SCENE II. A Hall in GLOSTER'S Castle. Enter EDMUND, with a Letter. Edm. Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines Enter GLOSTER. Glos. Kent banish'd thus! and France in choler parted! And the King gone to-night! subscrib'd his power! Confin'd to exhibition! All this done Upon the gad! 4. Edmund, how now! what news? [Putting up the Letter. Glos. Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter? Edm. I know no news, my lord. Glos. What paper were you reading? Edm. Nothing, my lord. Glos. No? What needed, then, that terrible despatch" 1 In this speech of Edmund you see, as soon as a man cannot reconcile himself to reason, how his conscience flies off by way of appeal to Nature, who is sure upon such occasions never to find fault; and also how shame sharpens a predisposition in the heart to evil. - Coleridge. 2 To "stand in the plague of custom " is, in Edmund's sense, to lie under the ban of conventional disability.. "The curiosity of nations" is the moral strictness of civil institutions. To deprive was sometimes used in the sense of to cut off, exclude, or disinherit. Exhæredo is rendered by this word in the old dictionaries. To top is to rise above, to surpass. See vol. i. page 558, note 33. 4" Subscrib'd his power," is yielded or given up his power; as when we say a man has signed away his wealth, his freedom, or his rights. "Confined to exhibition" is limited to an allowance. So in Ben Jonson's Poetaster: "Thou art a younger brother, and hast nothing but thy bare exhibition." The word is still so used in the English Universities. Upon the gad" is in haste; the same as upon the spur. A gad was a sharp-pointed piece of steel, used in driving oxen; hence goaded. — Parted, fourth line above, is departed. Often so used. See Antony and Cleopatra, 1. 2, note 10. Terrible because done as if from terror. . 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; and for so much as I have perus'd, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking. Glos. 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. Glos. 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. Glos. [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 suffer'd. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep till I wak'd him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, EDGAR. Humph conspiracy! - Sleep till I wak'd 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. Glos. 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. Glos. It is his. Edm. It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is not in the contents. Glos. Hath he never before 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. Glos. Ö 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 shall 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." Glos. 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. Glos. He cannot be such a monster Edm. Nor is not, sure. 8 Glos. 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.9 Edm. I will seek him, sir, presently; convey 10 the business as I shall find means, and acquaint you withal. Glos. 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 scourg'd by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack'd '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 6 Where was continually used for whereas. See vol. i. page 151, note 3. 7 In accordance with old usage, pretence here means purpose or intention. See page 323, note 2. 8 Me is here expletive. See vol. i. page 215, note 3. Wind into him is the same as our phrase "worm yourself into him"; that is, find out his hidden purpose 9 I would give my whole estate, all that I possess, to be satisfied or assured in the matter. The Poet often has resolve in the sense of assure or inform. 10 To convey, as the word is here used, is to manage or carry through a thing adroitly, or as by sleight of hand. See Macbeth, iv. 3, note 8. 11 Though reason or natural philosophy may make out that these strange events proceed from the regular operation of natural laws, and so have no moral purpose or significance, yet we find them followed by calamities, as in punishment of our sins. See vol. i. page 445, note 7. thee nothing; do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banish'd! 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 we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, 12 by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforc'd obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting-on. Edgar!-pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: 14 my cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam. 13 Enter EDGAR. O, these eclipses do portend these divisions! Fa, sol, la, mi.15 Edg. How now, brother Edmund! what serious contemplation are you in? Edm. I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read this other day, what should follow these eclipses. Edg. Do you busy yourself with that? 16 Edm. 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 12 Treachers for traitors. The word is used by Chaucer and Spenser. 13 Warburton thinks that the dotages of judicial astrology were meant to be satirized in this speech. Coleridge remarks upon Edmund's philosophizing as follows: "Thus scorn and misanthropy are often the anticipations and mouthpieces of wisdom in the detection of superstitions. Both individnals and nations may be free from such prejudices by being below them, as well as by rising above them." 14 Perhaps alluding, satirically, to the awkward catastrophies of the old comedies, which were coarsely contrived so as to have the persons enter, pat, just when they were wanted on the stage.. Cue, as here used, is prompt-word or hint. -Bedlam, an old corruption of Bethlehem, was a wellknown hospital for the insane. Tom was a name commonly given to Bedlamites. An instance of it will be seen afterwards in Edgar. 15 Shakespeare shows by the context that he was well acquainted with the property of these syllables in solmization, which imply a series of sounds so unnatural that ancient musicians prohibited their use. The monkish writers on music say mi contra fa est diabolus: the interval fa mi, including a tritonus or sharp fourth, consisting of three tones without the intervention of a semi-tone, expressed in the modern scale by the letters F G A B, would form a musical phrase extremely disagreeable to the ear. Edmund, speaking of the eclipses as portents, compares the dislocation of events, the times being out of joint, to the unnatural and offensive sounds fa sol la mi. — Dr. Burney. 16 Succeed is here used in the Latin sense of follow. See vol. i, page 460, note 1. nobles; needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what. Edg. How long have you been a sectary astronomical ? 17 Edm. Come, come; when saw you my father last? Edm. Spake you with him? Edg. Ay, two hours together. Edm. Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him by word or countenance ? Edg. None at all. Edm. 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. Edg. Some villain hath done me wrong. Edm. 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 arm'd. Edg. Arm'd, brother! Edm. Brother, I advise you to the best; 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. [Exit EDGAR. Edg. Shall I hear from you anon? [Exit. SCENE III. A Room in ALBANY's Palace. Enter GONERIL and OSWALD her Steward.1 Gon: Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his Fool? 17 How long have you belonged to the sect of astronomers? Judicial astrology, as it is called, had its schools and professors in the olden time. 1 66 The Steward," says Coleridge," should be placed in exact antithesis to Kent, as the only character of utter irredeemable baseness in Shakespeare. |