Edgar monologue (Act 7) — Becket and other plays

Jealous of me with Eva! Is it so? Well, tho' I grudge the pretty jewel, that I Have worn, to such a clod, yet that might be The best way out of it, if the child could keep Her counsel. I am sure I wish her happy. But I must free myself from this entanglement. I have all my life before me--so has she-- Give her a month or two, and her affections Will flower toward the light in some new face. Still I am half-afraid to meet her now. She will urge marriage on me. I hate tears. Marriage is but an old tradition. I hate Traditions, ever since my narrow father, After my frolic with his tenant's girl, Made younger elder son, violated the whole Tradition of our land, and left his heir, Born, happily, with some sense of art, to live By brush and pencil. By and by, when Thought Comes down among the crowd, and man perceives that The lost gleam of an after-life but leaves him A beast of prey in the dark, why then the crowd May wreak my wrongs upon my wrongers. Marriage! That fine, fat, hook-nosed uncle of mine, old Harold, Who leaves me all his land at Littlechester, He, too, would oust me from his will, if I Made such a marriage. And marriage in itself-- The storm is hard at hand will sweep away Thrones, churches, ranks, traditions, customs, marriage One of the feeblest! Then the man, the woman, Following their best affinities, will each Bid their old bond farewell with smiles, not tears; Good wishes, not reproaches; with no fear Of the world's gossiping clamour, and no need Of veiling their desires. Conventionalism, Who shrieks by day at what she does by night, Would call this vice; but one time's vice may be The virtue of another; and Vice and Virtue Are but two masks of self; and what hereafter Shall mark out Vice from Virtue in the gulf Of never-dawning darkness?