GLOUCESTER.
Kent banish’d thus! and France in choler parted!
And the King gone tonight! Prescrib’d his pow’r!
Confin’d to exhibition! All this done
Upon the gad!—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 know no news, my lord.
GLOUCESTER.
What paper were you reading?
EDMUND.
Nothing, my lord.
GLOUCESTER.
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.
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 perus’d, I find it not fit for your o’er-looking.
GLOUCESTER.
Give me the letter, sir.