Lear, King of Britain, had three daughters; Gonerill, wife to the Duke
of Albany; Regan, wife to the Duke of Cornwall; and Cordelia, a young
maid, for whose love the King of France and Duke of Burgundy were joint
suitors, and were at this time making stay for that purpose in the
court of Lear.
The old king, worn out with age and the fatigues of government, he
being more than fourscore years old, determined to take no further part
in state affairs, but to leave the management to younger strengths,
that he might have time to prepare for death, which must at no long
period ensue. With this intent he called his three daughters to him, to
know from their own lips which of them loved him best, that he might
part his kingdom among them in such proportions as their affection for
him should seem to deserve.
Gonerill, the eldest, declared that she loved her father more than
words could give out, that he was dearer to her than the light of her
own eyes, dearer than life and liberty, with a deal of such professing
stuff, which is easy to counterfeit where there is no real love, only a
few fine words delivered with confidence being wanted in that case. The
king, delighted to hear from her own mouth this assurance of her love,
and thinking truly that her heart went with it, in a fit of fatherly
fondness bestowed upon her and her husband one third of his ample
kingdom.
Then calling to him his second daughter, he demanded what she had to
say. Regan, who was made of the same hollow metal as her sister, was
not a whit behind in her professions; but rather declared that what
her sister had spoken came short of the love which she professed to
bear for his highness; insomuch that she found all other joys dead, in
comparison with the pleasure which she took in the love of her dear
king and father. Lear blest himself in having such loving children,
as he thought; and could do no less, after the handsome assurances
which Regan had made, than bestow a third of his kingdom upon her and
her husband, equal in size to that which he had already given away to
Gonerill.
Then turning to his youngest daughter Cordelia, whom he called his joy,
he asked what she had to say; thinking no doubt that she would glad
his ears with the same loving speeches which her sisters had uttered,
or rather that her expressions would be so much stronger than theirs,
as she had always been his darling, and favored by him above either of
them. But Cordelia, disgusted with the flattery of her sisters, whose
hearts she knew were far from their lips, and seeing that all their
coaxing speeches were only intended to wheedle the old king out of his
dominions, that they and their husbands might reign in his life-time,
made no other reply but this, that she loved his majesty according to
her duty, neither more nor less. The king, shocked with this appearance
of ingratitude in his favorite child, desired her to consider her
words, and to mend her speech, lest it should mar her fortunes.
Cordelia then told her father, that he was her father, that he had
given her breeding, and loved her, that she returned those duties
back as was most fit, and did obey him, love him, and most honor him.
But that she could not frame her mouth to such large speeches as her
sisters had done, or promise to love nothing else in the world. Why had
her sisters husbands, if (as they said) they had no love for anything
but their father? If she should ever wed, she was sure the lord to whom
she gave her hand would want half her love, half of her care and duty:
she should never marry like her sisters, to love her father all.
Cordelia, who in earnest loved her old father, even almost as
extravagantly as her sisters pretended to do, would have plainly told
him so at any other time, in more daughter-like and loving terms,
and without these qualifications, which did indeed sound a little
ungracious: but after the crafty flattering speeches of her sisters,
which drew such extravagant rewards, she thought the handsomest thing
she could do was to love and be silent. This put her affection out of
suspicion of mercenary ends, and showed that she loved, but not for
gain: and that her professions, the less ostentatious they were, had so
much the more of truth and sincerity than her sisters’.
This plainness of speech, which Lear called pride, so enraged the old
monarch—who in his best of times always showed much of spleen and
rashness, and in whom the dotage incident to old age had so clouded
over his reason, that he could not discern truth from flattery, nor a
gay painted speech from words that came from the heart—that in a fury
of resentment he retracted the third part of his kingdom which he had
reserved for Cordelia, and gave it away from her, sharing it equally
between her two sisters, and their husbands, the Dukes of Albany
and Cornwall; whom he now called to him, and in presence of all his
courtiers, bestowing a coronet between them, invested them jointly with
all the power, revenue, and execution of government, only retaining
to himself the name of king; all the rest of royalty he resigned:
with this reservation, that himself, with a hundred knights for his
attendants, was to be maintained by monthly course in each of his
daughters’ palaces in turn.
