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!
Kent banish'd 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?
So please your lordship, none.
Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
I know no news, my lord.
What paper were you reading?
Nothing, my lord.
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.
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.
Give me the letter, sir.
I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The
contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.
Let's see, let's see.
I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote
this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.
'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 half his
revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your
brother, .'
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?
It was not brought me, my lord; there's the
cunning of it; I found it thrown in at the
casement of my closet.
You know the character to be your brother's?
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.
It is his.
It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is
not in the contents.
Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business?
Never, my lord: but I have