Editorial note
We simplified the text to a more modern English style in order to be more accessible to more diverse demographics, including a younger audience. We started by translating the Shakespearean English (f, v, u) into everyday language that is widely understood. Additionally, we took out unnecessary filler words which took away from the overall clarity of the Quarto, while maintaining a formal and academic tone that Shakespeare is meant to be experienced in. We also unabbreviated the names of Regan, Gonriel, and Gloucester as well as replacing "bastard" with "Edmund".
The first part of the page picks up after Lear's banishment of Kent with Gonriel and Regan's private discussion. They are talking about their concern over their father's behavior. The sisters both agree that even in his prime he was always impulsive and reckless and so it makes sense that when he's old he would become only more unstable and irrational, they list Kent's banishment as evidence of his extreme outbursts. The sisters are already conspiring against Lear for their own benefit, using his increasingly unstable nature as a justification. The second section is Edmund's soliloquy leading into the trick he plays on his father. He rants about the unfairness of society and how it treats him as less than because he was born a bastard. He argues that nature makes him just as smart, strong, and worthy as Edgar, the legitimate son; going on to mock the idea that marriage should dictate inheritance. Edmund reveals and executes his plans to take Edgar's inheritance for himself.
Clarifying King Lear
...dearly known himself.
Gonriel: The best and fondest of his time has been but rash, then must we look to receive from his age not alone the imperfection of long ingrafted condition, but with that unruly waywardness, that infirm and choleric years bring with them.
Regan: Such instability are we like to have from him, as this of Kents banishment.
Gonriel: There is further complement of leave taken between France and him, pray lets work 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 it.
Gonriel: We must do something, and while the moment is hot.
Enter Edmund
Edmund: You, Nature, are my Goddess, to thy law my services are bound, why should I stand for the plague of custom and permit it to deprive me, for that I am some twelve or 14 moonshines short of a brother, why bastard? Why base, when I am just as physically, mentally, and morally capable as any legitimate-born child, why brand they us with base, bastardy? When in the lusty stealth of nature, there is more passion and ferocity than within a stale dull lyed¹ bed, creating a whole tribe of fools between sleep and wake; well the² legitimate Edgar, I must have you land, our Fathers love is to the bastard Edmund, as to the legitimate, well my legitimate, if this letter speed, and my plan succeeds, Edmund the base shall be the legitimate: I grow, I prosper, now Gods stand up for Bastards.
Enter Gloucester.
Gloucester: Kent banished thus, and France in weakness parted, and the King gone to night, subscribed his power, confined to exhibition, goaded into it; Edmund how now what news?
Edmund: So please your Lordship, none.
Gloucester: Why so earnestly seek you to hide that letter?
Edmund: I know no news my Lord.
Gloucester: What paper were you reading?
Edmund: Nothing my Lord.
Gloucester...
Image credit: Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library Digital Collections, copy *KC 1608. His True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King Lear and his three Daughters. First Quarto. London: 1608.
Citing this page: Shakespeare, William. King Lear, C1r. London: 1608. Cacodemon Digital Shakespeare. Edited by [your names]. Source edition: Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library (*KC 1608). http://cacodemonshakespeare.com/tragedies/lear/c1r.
Notes
- tired
- then