So preposterous a disposal of his kingdom, so little guided by reason,
and so much by passion, filled all his courtiers with astonishment and
sorrow; but none of them had the courage to interpose between this
incensed king and his wrath, except the Earl of Kent, who was beginning
to speak a good word for Cordelia, when the passionate Lear on pain
of death commanded him to desist; but the good Kent was not so to be
repelled. He had been ever loyal to Lear, whom he had honored as a
king, loved as a father, followed as a master; and had never esteemed
his life further than as a pawn to wage against his royal master’s
enemies, nor feared to lose it when Lear’s safety was the motive; nor
now that Lear was most his own enemy did this faithful servant of the
king forget his old principles, but manfully opposed Lear, to do Lear
good; and was unmannerly only because Lear was mad. He had been a most
faithful counselor in times past to the king, and he besought him
now, that he would see with his eyes (as he had done in many weighty
matters), and go by his advice still, and in his best consideration
recall this hideous rashness; for he would answer with his life, his
judgment, that Lear’s youngest daughter did not love him least, nor
were those empty-hearted whose low sound gave no token of hollowness.
When power bowed to flattery, honor was bound to plainness. For Lear’s
threats, what could he do to him, whose life was already at his
service, that should not hinder duty from speaking?
The honest freedom of this good Earl of Kent only stirred up the king’s
wrath the more, and like a frantic patient who kills his physician, and
loves his mortal disease, he banished his true servant, and allotted
him but five days to make his preparations for departure; but if on
the sixth his hated person was found within the realm of Britain, that
moment was to be his death. And Kent bade farewell to the king, and
said, that since he chose to show himself in such a fashion, it was but
banishment to stay there; and before he went he recommended Cordelia to
the protection of the gods, the maid who had so rightly thought, and
so discreetly spoken; and only wished that her sisters’ large speeches
might be answered with deeds of love; and then he went, as he said, to
shape his old course to a new country.
The King of France and Duke of Burgundy were now called in to hear the
determination of Lear about his youngest daughter, and to know whether
they would persist in their courtship to Cordelia, now that she was
under her father’s displeasure, and had no fortune but her own person
to recommend her. The Duke of Burgundy declined the match, and would
not take her to wife upon such conditions; but the King of France,
understanding what the nature of the fault had been which had lost her
the love of her father, that it was only a tardiness of speech, and the
not being able to frame her tongue to flattery like her sisters, took
this young maid by the hand, and saying that her virtues were a dowry
above a kingdom, bade Cordelia to take farewell of her sisters, and of
her father, though he had been unkind, and she should go with him, and
be queen of him and of fair France, and reign over fairer possessions
than her sisters: and he called the Duke of Burgundy in contempt a
waterish duke, because his love for this young maid had in a moment run
all away like water.
Then Cordelia, with weeping eyes, took leave of her sisters and
besought them to love their father well, and make good their
professions; and they sullenly told her not to prescribe to them for
they knew their duty, but to strive to content her husband, who had
taken her (as they tauntingly expressed it) as Fortune’s alms. And
Cordelia with a heavy heart departed, for she knew the cunning of her
sisters, and she wished her father in better hands than she was about
to leave him in.
Cordelia was no sooner gone than the devilish dispositions of her
sisters began to show themselves in their true colors. Even before the
expiration of the first month, which Lear was to spend by agreement
with his eldest daughter, Gonerill, the old king began to find out the
difference between promises and performances. This wretch, having got
from her father all that he had to bestow, even to the giving away of
the crown from off his head, began to grudge even those small remnants
of royalty which the old man had reserved to himself, to please his
fancy with the idea of being still a king. She could not bear to see
him and his hundred knights. Every time she met her father, she put on
a frowning countenance; and when the old man wanted to speak with her,
she would feign sickness, or anything to be rid of the sight of him;
for it was plain that she esteemed his old age a useless burden, and
his attendants an unnecessary expense. Not only she herself slackened
in her expressions of duty to the king, but by her example, and (it is
to be feared) not without her private instructions, her very servants
treated him with neglect, and would refuse to obey his orders, or
still more contemptuously pretend not to hear them. Lear could not
but perceive this alteration in the behavior of his daughter, but
he shut his eyes against it as long as he could, as people commonly
are unwilling to believe the unpleasant consequences which their own
mistakes and obstinacy have brought upon them.
True love and fidelity are no more to be estranged by ill, than
falsehood and hollow-heartedness can be conciliated by good usage.
This eminently appears in the instance of the good Earl of Kent, who,
though banished by Lear, and his life made forfeit if he were found in
Britain, choose to stay and abide all consequences, as long as there
was a chance of his being useful to the king, his master. See to what
mean shifts and disguises poor loyalty is forced to submit sometimes;
yet it counts nothing base or unworthy, so as it can but do service
where it owes an obligation. In the disguise of a serving-man, all his
greatness and pomp laid aside, this good earl proffered his services to
the king, who not knowing him to be Kent in that disguise, but pleased
with a certain plainness, or rather bluntness in his answers which the
earl put on, (so different from that smooth oily flattery which he had
so much reason to be sick of, having found the effects not answerable
in his daughter), a bargain was quickly struck, and Lear took Kent
into his service by the name of Caius, as he called himself, never
suspecting him to be his once great favorite, the high and mighty Earl
of Kent. This Caius quickly found means to show his fidelity and love
to his royal master; for Gonerill’s steward that same day behaving in a
disrespectful manner to Lear, and giving him saucy looks and language,
as no doubt he was secretly encouraged to do by his mistress, Caius
not enduring to hear so open an affront put upon majesty, made no more
ado, but presently tripped up his heels, and laid the unmannerly slave
in the kennel, for which friendly service Lear became more and more
attached to him.
Nor was Kent the only friend Lear had. In his degree, and so far as
so insignificant a personage could show his love, the poor fool, or
jester, that had been of his palace while Lear had a palace, as it was
the custom of kings and great personages at that time to keep a fool
(as he was called) to make them sport after serious business. This
poor fool clung to Lear after he had given away his crown, and by his
witty sayings would keep up his good humor, though he could not refrain
sometimes from jeering at his master for his imprudence, in uncrowning
himself and giving all away to his daughters, at which time, as he
rhymingly expressed it, these daughters
For sudden joy did weep,
And he for sorrow sung,
That such a king should play bo-peep,
And go the fools among.
And in such wild sayings and scraps of songs, of which he had plenty,
this pleasant, honest fool poured out his heart even in the presence
of Gonerill herself, in many a bitter taunt and jest which cut to the
quick; such as comparing the king to the hedge-sparrow, who feeds
the young of the cuckoo till they grow old enough, and then has its
head bit off for its pains. And saying that the ass may know when the
cart draws the horse (meaning that Lear’s daughters, that ought to go
behind, now ranked before their father); and that Lear was no longer
Lear, but the shadow of Lear; for which free speeches he was once or
twice threatened to be whipped.
The coolness and falling off of respect which Lear had begun to
perceive, were not all which this foolish-fond father was to suffer
from his unworthy daughter. She now plainly told him that his staying
in her palace was inconvenient so long as he insisted upon keeping up
an establishment of a hundred knights; that this establishment was
useless and expensive, and only served to fill her court with riot and
feasting; and she prayed him that he would lessen their number, and
keep none but old men about him, such as himself, and fitting his age.
Lear at first could not believe his eyes or ears, nor that it was
his daughter who spoke so unkindly. He could not believe that she
who had received a crown from him should seek to cut off his train,
and grudge him the respect due to his old age. But she persisting
in her undutiful demand, the old man’s rage was so excited, that he
called her a detested kite, and said that she spoke an untruth. And
so indeed she did, for the hundred knights were all men of choice
behavior and sobriety of manners, skilled in all particulars of duty,
and not given to rioting and feasting as she said. And he bid his
horses to be prepared, for he would go to his other daughter, Regan,
he and his hundred knights. And he spoke of ingratitude, and said it
was a marble-hearted devil, and showed more hideous in a child than
the sea-monster. And he cursed his eldest daughter Gonerill so as was
terrible to hear, praying that she might never have a child, or if
she had, that it might live to return that scorn and contempt upon
her, which she had shown to him; that she might feel how sharper than
a serpent’s tooth it was to have a thankless child. And Gonerill’s
husband, the Duke of Albany, beginning to excuse himself for any share
which Lear might suppose he had in the unkindness, Lear would not hear
him out, but in rage ordered his horses to be saddled, and set out with
his followers for the abode of Regan, his other daughter. And Lear
thought to himself, how small the fault of Cordelia (if it was a fault)
now appeared, in comparison with her sister’s, and he wept. And then he
was ashamed that such a creature as Gonerill should have so much power
over his manhood as to make him weep.
