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Stand Up for Bastards

A thriller monologue from King Lear by William Shakespeare. About 1 min.

Edmund, the Earl of Gloucester’s illegitimate son, resolves to take his brother’s inheritance.

Edmund
20s to 30s. A bastard son with a forged letter

  1. Alone, with a letter in his hand.

  2. Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound.

  3. Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom, and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me?

  4. For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines Lag of a brother?

  5. Why bastard? Wherefore base?

  6. When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous, and my shape as true As honest madam’s issue?

  7. Why brand they us With base? With baseness? bastardy? Base, base?

  8. Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality

  9. Than doth within a dull stale tired bed Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops Got ’tween asleep and wake?

  10. Well then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:

  11. Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund As to the legitimate: fine word: legitimate!

  12. Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top the legitimate.

  13. I grow, I prosper.

  14. Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

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Public domain, William Shakespeare, 1606. Text from Project Gutenberg #1532.

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