Raise me this beggar and deject that lord–

The senator shall bear contempt hereditary,

The beggar native honour.

It is the pasture lards the wether’s sides,

The want that makes him lean. Who dares, who dares,

In purity of manhood stand upright,

And say ‘This man’s a flatterer’? If one be,

So are they all, for every grise of fortune

Is smoothed by that below. The learnèd pate

Ducks to the golden fool. All’s obliquy,

There’s nothing level in our cursèd natures

But direct villainy. Therefore be abhorred

All feasts, societies, and throngs of men.

His semblable, yea, himself, Timon disdains.

Destruction fang mankind. Earth, yield me roots.

He digs

Who seeks for better of thee, sauce his palate

With thy most operant poison. What is here?

Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold?

No, gods, I am no idle votarist.

Roots, you clear heavens! Thus much of this will make

Black white, foul fair, wrong right,

Base noble, old young, coward valiant.

Ha, you gods! Why this? What, this, you gods? Why, this

Will lug your priests and servants from your sides,

Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads.

This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions, bless th’ accursed,

Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves

And give them title, knee, and approbation,

With senators on the bench. This is it

That makes the wappened widow wed again –

She whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores

Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices

To th’April day again. Come, damned earth,

Thou common whore of mankind, that puts odds

Among the rout of nations, I will make thee

Do thy right nature.

King Lear

[I, ii, 1–22] What makes a bastard less worthy than his legitimate brother? Conceived on the wrong side of the blanket, Edmund, Gloucester’s bastard son, resolves that he will be no respecter of right in his own conduct:

Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should I

Stand in the plague of custom and permit

The curiosity of nations to deprive me,

For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines

Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?

When my dimensions are as well-compact,

My mind as generous, and my shape as true

As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us

With ‘base’? with ‘baseness’? ‘bastardy’? ‘base, base’?

Who in the lusty stealth of nature take

More composition and fierce quality

Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed

Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops

Got ’tween asleep and wake? Well then,

Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.

Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund

As to the legitimate. Fine word ‘legitimate’!

Well, my ‘legitimate’, if this letter speed

And my invention thrive, Edmund the base

Shall top the legitimate. I grow. I prosper.

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

[II, iii, 1–21] His beloved father turned against him by his bastard brother’s machinations, Edgar must flee for his life in disguise. So crazy do things seem to be that he can think of no better shape to adopt for his flight than that of the wandering, ranting Bedlam beggar: