(Line differences from Q1 are in brackets, lines in F1 only are in italics)
Act 1 Scene 2
Enter EDMUND, with a letter
EDMUND
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 GLOUCESTER
GLOUCESTER
Kent banish’d thus, and France in choler parted?
And the king gone tonight, prescribed [subscribed] his power,
Confined to exhibition? All this done
Upon the gad! Edmund, how now, what news?
EDMUND
So please your lordship, none.
GLOUCESTER
Why so earnestly seek you to put up that 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 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.
EDMUND
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 perused, I find it not
fit for your o’er-looking [liking].
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.
GLOUCESTER
Let’s see, let’s see.
EDMUND
I hope, for my brother’s justification, he wrote
this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.
GLOUCESTER
(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?
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.
GLOUCESTER
You know the character to be your brother’s?
EDMUND
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.
GLOUCESTER
It is his?
EDMUND
It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is
not in the contents.
GLOUCESTER
Hath he never heretofore 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 declining, 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 him — abominable villain!
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 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 wrote this to feel my
affection to your honour, and to no other [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 not, 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 the
business after your own wisdom. I would unstate
myself, to be in a due resolution.
EDMUND
I will seek him, sir, presently, convey the
business as I shall find [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 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 GLOUCESTER
EDMUND
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that
when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit
of our own behavior, 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 [spiritual] 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.” [Fut!] I should have been that I am,
had the maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing [bastardy].
Enter EDGAR
[Edgar] — And pat [out] 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.
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 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.
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
Ay, 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 scarcely allay.
EDGAR
Some villain hath done me wrong.
EDMUND
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 ye, go; there’s my key.
If you do stir abroad, go armed.
EDGAR
Armed, brother?
EDMUND
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
Footnotes:
Nature: the natural world, governed by amoral laws of cause and effect, not human decrees and social restrictions, such as the censure of illegitimacy that holds Edmund back (see commentary for more explanation)
Stand … custom: accept the curse that society places on me, just because I’m a bastard
curiosity: moral scruples of a society that looks down on the illegitimate
lag: short of, younger than; Edmund is a year or so younger than Edgar, so he also loses the major part of the inheritance by not being the first-born
wherefore base?: why does my being born illegitimate make me a lowly and unworthy person?
compact: his body and features are well put together; that is, he’s well built and good looking
generous: as well endowed with intellect and ability (not generous in the sense of willing to give to others)
honest madam’s issue: a married woman’s child
Who: the antecedent appears to be “us”; that is, we bastards gain more qualities in our lusty birth than do most legitimate children who are born fools
lusty stealth of nature: the secret, hidden affairs of natural lust
composition and fierce quality: complete and full of energy, robust
dull … bed: reference to the faithful marriage bed, dull and stale because of a lack of variety of lovers
top: rise above, defeat (“top” is the 1768 editor Capell’s suggested correction; Q has “tooth,” F has “to th”)
exhibition: an allowance or pension
gad: goad, as a horse is pricked by a goad; that is, on the spur of the moment
put up: Edmund makes an obvious attempt to hide the letter
terrible dispatch: trying to conceal the letter hastily
policy: the practice of a son having to wait for his father to die in order to receive the inheritance
suffered: allowed, that is, this custom stands only because we permit it
casement of my closet: window of his room
matter: subject matter of the letter
sounded: tested these ideas on you
perfect age: the prime of life
certain course: proceed safely, knowing the path
auricular: hearing with your own ears
wind: work your way into his confidence
unstate … resolution: I would give everything I own to know the truth about this matter
eclipses: Gloucester blames ominous astrological signs for the recent misfortunes
wisdom of nature: scientific learning
sequent: consequent; the effects following these bad omens
prediction: my son’s treason falls under the stars’ influence
bias of nature: Lear has fallen away from the natural bias he should have toward Cordelia
sick in fortune: suffering bad luck
guilty: we blame the results of our own misdeeds on the stars
heavenly compulsion: as if the stars made us act this way without our free will
treachers: traitors, those who commit treachery
spherical predominance: whichever planet he was born under (astrology)
divine thrusting on: influence by the gods
goatish: lustful, after the mythical satyrs which were known to be lecherous
charge: fault (we lay the blame for our own sins on the stars)
compounded: joined with her sexually
dragon’s tail: the constellation of Draco
Ursa Major: the Great Bear (also known as the Big Dipper)
Fut: swear word, short for “God’s foot”
Edgar: When Edmund sees his brother enter, his first few lines are spoken as an aside
pat: immediately (“speak of the devil, here he is”)
castastrophe: conclusion of a play, referring to predictable comedies which resolve the dramatic conflict in the nick of time
Tom o’ Bedlam: a madman from Bethlehem (Bedlam) Hospital (ironically, Edgar will later take on this disguise); Q1 has “them of Bedlam”
portend: predict (ironically echoing his father)
fa, so, la, mi: notes on a scale (singing to himself)
succeed: unfortunately, this man’s unfortunate (unhappy) predictions often come true
nuptial breaches: broken marriages
sectary: believer in astrology
countenance: facial expression
allay: even an injury to you would not appease his anger
continent forbearance: keep a cautious distance
good meaning: if our father means you any good
faintly: my words can barely express the trouble you are in