уильям шекспир - King Lear

When my dimensions are as well compact 7,

My mind as generous, and my shape as true 8,

As honest madam’s issue 9? Why brand they us

With base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base, base?

Who in the lusty stealth of nature take 11

More composition and fierce quality 12

Than doth within a dull, stale, tirèd bed,

Go to th’creating a whole tribe of fops 14

Got 15’tween a sleep and wake? Well then,

Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:

Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund

As 18to th’legitimate — fine word, ‘legitimate’ —

Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed 19

And my invention 20thrive, Edmund the base

Shall to th’legitimate 21. I grow, I prosper:

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Enter Gloucester

GLOUCESTER Kent banished thus? And France in choler parted 23?

And the king gone tonight? Prescribed 24his power,

Confined to exhibition 25? All this done

Upon the gad 26? Edmund, how now? What news?

Hides the letter

EDMUND So please your lordship, none.

GLOUCESTER Why so earnestly seek you to put up 28that letter?

EDMUND I know no news, my lord.

GLOUCESTER What paper were you reading?

EDMUND Nothing, my lord.

GLOUCESTER No? What needed, then, that terrible dispatch 32of 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.

EDMUND I beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a letter from my

brother that I have not all o’er-read; and for 37so much as I

have perused, I find it not fit for your o’erlooking 38.

GLOUCESTER Give me the letter, sir.

EDMUND I shall offend either to detain or give it: the contents,

as in part I understand them, are to blame.

Edmund gives the letter

GLOUCESTER Let’s see, let’s see.

EDMUND I hope for my brother’s justification he wrote this

but as an essay or taste 44of my virtue.

GLOUCESTER Reads ‘This policy and reverence of age 45makes the

world bitter to the best of our times, keeps our fortunes 46from

us till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle 47

and fond 48bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny, who

sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered 49. 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.’

Hum! 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?

EDMUND It was not brought me, my lord; there’s the cunning

of it: I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet 58.

GLOUCESTER You know the character 59to be your brother’s?

EDMUND If the matter 60were good, my lord, I durst swear it

were his, but in respect of that I would fain 61think it were not.

GLOUCESTER It is his.

EDMUND 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?

EDMUND Never, my lord: but I have heard him oft maintain it

to be fit that, sons at perfect age and fathers declined 67, the

father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his

revenue.

GLOUCESTER 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 72him.

Abominable 73villain, where is he?

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 his intent, you should

run a certain course, where, if you violently proceed 77against

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 80my life for him, that he hath

writ this to feel 81my affection to your honour, and to no other

pretence 82of danger.

GLOUCESTER Think you so?

EDMUND If your honour judge it meet 84, I will place you where

you shall hear us confer of this, and by an auricular 85

assurance have your satisfaction 86, and that without any

further delay than this very evening.

GLOUCESTER He cannot be such a monster. Edmund, seek him

out: wind me into him, I pray you: frame 89the business after

your own wisdom. I would unstate myself to be in a due 90

resolution.

EDMUND I will seek him, sir, presently: convey 92the business as

I shall find means and acquaint you withal 93.

GLOUCESTER These late 94eclipses in the sun and moon portend no

good to us: though the wisdom of nature 95can reason it thus

and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent 96

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 prediction: there’s son against father.

The king falls from bias of nature 101: 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 104

shall lose thee nothing. Do it carefully.— And the noble and

true-hearted Kent banished! His offence, honesty! ’Tis

strange.

Exit

EDMUND This is the excellent foppery 108of the world, that when

we are sick in fortune — often the surfeits 109of our own

behaviour — we make guilty of our disasters 110the sun, the

moon 111and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by

heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves and treachers 112by

spherical predominance 113, 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 115

of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish 116disposition on the

charge of a star! My father compounded 117with my mother

under the dragon’s tail and my nativity was under Ursa 118

Major, so that it follows I am rough 119and lecherous. I should

have been that I am had the maidenliest 120star in the

firmament twinkled on my bastardizing 121.

Enter Edgar

Pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue 122

is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o’Bedlam 123.—

O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi 124.

EDGAR How now, brother Edmund, what serious

contemplation are you in?

EDMUND I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this 127

other day, what should follow these eclipses.

EDGAR Do you busy yourself with that?

EDMUND I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed 130

unhappily 131. When saw you my father last?

EDGAR The night gone by.

EDMUND Spake you with him?

EDGAR Ay, two hours together.

EDMUND Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure

in him by word nor countenance 136?

EDGAR None at all.

EDMUND Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended

him, and at my entreaty forbear 139his presence until some little

time hath qualified 140the heat of his displeasure, which at this

instant so rageth in him that with the mischief of your 141

person it would scarcely allay 142.