Title: Act VI, scene 1 (The King's castle)
Author: sabcatt

Fandom: King Lear (Shakespeare)
Prompt: long
Rating: T
Words: 595
Dramatis personae: Duke of Albany, Edgar (now Earl of Gloucester)

Summary: Some time after the curtain falls, Albany and Gloucester talk.
Notes: A character study in script format. Contains references to Renaissance-tragedy-typical death, murder, etc. Stylistically imitating Shakespeare, hence the diction, styling, and lack of stage directions.



Enter the Duke of Albany and Earl of Gloucester severally.

Alb.
Here's a stormy face. What's the grim matter that thus disposes you, my lord of Gloucester?

Glou.
A trifling matter, sir. You need not concern yourself with't, nor with me.

Alb.
Is't so?

Glou.
Nay, not so. Your pardon, sir; I here have let my darker nature lead me where I must not.

Alb.
You have it. But truly, what is't disturbs you so? As we have all lately had our share of darkness, I blame you not for being o'ertaken by such a mood; but speak, and you may find it lightens on you.

Glou.
I was thinking of my brother, sir.

Alb.
Ah.

Glou.
Quite so.

Alb.
The ills he did will not soon heal, and 'tis the honorable office of a son to mourn the father. It may be small comfort, but comfort you nonetheless to know the more honor than that have you, who revealed and rightly ended the traitor who did such wrongs upon your noble father, those the greatest but not last of his sins; and though among the least were those upon me, for by your intervention he had not the chance to practise them, I thank and honor you as well.

Glou.
I would my heart were of a kind with yours. 'Twould ease me to be so.

Alb.
How mean you?

Glou.
Have you a brother, sir? Or sister?

Alb.
One sister, long since wed. I do not see her oft.

Glou.
'Tis strange. My brother... nine years he spent away, at my father's edict. Our father's. Bare weeks had we 'twixt his return and his away again, this time by mine own hand. Now he will return ne'er. I know 'tis well as 'twill, and better; the better best for all of us, methinks. But still, there's something in me that mourns.

Alb.
Your father, Lady Cordelia, the King, and now noble Kent... There's much to mourn.

Glou.
Not this, my lord. Not the bastard, half-kin villain that he was. But the brother before that...

Alb.
Was false, cold, conniving, full of schemes, sweet only in th'employment of his aims. I know it as well; he and my wife were of a kind. I only wish them pleasure of each other in whatever cold beyond they find themselves; and Regan too. If the gods will, all the pleasure they would have given unto us, may they practise upon each other. I say, good riddance.

Glou.
So you have found the hardened heart that Goneril and old King Lear long did despair you lacked.

Alb.
Perhaps I did, i'th'end, profit off the lessons of one or th'other.

Glou.
Perhaps, if you do feel such learning's profitable. For me, sir, I did love Edmund too long to make cease now.

Alb.
'Tis fair waste of fair thought on a false and vile treacher.

Glou.
Yet does the mind, bootless, try to 'press upon the heart, and the heart make no such change. I cannot but go on thinking fair o'the dark, and so darkening me by my fairness. Good day, sir.

Exeunt Gloucester.

Alb.
A noble spirit doth young Gloucester show
Yet shows too lack of wisdom in's decree,
Sith charity can wound as well as hate.
I like not setting in the place of King
One who, in hopes of 'scaping old Lear's faults
Would fortune bring full circle by reverse.
Thusly I find myself i'the self-same mind
That once, in wife, I thought and called unkind.

Exeunt.