Regan and her husband were keeping their court in great pomp and state
at their palace; and Lear despatched his servant Caius with letters
to his daughter, that she might be prepared for his reception, while
he and his train followed after. But it seems that Gonerill had been
beforehand with him, sending letters also to Regan, accusing her father
of waywardness and ill humors, and advising her not to receive so great
a train as he was bringing with him. This messenger arrived at the same
time with Caius, and Caius and he met. And who should it be but Caius’
old enemy, the steward, whom he had formerly tripped up by the heels
for his saucy behavior to Lear. Caius not liking the fellow’s look,
and suspecting what he came for, began to revile him, and challenged
him to fight, which the fellow refusing, Caius, in a fit of honest
passion, beat him soundly, as such a mischief-maker and carrier of
wicked messages deserved; which coming to the ears of Regan and her
husband, they ordered Caius to be put in the stocks, though he was a
messenger from the king her father, and in that character demanded the
highest respect, so that the first thing the king saw when he entered
the castle, was his faithful servant Caius sitting in that disgraceful
situation.
This was but a bad omen of the reception which he was to expect; but
a worse followed, when upon inquiry for his daughter and her husband,
he was told they were weary with traveling all night, and could not
see him: and when lastly, upon his insisting in a positive and angry
manner to see them, they came to greet him, whom should he see in their
company but the hated Gonerill, who had come to tell her own story, and
set her sister against the king her father!
This sight much moved the old man, and still more to see Regan take her
by the hand: and he asked Gonerill if she was not ashamed to look upon
his white beard? And Regan advised him to go home again with Gonerill
and live with her peaceably, dismissing half of his attendants, and to
ask her forgiveness; for he was old and wanted discretion, and must be
ruled and led by persons that had more discretion than himself. And
Lear showed how preposterous that would sound, if he were to go down
on his knees, and beg of his own daughter for food and raiment, and he
argued against such an unnatural dependence; declaring his resolution
never to return with her, but to stay where he was with Regan, he and
his hundred knights: for he said that she had not forgot the half of
the kingdom which he had endowed her with, and that her eyes were not
fierce like Gonerill’s, but mild and kind. And he said that rather than
return to Gonerill, with half his train cut off, he would go over to
France, and beg a wretched pension of the king there, who had married
his youngest daughter without a portion.
But he was mistaken in expecting kinder treatment of Regan than he had
experienced from her sister Gonerill. As if willing to outdo her sister
in unfilial behavior, she declared that she thought fifty knights too
many to wait upon him; that five-and-twenty were enough. Then Lear,
nigh heart-broken, turned to Gonerill, and said that he would go
back with her, for her fifty doubled five-and-twenty, and so her love
was twice as much as Regan’s. But Gonerill excused herself and said,
“What need of so many as five-and-twenty? or even ten? or five? when
he might be waited upon by her servants or her sister’s servants?” So
these two wicked daughters, as if they strove to exceed each other in
cruelty to their old father who had been so good to them, by little
and little would have abated him of all his train, all respect (little
enough for him that once commanded a kingdom), which was left him
to show that he had once been a king! Not that a splendid train is
essential to happiness, but from a king to a beggar is a hard change,
from commanding millions to be without one attendant: and it was the
ingratitude in his daughters denying it, more than what he would suffer
by the want of it, which pierced this poor king to the heart: insomuch
that with this double ill-usage, and vexation for having so foolishly
given away a kingdom, his wits began to be unsettled, and while he said
he knew not what, he vowed revenge against those unnatural hags, and to
make examples of them that should be a terror to the earth!
While he was thus idly threatening what his weak arm could never
execute, night came on, and a loud storm of thunder and lightning
with rain; and his daughters still persisting in their resolution not
to admit his followers, he called for his horses, and chose rather
to encounter the utmost fury of the storm abroad, than to stay under
the same roof with these ungrateful daughters; and they, saying that
the injuries which willful men procure to themselves are their just
punishment, suffered him to go in that condition, and shut their doors
upon him.
The winds were high and the rain and storm increased when the old
man sallied forth to combat with the elements, less sharp than his
daughters’ unkindness. For many miles about there was scarce a bush:
and there upon a heath, exposed to the fury of the storm in a dark
night, did King Lear wander out, and defy the winds and the thunder;
and he bid the winds to blow the earth into the sea, or swell the waves
of the sea till they drowned the earth, that no token might remain of
any such ungrateful animal as man. The old king was now left with no
companion but the poor fool, who still abided with him, with his merry
conceits striving to out-jest misfortune, saying, it was but a naughty
night to swim in, and truly the king had better go in and ask his
daughter’s blessing:
But he that has a little tiny wit,
With heigh ho, the wind and rain!
Must make content with his fortune fit,
Though the rain it raineth every day:
and swearing it was a brave night to cool a lady’s pride.
Thus poorly accompanied this once great monarch was found by his ever
faithful servant, the good Earl of Kent, now transformed to Caius, who
ever followed close at his side, though the king did not know him to be
the earl; and he said, “Alas! sir, are you here? creatures that love
night love not such nights as these. This dreadful storm has driven
the beasts to their hiding places. Man’s nature can not endure the
affliction or the fear.” And Lear rebuked him, and said, these lesser
evils were not felt, where a greater malady was fixed. When the mind is
at ease, the body has leisure to be delicate; but the tempest in his
mind did take all feelings else from his senses, but of that which beat
at his heart. And he spoke of filial ingratitude, and said it was all
one as if the mouth should tear the hand for lifting food to it; for
parents were hands and food and everything to children.
But the good Cauis, still persisting in his entreaties that the king
would not stay out in the open air, at last persuaded him to enter a
little wretched hovel which stood upon the heath, where the fool first
entering, suddenly ran back terrified, saying he had seen a spirit.
But upon examination this spirit proved to be nothing more than a poor
Bedlam beggar, who had crept into this deserted hovel for shelter,
and with his talk about devils frighted the fool, one of those poor
lunatics who are either mad, or feign to be so, the better to extort
charity from the compassionate country people; who go about the country
calling themselves poor Tom and poor Turleygood, saying, “Who gives
anything to poor Tom?” sticking pins and nails and sprigs of rosemary
into their arms to make them bleed; with such horrible actions, partly
by prayers, and partly with lunatic curses, they move or terrify the
ignorant country folks into giving them alms. This poor fellow was such
a one; and the king seeing him in so wretched a plight, with nothing
but a blanket about his loins to cover his nakedness, could not be
persuaded but that the fellow was some father who had given all away to
his daughters, and brought himself to that pass; for nothing he thought
could bring a man to such wretchedness but the having unkind daughters.
And from this and many such wild speeches which he uttered, the good
Caius plainly perceived that he was not in his perfect mind, but that
his daughters´ ill-usage had really made him go mad. And now the
loyalty of this worthy Earl of Kent showed itself in more essential
services than he had hitherto found opportunity to perform. For with
the assistance of some of the king’s attendants who remained loyal,
he had the person of his royal master removed at daybreak to the
castle of Dover, where his own friends and influence, as Earl of Kent,
chiefly lay; and himself embarking for France, hastened to the court
of Cordelia, and did there in such moving terms represent the pitiful
condition of her royal father, and set out in such lively colors the
inhumanity of her sisters, that this good and loving child with many
tears besought the king, her husband, that he would give her leave
to embark for England with a sufficient power to subdue these cruel
daughters and their husbands, and restore the old king, her father, to
his throne; which being granted, she set forth, and with a royal army
she landed at Dover.
Lear having by some chance escaped from the guardian which the good
Earl of Kent had put over him to take care of him in his lunacy, was
found by some of Cordelia’s train, wandering about in the fields near
Dover, in a pitiable condition, stark mad and singing aloud to himself,
with a crown upon his head which he had made of straw and nettles,
and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the corn-fields. By the
advice of the physicians, Cordelia, though earnestly desirous of seeing
her father, was prevailed upon to put off the meeting, till by sleep
and the operation of herbs which they gave him, he should be restored
to greater composure. By the aid of these skillful physicians, to whom
Cordelia promised all her gold and jewels for the recovery of the old
king, Lear was soon in a condition to see his daughter.
