Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dowry.

Bur.

Royal Lear,

Give but that portion which yourself propos'd,
And here I take Cordelia by the hand,
Duchess of Burgundy.

Lear. Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.
Bur. I am sorry then, you have so lost a father,

That you must lose a husband.

Cor.

Peace be with Burgund!

Since that respects of fortune are his love,
I shall not be his wife.

France. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, be

ing poor;

Most choice, forsaken; and most lov'd, despis'd!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon :

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

Gods, gods! ods! 'tis strange, that from their cold'st

neglect

My love should kindle to inflam'd respect.
Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France :

Not all the dukes of wat'rish Burgundy,

Shall buy this unpriz'd precious maid of me.
Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:

Thou losest here, a better where to find.

Lear. Thou hast her, France: let her be thine;

for we

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 wash'd eyes
Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are;
And, like a sister, am most loath to call
Your faults, as they are nam'd. 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.
So farewell to you both.

Gon. Prescribe not us our duties.
Reg.

Let your study

Be, to content your lord; who hath receiv'd 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 hath 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 cholerick 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 to gether: 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 moon-shines
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,

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news?

Upon the gad! - Edmund! How now; what 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'er-read; 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 essay or taste of my virtue.

Glo. [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 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, Edgar. Humph - Conspiracy! - Sleep till 1 waked 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 this to you? Who brought it?

Edm. It was not brought me, my lord; there's the cunning of it; I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet.

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, sirrah, 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 testi- | ancient amities; divisions in state, menaces and ma

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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 effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the ond 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! [Erit.

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 whore-master 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 villainous 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

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ledictions 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.

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Kent. If but as well I other accents borrow, That can my speech diffuse, my good intent May carry through itself to that full issue For which I raz'd my likeness. Now, banish'd Kent,

If thou can'st serve where thou dost stand condemn'd,

(So may it come!) thy master, whom thou lov'st, Shall find thee full of labours.

Horns within. Enter LEAR, Knights, and
Attendants.

Lear. Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go, get it ready. [Exit an Attendant.] How now, what art

thou?

Kent. A man, sir.

Lear. What dost thou profess? What would'st 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 would'st

thou?

Kent. Service.

Lear. Who would'st 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 qualify'd 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 any thing: 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 fool hither:

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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 call'd him ?

Knight. Sir, he answer'd 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 entertain'd with that ceremonious affection as you were wont; there's a great abatement of kindness appears, as well in the general dependants, as in the duke himself also, and your daughter.

Lear. Ha! say'st 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 wrong'd.

Lear. Thou but remember'st 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 him.

Stew. I'll not be struck, my lord. Kent. Nor tripped neither; you base foot-ball player. [Tripping up his heels.

Lear. I thank thee, fellow; thou servest me, and I'll love thee.

Kent. Come, sir, arise, away; I'll teach you differences; away, away: If you will measure your lubber's length again, tarry: but away: go to; Have you wisdom? so. Pushes the Steward out.

Lear. Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee: there's earnest of thy service. [Giving KENT топгу.

Enter Fool.

Fool. Let me hire him too;-Here's my coxcomb. [Giving KENT his cap. Lear. How now, my pretty knave? how dost thou Fool. Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb. Kent. Why, fool?

Fool. Why? For taking one's part that is out of favour: Nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits, thou'lt catch cold shortly: There, take my coxcomb: Why, this fellow has banish'd two of his daughters, and did the third a blessing against his will; if thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb. - How now, nuncle? 'Would I had two coxcombs, and two daughters!

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