William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition (413 page)

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Authors: William Shakespeare

Tags: #Drama, #Literary Criticism, #Shakespeare

BOOK: William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition

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EDMUND 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 this 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 honour and shake in pieces the heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life for him he hath wrote this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no further pretence of danger.

GLOUCESTER Think you so?

EDMUND 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.

GLOUCESTER He cannot be such a monster.

EDMUND Nor is pilot, 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 your business after your own wisdom. I would unstate myself to be in a due resolution.

EDMUND I shall seek him, sir, presently, convey the business as I shall see 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 reason thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities mutinies, in countries discords, palaces treason, the bond cracked between son and father. 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

EDMUND 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 treacherers 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 stars! 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. Fut! I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star of the firmament twinkled on my bastardy. Edgar ...

Enter Edgar

and on’s cue out he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy; mine is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like them of Bedlam.—O, these eclipses do portend these divisions.

EDGAR How now, brother Edmund, what serious contemplation are you in?

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

EDGAR Do you busy yourself about that?

EDMUND I promise you, the effects he writ 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.

EDGAR How long have you been a sectary astronomical?

EDMUND Come, come, when saw you my father last?

EDGAR Why, the night gone by.

EDMUND Spake you with him?

EDGAR Two hours together.

EDMUND Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him by word or countenance?

EDGAR None at all.

EDMUND 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 scarce allay.

EDGAR Some villain hath done me wrong.

EDMUND That’s my fear, brother. I advise you to the best. Go armed. 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.

EDGAR Shall I hear from you anon?

EDMUND 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

Sc. 3
Enter Gonoril and Oswald, her gentleman

GONORIL

Did my father strike my gentleman
For chiding of his fool?

OSWALD Yes, madam.

GONORIL

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.

⌈Hunting horns within⌉

OSWALD He’s coming, madam. I hear him.

GONORIL

Put on what weary negligence you please,
You and your fellow servants. I’d have it come in
question.
If he dislike it, let him to our 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 tell you.

OSWALD Very well, madam.

GONORIL

And let his knights have colder looks among you.
What grows of it, no matter. Advise your fellows so.
I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall,
That I may speak. I’ll write straight to my sister
To hold my very course. Go prepare for dinner.

Exeunt severally

Sc. 4
Enter the Earl of Kent, disguised

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 razed my likeness. Now, banished Kent,
If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemned,
Thy master, whom thou lov’st, shall find thee full of
labour.

Enter King Lear and servants from hunting

LEAR Let me not stay a jot for dinner. Go get it ready.

⌈Exit one⌉

(
To Kent
) How now, what art thou?

KENT A man, sir.

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 judgement, 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’rt 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 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 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 fool hither.

⌈
Exit one
⌉

Enter Oswald the steward

You, sirrah, where’s my daughter?

OSWALD So please you—

Exit

LEAR What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll back.

Exeunt Servant ⌈and Kent⌉

Where’s my fool? Ho, I think the world’s asleep.

Enter the Earl of Kent ⌈and a Servant⌉

How now, where’s that mongrel?

KENT He says, my lord, your daughter is not well.

LEAR Why came not the slave back to me when I called him?

SERVANT Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner he would not.

LEAR A would not?

SERVANT My lord, I know not what the matter is, but to my judgement your highness is not entertained with that ceremonious affection as you were wont. There’s a great abatement appears as well in the general dependants as in the Duke himself also, and your daughter.

LEAR Ha, sayst thou so?

SERVANT I beseech you pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken, for my duty cannot be silent when I think your highness 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 purport of unkindness. I will look further into’t. But where’s this fool? I have not seen him these two days.

SERVANT Since my young lady’s going into France, sir, the fool hath much pined away.

LEAR No more of that, I have noted it. Go you and tell my daughter I would speak with her.
⌈Exit one⌉
Go you, call hither my fool.
⌈Exit one⌉

Enter Oswald the steward ⌈crossing the stage⌉

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

OSWALD My lady’s father.

LEAR My lady’s father? My lord’s knave, you whoreson dog, you slave, you cur!

OSWALD I am none of this, my lord, I beseech you pardon me.

LEAR Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?

⌈
Lear strikes him⌉

OSWALD I’ll not be struck, my lord—

KENT (
tripping him
) Nor tripped neither, you base football player.

LEAR (to Kent) I thank thee, fellow. Thou serv’st me, and I’ll love thee.

KENT (
to Oswald
) Come, sir, I’ll teach you differences. Away, away. If you will measure your lubber’s length again, tarry; but away if you have wisdom.

Exit Oswald

LEAR Now, friendly knave, I thank thee.

Enter Lear’s Fool

There’s earnest of thy service.

He gives Kent money

FOOL Let me hire him, too. (To Kent) Here’s my coxcomb.

LEAR How now, my pretty knave, how dost thou?

FOOL (to Kent) Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.

KENT Why, fool?

FOOL Why, for taking one’s part that’s 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 hath banished two on’s daughters and done the third a blessing against his will. If thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb. (To Lear) How now, nuncle? Would I had two coxcombs and two daughters.

LEAR Why, my boy?

FOOL If I gave them my living I’d keep my coxcombs myself. There’s mine; beg another off thy daughters.

LEAR Take heed, sirrah—the whip.

FOOL Truth is a dog that must to kennel. He must be whipped out when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink.

LEAR A pestilent gall to me!

FOOL ⌈
to Kent
⌉ Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech.

LEAR Do.

FOOL Mark it, uncle.