“'This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,

when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit

of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our

disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as

if we were villains on necessity; fools by

heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and

treachers by spherical pre-dominance; drunkards,

liars, and adulterers by an enforc'd obedience of

planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,

by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion

of whore-master 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 am,

had the maidenliest star in the firmament

twinkled on my bastardizing.”

—EDMUND, KING LEAR, ACT I SCENE 2