Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law My services are bound. Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base? When my dimensions are as well compact, My mind as generous, and my shape as true, As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us With base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base, base? Who in the lusty stealth of nature take More composition and fierce quality Than doth within a dull, stale, tired bed Go to th' creating a whole tribe of fops Got 'tween asleep and wake?
William Shakespeare (1564–1616), British poet. King Lear (I, ii).
Rejecting conventional morality in favor of the law of the jungle, as he is a "natural" child, a bastard. OHFP. The Unabridged William Shakespeare, William George Clark and William Aldis Wright, eds. (1989) Running Press.