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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 favoured 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.
The king, shocked with this appearance
of ingratitude in his favourite 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
honour 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 she had seen drawn
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 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.
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 honoured 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 counsellor 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, honour 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 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.
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.
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 colours. Even before
the expiration of the first month, which Lear was
to spend by agreement with his eldest 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 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 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 behaviour 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, 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 favourite, the high and mighty Earl of Kent.
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.
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 humour, 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
Goneril 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 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.
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 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 behaviour 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.
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 before-hand with
him, sending letters also to Regan, accusing her father
of waywardness and ill humours, 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
behaviour 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 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 travelling 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!
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.
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 behaviour, 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 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 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 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.
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:
But he that has a little tiny wit.
With heigh ho, the wind and
the rain!
Must make content with his fortunes 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 cannot 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 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.
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 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 colours 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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, is needless here to narrate;
Lear and his Three Daughters being dead, whose adventures
alone concern our story.