No unchaste action, or dishonored step,

That hath deprived me of your grace and favor;
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,
Hath lost me in your liking.

Lear.

Better thou

Hadst not been born, than not to have pleased 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 Burgundy,
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 proposed,
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 Burgundy!

Since that respects of fortune are his love,

I shall not be his wife.

France. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!

Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon;

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

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

My love should kindle to inflamed respect.

Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance,
Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France;

Not all the dukes of waterish Burgundy

Shall buy this unprized 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, CORNWALL, ALBANY, GLOSTER, and Attendants.

France. Bid farewell to your sisters.

Cor. The jewels of our father, with washed eyes
VOL. IV.-21

Cordelia leaves you; I know you what you are;
And, like a sister, am most loath to call

Your faults, as they are named. 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 received 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 choleric years bring with him.

Reg. Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him, as of this Kent's banishment.

Gon. There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and him. 'Pray you, let us hit together. 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 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 awake?-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 GLOSTER,

Glo. Kent banished thus! and France in choler parted! And the king gone to-night! subscribed his power! Confined to exhibition! All this done

Upon the gad! Edmund! how now? what news?
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'erread; for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your overlooking.

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 forever, and live the beloved of your brother, Edgar!- Humph - 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.

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 ye to suspend your indignation against my brother, till you can derive from him better testimony of his intent, you shall run a certain course; where, if you violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great gap in your own honor, 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 honor, and to no other pretence of danger.

Glo. Think you so?

Edm. If your honor 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.

Glo. He cannot be such a monster.

[Edm. Nor is not, sure.

Glo. 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.

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 bond 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! [Exit.

Edm. 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 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.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 villanous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom