[Enter GLOUCESTER and EDMUND] 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: impiety, unnaturalness, death, disfavour, dissension, and I know not what. Have you any letters from my lord of Cornwall? EDMUND I shall serve you, sir, truly, however else. GLOUCESTER That's my good fellow. I will reward thy loyalty. Here's gold for you. EDMUND How, my lord, I may be censured, that nature thus gives way to loyalty, something fears me to think of. GLOUCESTER What mean you by that? EDMUND I mean, my lord, that this letter is but a counterfeit; and yet, to be plain with you, these injunctions are but a device to set me against my brother; the which I will not do. GLOUCESTER How! EDMUND I beseech you, sir, question me no further. I would fain be loyal to you. 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; for so much as I have perused, I find it not fit for your o'er-looking. 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 [Giving the letter] I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue. GLOUCESTER [Reading] '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 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 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 declined, 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 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 wrote this to feel my affection to your honour, and to no 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 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: impiety, unnaturalness, death, disfavour, dissension, and I know not what. [Exit] 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 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 bastardry. Edgar-- [Enter EDGAR] and pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is villanous 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? EDGAR Come, come; when saw you my father last? EDMUND Why, the night gone by. EDGAR Spake you with him? EDMUND Ay, two hours together. EDGAR Parted you in good terms? Found you no displeasure in him by word or countenance? EDMUND None at all. EDGAR 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 practises ride easy! All with me's meet That I can fashion fit. [Exit]