EDMUND.
Thou hast spoken right, ’tis true;
The wheel is come full circle; I am here.
ALBANY.
Methought thy very gait did prophesy
A royal nobleness. I must embrace thee.
Let sorrow split my heart if ever I
Did hate thee or thy father.
EDGAR.
Worthy prince, I know’t.
ALBANY.
Where have you hid yourself?
How have you known the miseries of your father?
EDGAR.
By nursing them, my lord. List a brief tale;
And when ’tis told, O that my heart would burst!
The bloody proclamation to escape
That follow’d me so near,—O, our lives’ sweetness!
That with the pain of death we’d hourly die
Rather than die at once!—taught me to shift
Into a madman’s rags; t’assume a semblance
That very dogs disdain’d; and in this habit
Met I my father with his bleeding rings,
Their precious stones new lost; became his guide,
Led him, begg’d for him, sav’d him from despair;
Never,—O fault!—reveal’d myself unto him
Until some half hour past, when I was arm’d;
Not sure, though hoping of this good success,
I ask’d his blessing, and from first to last
Told him my pilgrimage. But his flaw’d heart,
Alack, too weak the conflict to support!
’Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,
Burst smilingly.
EDMUND.
This speech of yours hath mov’d me,
And shall perchance do good, but speak you on;
You look as you had something more to say.
ALBANY.
If there be more, more woeful, hold it in;
For I am almost ready to dissolve,
Hearing of this.
EDGAR.
This would have seem’d a period
To such as love not sorrow; but another,
To amplify too much, would make much more,
And top extremity.
Whilst I was big in clamour, came there a man
Who, having seen me in my worst estate,
Shunn’d my abhorr’d society; but then finding
Who ’twas that so endur’d, with his strong arms
He fastened on my neck, and bellow’d out
As he’d burst heaven; threw him on my father;
Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him
That ever ear receiv’d, which in recounting
His grief grew puissant, and the strings of life
Began to crack. Twice then the trumpets sounded,
And there I left him tranc’d.
ALBANY.
But who was this?
EDGAR.
Kent, sir, the banish’d Kent; who in disguise
Follow’d his enemy king and did him service
Improper for a slave.