Lear's Labour's Lost
                                                         copyright © 2007 Jeff Goode

            ACT II

            SCENE 3 -  The Earl of Gloucester's castle.
                  Enter EDMUND, with a letter
            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 moon-shines 
               Lag of a brother? ...
               Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: 
               Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, 
               And my invention thrive, Edmund the base 
               Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper: 
                  Enter GLOUCESTER
            GLOUCESTER 
               Edmund, how now! what news?
            EDMUND
               So please your lordship, none. 
                                                             Putting up the letter
            GLOUCESTER
               Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
            EDMUND
               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.
            GLOUCESTER
               Give me the letter, sir.
            EDMUND
               I hope, for my brother's justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.
            GLOUCESTER 
               [Reads] 
               'I will hereupon confess I am in love: and as it is base for a soldier to love, so am I
               in love with a base wench. 
               'If drawing my sword against the humour of affection would deliver me from the
               reprobate thought of it, I would take Desire prisoner, and ransom him to any
               French courtier for a new-devised courtesy. I think scorn to sigh: methinks I
               should outswear Cupid.
               'Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep till I waked him, I
               should have Jaquenetta for ever, and live the beloved of your brother, EDGAR.'
               My son Edgar! Had he a hand to write this? a heart and brain to breed it in?--
               [Aside] But I do love that country girl that I took in the park with the rational hind
               Costard: she deserves well.
            EDMUND
               [Aside] To be whipped.
            GLOUCESTER 
               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
               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 that:
               A wither'd hermit, five-score winters worn, 
               Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye.
            GLOUCESTER
               O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter! 
               "Beauty doth varnish age, as if new-born, 
               And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy:" 
               Where is he?
            EDMUND
               I do not well know, my lord. 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
               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
               Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the noble and
               true-hearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty! 'Tis strange. 
                                                                      Exit
            EDMUND
               Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
               All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.
                                                                      Exit

Forth!