Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

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The History of King Lear

Sc. 1 Enter the Earl of Kent, the Duke of Gloucester, and Edmund the bastard

KENT I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.

GLOUCESTER It did always seem so to us, but now in the division of the kingdoms it appears not which of the Dukes he values most; for equalities are so weighed that curiosity in neither can make choice of either’s moiety.

KENT Is not this your son, my lord?

GLOUCESTER His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am brazed to it.

KENT I cannot conceive you.

GLOUCESTER Sir, this young fellow’s mother could, whereupon she grew round-wombed and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?

KENT I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.

GLOUCESTER But I have, sir, a son by order of law, some year elder than this, who yet is no dearer in my account. Though this knave came something saucily into the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair, there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged. (To Edmund) Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund?

EDMUND No, my lord.

GLOUCESTER (to Edmund) My lord of Kent. Remember him hereafter as my honourable friend.

EDMUND (to Kent) My services to your lordship.

KENT I must love you, and sue to know you better.

EDMUND Sir, I shall study deserving.

GLOUCESTER (to Kent) He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again.

Sound a sennet

The King is coming.

Enter one bearing a coronet, then King Lear, then the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall; next Gonoril, Regan, Cordelia, with followers

LEAR

Attend my lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.

GLOUCESTER I shall, my liege.

⌈Exit⌉

LEAR

Meantime we will express our darker purposes.

The map there. Know we have divided

In three our kingdom, and ’tis our first intent

To shake all cares and business off our state,

Confirming them on younger years.

The two great princes, France and Burgundy—

Great rivals in our youngest daughter’s love—

Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,

And here are to be answered. Tell me, my daughters,

Which of you shall we say doth love us most,

That we our largest bounty may extend

Where merit doth most challenge it?

Gonoril, our eldest born, speak first.

GONORIL

Sir, I do love you more than words can wield the

matter;

Dearer than eyesight, space, or liberty;

Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;

No less than life; with grace, health, beauty, honour;

As much as child e’er loved, or father, friend;

A love that makes breath poor and speech unable.

Beyond all manner of so much I love you.

CORDELIA (aside)

What shall Cordelia do? Love and be silent.

LEAR (to Gonoril)

Of all these bounds even from this line to this,

With shady forests and wide skirted meads,

We make thee lady. To thine and Albany’s issue

Be this perpetual.—What says our second daughter?

Our dearest Regan, wife to Cornwall, speak.

REGAN Sir, I am made

Of the self-same mettle that my sister is,

And prize me at her worth. In my true heart

I find she names my very deed of love—

Only she came short, that I profess

Myself an enemy to all other joys

Which the most precious square of sense possesses,

And find I am alone felicitate

In your dear highness’ love.

CORDELIA (aside) Then poor Cordelia—

And yet not so, since I am sure my love’s

More richer than my tongue.

LEAR (to Regan)

To thee and thine hereditary ever

Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom, No less in space, validity, and pleasure

Than that confirmed on Gonoril. (To Cordelia) But

now our joy,

Although the last, not least in our dear love:

What can you say to win a third more opulent

Than your sisters?

CORDELIA Nothing, my lord.

LEAR

How? Nothing can come of nothing. Speak again.

CORDELIA

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave

My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty

According to my bond, nor more nor less.

LEAR

Go to, go to, mend your speech a little

Lest it may mar your fortunes.

CORDELIA Good my lord,

You have begot me, bred me, loved me.

I return those duties back as are right fit—

Obey you, love you, and most honour you.

Why have my sisters husbands if they say

They love you all? Haply when I shall wed

That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry

Half my love with him, half my care and duty.

Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters,

To love my father all.

LEAR But goes this with thy heart?

CORDELIA Ay, good my lord.

LEAR So young and so untender?

CORDELIA So young, my lord, and true.

LEAR

Well, let it be so. Thy truth then he thy dower;

For by the sacred radiance of the sun,

The mysteries of Hecate and the night,

By all the operation of the orbs

From whom we do exist and cease to be,

Here I disclaim all my paternal care,

Propinquity, and property of blood,

And as a stranger to my heart and me

Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,

Or he that makes his generation

Messes to gorge his appetite,

Shall be as well neighboured, pitied, and relieved

As thou, my sometime daughter.

