<h2><SPAN name="chap09"></SPAN>KING LEAR</h2>
<p>Lear, King of Britain, had three daughters: Goneril, 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Goneril, 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.</p>
<p>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; in so much that she found all other joys dead in comparison with
the pleasure which she took in the love of her dear king and father.</p>
<p>Lear blessed 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 Goneril.</p>
<p>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 lifetime, made no other reply but
this—that she loved his Majesty according to her duty, neither more
nor less.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 husband would
want half her love, half of her care and duty; she should never marry like
her sisters, to love her father all.</p>
<p>Cordelia, who in earnest loved her old father even almost 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 she had seen draw 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’.</p>
<p>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 gaypainted
speech from words that came from the heart—that in a fury of
resentment he retracted the third part of his kingdom which yet remained,
and 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.</p>
<p>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 he 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.</p>
<p>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 this 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 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.</p>
<p>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. And 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 , daughter, Goneril, 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 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
get 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 affected to treat him with neglect, and would either
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.</p>
<p>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, chose 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.</p>
<p>This Caius quickly found means to show his fidelity and love to his royal
master, for, Goneril’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 his 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.</p>
<p>Nor was Kent the only friend Lear had. In his degree, and as 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—</p>
<p class="poem">
“For sudden joy did weep,<br/>
And I for sorrow sung,<br/>
That such a king should play bo-peep<br/>
And go the fools among.”</p>
<p>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
Goneril herself, in many a bitter taunt and jest which cut to the quick,
such as comparing the king to the hedgesparrow, 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 an 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 could 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 or
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, Goneril, 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 Goneril’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 a 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 Goneril
should have so much power over his manhood as to make him weep.</p>
<p>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 Goneril 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’s 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.</p>
<p>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 Goneril, who had come to tell her own story and set her sister
against the king her father!</p>
<p>This sight much moved the old man, and still more to see Regan take her by
the hand; and he asked Goneril if she was not ashamed to look upon his old
white beard. And Regan advised him to go home again with Goneril, 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 Goneril’s, but mild
and kind. And he said that rather than return to Goneril, 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.</p>
<p>But he was mistaken in expecting kinder treatment of Regan than he had
experienced from her sister Goneril. 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
heartbroken, turned to Goneril 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 Goneril 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 more
than what he would suffer by the want of it, which pierced this poor king
to the heart; in so much 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!</p>
<p>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 stay under the same roof with these
ungrateful daughters; and they, saying that the injuries which wilful men
procure to themselves are their just punishment, suffered him to go in
that condition and shut their doors upon him.</p>
<p>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 other companion than the
poor fool, who still abided with him, with his merry conceits striving to
outjest 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:</p>
<p class="poem">
But he that has a little tiny wit—<br/>
With heigh ho, the wind and the rain,—<br/>
Must make content with his fortunes fit<br/>
Though the rain it raineth every day,</p>
<p class="noindent">
and swearing it was a brave night to cool a lady’s pride.</p>
<p>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 be said:</p>
<p>“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 cannot endure the affliction or the
fear.”</p>
<p>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 feeling 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.</p>
<p>But the good Caius 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 that 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 Turlygood, saying, “Who gives anything to poor
Tom?” sticking pins and nails and sprigs of rosemary into their arms
to make them bleed; and with horrible actions, partly by prayers, and
partly with lunatic curses, they move or terrify the ignorant country folk
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.</p>
<p>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 landed at Dover.</p>
<p>Lear, having by some chance escaped from the guardians 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 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 skilful 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.</p>
<p>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 tb at 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.</p>
<p>So we will leave this old king in the protection of his 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.</p>
<p>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 Goneril 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,
Goneril 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.</p>
<p>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 Goneril 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 her to the
world an illustrious example of filial duty. Lear did not long survive
this kind child.</p>
<p>Before he died, the good Earl of Kent, who had still attended his old
master’s steps from the first of his daughters’ 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.</p>
<p>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 Goneril’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, it is needless here to
narrate, Lear and his three daughters being dead, whose adventures alone
concern our story.</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />