William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear

ACT I. 2. Scene II. A Hall in the Earl of Gloster's Castle. (continued)

Glou.
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?

Edm.
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 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 that he hath writ this to feel my affection to your
honour, and to no other pretence of danger.

Glou.
Think you so?

Edm.
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.

Glou.
He cannot be such a monster.

Edm.
Nor is not, sure.

Glou.
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.

Edm.
I will seek him, sir, presently; convey the business as I shall
find means, and acquaint you withal.

Glou.
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: 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 banished! his
offence, honesty!--'Tis strange.

[Exit.]