KENT Good my +liege-

LEAR

Peace, Kent. Come not between the dragon and his

wrath.

I loved her most, and thought to set my rest

On her kind nursery. ⌈To Cordelia⌉ Hence, and avoid

my sight!—

So be my grave my peace as here I give

Her father’s heart from her. Call France. Who stirs?

Call Burgundy.

⌈Exit one or more⌉

Cornwall and Albany,

With my two daughters’ dowers digest this third.

Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.

I do invest you jointly in my power,

Pre-eminence, and all the large effects

That troop with majesty. Ourself by monthly course,

With reservation of an hundred knights

By you to be sustained, shall our abode

Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain

The name and all the additions to a king.

The sway, revenue, execution of the rest,

Beloved sons, be yours; which to confirm,

This crownet part betwixt you.

KENT Royal Lear,

Whom I have ever honoured as my king,

Loved as my father, as my master followed,

As my great patron thought on in my prayers—

LEAR

The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft.

KENT

Let it fall rather, though the fork invade

The region of my heart. Be Kent unmannerly

When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man?

Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak

When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour’s

bound

When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom,

And in thy best consideration check

This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgement,

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,

Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound

Reverbs no hollowness.

LEAR Kent, on thy life, no more!

KENT

My life I never held but as a pawn

To wage against thy enemies, nor fear to lose it,

Thy safety being the motive.

LEAR Out of my sight!

KENT

See better, Lear, and let me still remain

The true blank of thine eye.

LEAR Now, by Apollo-

KENT

Now, by Apollo, King, thou swear’st thy gods in vain.

LEAR ⌈making to strike himl ⌉

Vassal, recreant!

KENT Do, kill thy physician,

And the fee bestow upon the foul disease.

Revoke thy doom, or whilst I can vent clamour

From my throat I’ll tell thee thou dost evil.

LEAR

Hear me; on thy allegiance hear me!

Since thou hast sought to make us break our vow,

Which we durst never yet, and with strayed pride

To come between our sentence and our power,

Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,

Our potency made good take thy reward:

Four days we do allot thee for provision

To shield thee from dis-eases of the world,

And on the fifth to turn thy hated back

Upon our kingdom. If on the next day following

Thy banished trunk be found in our dominions,

The moment is thy death. Away! By Jupiter,

This shall not be revoked.

KENT

Why, fare thee well, King; since thus thou wilt

appear,

Friendship lives hence, and banishment is here.

(To Cordelia) The gods to their protection take thee,

maid,

That rightly thinks, and hast most justly said.

(To Gonoril and Regan)

And your large speeches may your deeds approve,

That good effects may spring from words of love.

Thus Kent, O princes, bids you all adieu;

He’ll shape his old course in a country new.

Exit

Enter the King of France and the Duke of

Burgundy, with the Duke of Gloucester

GLOUCESTER

Here’s France and Burgundy, my noble lord.

LEAR My lord of Burgundy,

We first address towards you, who with a king

Hath rivalled for our daughter: what in the least

Will you require in present dower with her

Or cease your quest of love?

BURGUNDY Royal majesty,

I crave no more than what your highness offered;

Nor will you tender less.

LEAR Right noble Burgundy,

When she was dear to us we did hold her so;

But now her price is fallen. Sir, there she stands.

If aught within that little seeming substance,

Or all of it, with our displeasure pieced,

And nothing else, may fitly like your grace,

She’s there, and she is yours.

BURGUNDY I know no answer.

LEAR

Sir, will you with those infirmities she owes,

Unfriended, new-adopted to our hate,

Covered with our curse and strangered with our oath,

Take her or leave her?

BURGUNDY Pardon me, royal sir.

Election makes not up on such conditions.

LEAR

Then leave her, sir; for by the power that made me,

I tell you all her wealth. (To France) For you, great

King,

I would not from your love make such a stray

To match you where I hate, therefore beseech you

To avert your liking a more worthier way

Than on a wretch whom nature is ashamed

Almost to acknowledge hers.

