Shake-Speare:
Edmund: [To Gloucester] I have heard him [Edgar] oft maintain it to be fit that
sons at perfect age and father declined, the father should be as a ward to the son,
and the son manage his revenue.
sons at perfect age and father declined, the father should be as a ward to the son,
and the son manage his revenue.
King Lear 1.2.72-75
Bacon: Suppose a nation where the custom were that after full age the sons should expulse their fathers and mothers out of their possessions and put them to their pension. [Such cases would be] total violations and perversions of the laws of nature and nations.
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Comment: This is part of the same scene as above. The Arden editor cites two extracts from other authors castigating fathers for keeping their sons out of the father's money. But, unlike the Bacon and Shake-Speare passages, they do not contain, or at least do not express, the idea of fathers being put in ward to their sons. Further, Bacon takes the parents' side in the controversy; and so does Shake-Speare, if his views are reflected in Gloucester's dismissal of the idea as "unnatural", "detested", "brutish", and "abominable".
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