A tender sight it was to see the meeting between this father and
daughter; to see the struggles between the joy of this poor old king
at beholding again his once darling child, and the shame at receiving
such filial kindness from her whom he had cast off for so small a fault
in his displeasure; both these passions struggling with the remains of
his malady, which, in his half-crazed brain, sometimes made him that he
scarce remembered where he was, or who it was that so kindly kissed him
and spoke to him: and then he would beg the standers-by not to laugh
at him, if he were mistaken in thinking this lady to be his daughter
Cordelia! And then to see him fall on his knees to beg pardon of his
child; and she, good lady, kneeling all the while to ask a blessing of
him, and telling him that it did not become him to kneel, but it was
her duty, for she was his child, his true and very child Cordelia. And
she kissed him (as she said) to kiss away all her sisters’ unkindness,
and said that they might be ashamed of themselves, to turn their
old kind father with his white beard out into the cold air, when
her enemy’s dog, though it had bit her (as she prettily expressed
it), should have stayed by her fire such a night as that, and warmed
himself. And she told her father how she had come from France with
purpose to bring him assistance; and he said that she must forget and
forgive, for he was old and foolish, and did not know what he did; but
that to be sure she had great cause not to love him, but her sisters
had none. And Cordelia said that she had no cause, no more than they
had. So we will leave this old king in the protection of this dutiful
and loving child, where, by the help of sleep and medicine, she and her
physicians at length succeeded in winding up the untuned and jarring
senses which the cruelty of his other daughters had so violently
shaken. Let us return to say a word or two about those cruel daughters.
These monsters of ingratitude, who had been so false to their old
father, could not be expected to prove more faithful to their own
husbands. They soon grew tired of paying even the appearance of duty
and affection, and in an open way showed they had fixed their loves
upon another. It happened that the object of their guilty loves was
the same. It was Edmund, a natural son of the late Earl of Gloucester,
who, by his treacheries, had succeeded in disinheriting his brother
Edgar, the lawful heir, from his earldom, and by his wicked practices
was now earl himself: a wicked man, and a fit object for the love of
such wicked creatures as Gonerill and Regan. It falling out about
this time that the Duke of Cornwall, Regan’s husband, died, Regan
immediately declared her intention of wedding this Earl of Gloucester,
which rousing the jealousy of her sister, to whom as well as to Regan,
this wicked earl had at sundry times professed love, Gonerill found
means to make away with her sister by poison; but being detected in
her practices, and imprisoned by her husband, the Duke of Albany, for
this deed, and for her guilty passion for the earl which had come to
his ears, she, in a fit of disappointed love and rage, shortly put an
end to her own life. Thus the justice of heaven at last overtook these
wicked daughters.
While the eyes of all men were upon this event, admiring the justice
displayed in their deserved deaths, the same eyes were suddenly taken
off from this sight to admire at the mysterious ways of the same
power in the melancholy fate of the young and virtuous daughter, the
Lady Cordelia, whose good deeds did seem to deserve a more fortunate
conclusion. But it is an awful truth, that innocence and piety are not
always successful in this world. The forces which Gonerill and Regan
had sent out under the command of the bad Earl of Gloucester were
victorious, and Cordelia, by the practices of this wicked earl, who
did not like that any should stand between him and the throne, ended
her life in prison. Thus heaven took this innocent lady to itself in
her young years, after showing to the world an illustrious example of
filial duty. Lear did not long survive this kind child.
Before he died, the good Earl of Kent, who had still attended his old
master’s steps from the first of his daughter’s ill-usage to this sad
period of his decay, tried to make him understand that it was he who
had followed him under the name of Caius; but Lear’s care-crazed brain
at that time could not comprehend how that could be, or how Kent and
Caius could be the same person. So Kent thought it needless to trouble
him with explanations at such a time; and Lear soon after expiring,
this faithful servant to the king, between age and grief for his old
master’s vexations, soon followed him to the grave.
How the judgment of heaven overtook the bad Earl of Gloucester, whose
treasons were discovered, and himself slain in single combat with
his brother, the lawful earl; and how Gonerill’s husband, the Duke
of Albany, who was innocent of the death of Cordelia, and had never
encouraged his lady in her wicked proceedings against her father,
ascended the throne of Britain after the death of Lear, is needless
here to narrate, Lear and his three daughters being dead, whose
adventures alone concern our story.