Page 1791 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

of this, and by an auricular [90] 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 [95] 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 [100] 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 scourg’d
by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, [105] 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 [110] 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 banish’d! his offence, honesty! ’Tis
strange. [115]
Exit.

EDMUND
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,
often the surfeits of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the

sun, the moon, and stars; as if we were villains on necessity, fools by
heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers [120] by spherical