FRANCE

This is most strange, that she that even but now

Was your best object, the argument of your praise,

Balm of your age, most best, most dearest,

Should in this trice of time commit a thing

So monstrous to dismantle

So many folds of favour. Sure, her offence

Must be of such unnatural degree

That monsters it, or your fore-vouched affections

Fall’n into taint; which to believe of her

Must be a faith that reason without miracle

Could never plant in me.

CORDELIA (to Lear)

I yet beseech your majestyIf for I want that glib and oily art

To speak and purpose not—since what I well intend,

I’ll do’t before I speak—that you acknow

It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,

No unclean action or dishonoured step

That hath deprived me of your grace and favour,

But even the want of that for which I am rich—

A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue

As I am glad I have not, though not to have it

Hath lost me in your liking.

LEAR Go to, go to.

Better thou hadst not been born than not to have

pleased me better.

FRANCE

Is it no more but this—a tardiness in nature,

That 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 stands

Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?

She is herself a dower.

BURGUNDY 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.

BURGUNDY (to Cordelia)

I am sorry, then, you have so lost a father

That you must lose a husband.

CORDELIA

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 in wat’rish 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 benison.—

Come, noble Burgundy.

[Flourish.! Exeunt Lear and Burgundy, then

Albany, Cornwall, Gloucester, ⌈Edmund,⌉

and followers

FRANCE (to Cordelia) Bid farewell to your sisters.

CORDELIA

Ye jewels of our father, with washed eyes

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.

GONORIL Prescribe not us our duties.

REGAN 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 worst that you have wanted.

CORDELIA

Time shall unfold what pleated cunning hides.

Who covers faults, at last shame them derides.

Well may you prosper.

FRANCE Come, fair Cordelia.

Exeunt France and Cordelia

GONORIL Sister, it is not a little I have to say of what most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father will hence tonight.

REGAN That’s most certain, and with you. Next month with us.

GONORIL 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 judgement he hath now cast her off appears too gross.

REGAN ’Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself.

GONORIL The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash; then must we look to receive from his age not alone the imperfection of long-engrafted condition, but therewithal unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric years bring with them.

REGAN Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent’s banishment.

GONORIL There is further compliment of leave-taking between France and him. Pray, let’s hit together. If our father carry authority with such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us.

REGAN We shall further think on’t.

GONORIL We must do something, and l’th’ heat. Exeunt

Sc. 2 Enter Edmund the bastard

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, base bastardy’,

Who in the lusty stealth of nature take

More composition and fierce quality

Than doth within a stale, dull-eyed bed go

To the creating a whole tribe of fops

Got ’tween a sleep and wake? Well then,

Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.

Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund

As to the legitimate. Well, my legitimate, if

This letter speed and my invention thrive,

Edmund the base shall to th’ legitimate.

I grow, I prosper. Now gods, stand up for bastards!

Enter the Duke of Gloucester. Edmund reads a letter

GLOUCESTER

Kent banished thus, and France in choler parted,

And the King gone tonight, 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 needs 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 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 assay or taste of my virtue.

He gives Gloucester a letter

GLOUCESTER (reads) ‘This policy 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! ‘Slept 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? 70

EDMUND Never, my lord; but I have often heard him maintain it to be fit that, sons at perfect age and fathers declining, his father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage the revenue.

GLOUCESTER O villain, villain—his very opinion in the tetter! Abhorred villain, unnatural, detested, brutish villain—worse than brutish! Go, sir, seek him, ay, 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 this 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 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 pilot, 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 your business after your own wisdom. I would unstate myself to be in a due resolution.

EDMUND I shall seek him, sir, presently, convey the business as I shall 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 thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities mutinies, in countries discords, palaces treason, the bond cracked between son and father. 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

EDMUND 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 treacherers 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 stars! 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 of the firmament twinkled on my bastardy. Edgar ...

Enter Edgar

and on’s cue out he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy; mine is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like them of Bedlam.—O, these eclipses do portend these divisions.

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 writ 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 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 scarce allay.

EDGAR Some villain hath done me wrong.

EDMUND That’s my fear, 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