THE FOLLYE OF ASTROL'GY
From Lear, this is the young Edmund's abrupt rejoinder to his father's (Earl of Gloucester) whinging speech bemoaning the 'late eclipses' which 'portend no good to us'. It's fantastic.
Edmund:
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune - often the surfeits of our own behaviour - we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obediance of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting-on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star. My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising. Edgar -
(Enter Edgar)
pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy. My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o'Bedlam. (Aloud) O these eclipses do portend these divisions.
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According to the notes, the 'Fut' (clearly an intensifying or exclamatory word) derives from 'By Christ's foot'. D'you remember when people used to say (disbelievingly) 'My foot!'? Now it's only ever 'My arse'. So, for a modern translation, substitute 'arse' for 'fut'. (As if Puskas needs any help with this)
From Lear, this is the young Edmund's abrupt rejoinder to his father's (Earl of Gloucester) whinging speech bemoaning the 'late eclipses' which 'portend no good to us'. It's fantastic.
Edmund:
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune - often the surfeits of our own behaviour - we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obediance of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting-on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star. My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising. Edgar -
(Enter Edgar)
pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy. My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o'Bedlam. (Aloud) O these eclipses do portend these divisions.
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According to the notes, the 'Fut' (clearly an intensifying or exclamatory word) derives from 'By Christ's foot'. D'you remember when people used to say (disbelievingly) 'My foot!'? Now it's only ever 'My arse'. So, for a modern translation, substitute 'arse' for 'fut'. (As if Puskas needs any help with this)
