King Lear | Page 7

[Putting up the letter.]
Glou. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
Edm. I know no news, my lord.
Glou. What paper were you reading?
Edm. Nothing, my lord.
Glou. No? What needed, then, that terrible dispatch 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; and for so much as I have perus'd, I find it not fit
for your o'erlooking.
Glou. 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.
Glou. 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.
Glou. [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.' Hum!
Conspiracy?--'Sleep till I 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.
Glou. 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.
Glou. It is his.
Edm. It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the contents.
Glou. Hath he never before sounded you in this business?

Edm. Never, my lord: but I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit that,
sons at perfect age, and fathers declined, the father should be as ward to
the son, and the son manage his revenue.
Glou. 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
testimony of his 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 that he hath writ this to
feel my affection to your honour, and to no other pretence of danger.
Glou. 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.
Glou. He cannot be such a monster.
Edm. Nor is not, sure.
Glou. 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.
Glou. 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 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.--And the noble and
true-hearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty!--'Tis 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