# Stories from Old English Poetry/The Story of King Lear and his Three Daughters

THE STORY OF KING LEAR AND HIS THREE
DAUGHTERS.
(FROM SHAKESPEARE.)
A LONG time ago, when the island of Great Britain was not so large and prosperous a country as now, but was a wild and thinly settled island, divided into several kingdoms, there reigned over one of these dominions an old monarch called Lear. He was one of the mightiest of the British kings, and though he had a kind and generous heart, he was so passionate that when one of his fits of rage possessed him, his bravest and wisest counselors could not dissuade him from any wild or frantic purpose which seized him.
Lear had three children, all of them daughters, and all very beautiful. The eldest was named Goneril; the second, Regan; and the youngest, Cordelia. Goneril and Regan were proud and haughty beauties. They trod the halls of their father’s palace as if they were already queens. When any story of suffering or complaint of wrong arose from the people, they always took ​the part of the oppressor, Their radiant black eyes glistened with hatred or sparkled with anger, but they never softened with pity or tenderness.
But Cordelia, blue-eyed, golden-haired little Cordelia, had a heart full of tenderness and goodness. Her sisters disliked her because she was so meek and gentle, just as ugly spirits always dislike that which is pure and beautiful; so she kept out of their way as much as possible, and sat in her chamber, with her maidens, little heeded and little known by the court or people. She had heard so many loud, false speeches from the tongues of her sisters, that she had learned to distrust noisy vows and protestations, and had grown very reserved and modest in her speech. Sometimes, when she tried to tell the emotions which lay warm and deep in her heart, an impulse, half of shame, would check her,—a feeling as if these things were too sacred to be talked about.
Thus these three sisters lived in the court until Lear became an old, old man. Then he began to imagine he was weary of all the trouble of his state affairs, and resolved he would divide his kingdom into three parts, and give to each of his daughters an equal portion of his realm to govern. For,this purpose he assembled one day all the principal officers of his kingdom, all his ​priests and nobles, and‘ sitting in the midst of them in grand state upon his throne, overhung by canopies of brilliant cloth, he sent for his three daughters to appear before him.
They came at his bidding. First the proud Goneril, with her husband, the Duke of Albany; then the haughty Regan, with her cruel-looking lord, the Duke of Cornwall; last of all came Cordelia, blushing and half afraid at appearing before so many people. Cordelia had two lovers visiting her father’s court, both Frenchmen; for although she had lived so quietly in the palace, the neighboring princes did not forget that Lear had a daughter yet unmarried, and all foreign nations were eager to form an alliance with so mighty a prince.
When they were all arranged in state, Lear told the court of his purpose to divide the kingdom among his three daughters, and declared that he should spend the rest of his days in turn with each of them. His wisest lords shook their heads doubtfully when he said this; but all knew his temper so well that not one dared object.
Lear called on Goneril first to declare how much she loved him, that he might requite her love by a portion of his kingdom. To this Goneril answered that she loved him beyond her eye-sight, her freedom, her life itself. She ​assured him no child had ever loved a father as she loved him, and that words were too weak to tell the greatness of her love.
When she stopped speaking, Lear showed her the limits of the kingdom he had deeded to her and the Duke of Albany, a most generous gift; and then he turned to Regan, who stood by, eager to speak, and asked her which she thought loved him best. Regan told him she was of the same blood as Goneril, her sister, and she loved him not a whit less; that even her sister’s declarations of affection did not come up to the measure of her feelings; and that her only earthly happiness was in her father’s love.
Lear then gave her an ample portion for her dowry, and called forth his youngest daughter, whom in his heart he loved best of the three. Now Cordelia had listened with amazement at the ease with which her sisters had declared the most sacred feelings of the heart so loudly, and at the extraordinary affection they professed. “What love have they left to give their husbands,” she thought. within herself, “if they love their father all?” While she was thus thinking, Lear asked this youngest and best-loved child what she had to say. She looked at him with her clear, truthful eyes, and answered, “Nothing.”
Lear looked at her in wonder, and repeated “Nothing?”
​ Cordelia then told him simply that she loved him as she ought to love a father who had bred and reared her; that she should always honor and obey him above all others; but if she had a husband, she should think it her duty to give him half her love and care, and not, like her sisters, give her father all.
On this Lear went into one of his terrible fits of rage. He was so sorely disappointed at Cordelia’s answer that he could not wait to let his reason see how wise it was. He stamped and raved, and without delay divided the large portion he had reserved for Cordelia between her sisters. He bade her instantly leave the court, and never see his face again. One of his oldest nobles, the Earl of Kent, interceded for her so boldly, that the king’s rage turned on him also, and he banished him, on pain of death, from his kingdom. Then he called forth Cordelia’s lovers, the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France, and told them if either of them wished Cordelia, stripped of rank and wealth, they might take her where she stood; from him she should have nothing. Burgundy said that since she had no fortune, he could scarcely afford to marry her; but the French King said nobly, that he could see virtues in the maiden worth more than lands or gold, and if she would, she should be his bride and the Queen of France.
​ Cordelia looked into his handsome, earnest face and gave him her hand without a word. Even if she had not thought of him before, his noble offer was enough to make her love him as much as a prince of so rare qualities deserved to be loved. And hand in hand, without a single attendant, she went out with her royal lover, in the footsteps of poor Kent, whom Leon had so madly banished.
Immediately Goneril, with her husband, the Duke of Albany, took command of their new kingdom, and the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall went to occupy their palace. Lear only reserved for himself a hundred knights and warriors for his train of followers, and trusted the keeping of them all to the generosity of the two daughters to whom he had given everything.
He resolved to live one month with Goneril, and spend the next with Regan, and so changing from month to month, spend equal time with each daughter. For a few days, Goneril disguised her wicked temper,—but only for a few days. She waited for the first slight pretext to complain of her father and take away some of his pleasures. One day when his men, who were nearly all soldiers and rough fellows, used to being at battle in the field, had been a little noisy in one of the court-yards of her palace, she sent for her father, and told him he kept too many ​followers; that she could no longer permit it. She asked what necessity there was for him, who would always be well taken care of by his daughters, if he behaved properly, to have so many as a hundred followers. Would not fifty, or even twenty-five, do quite as well?
Imagine how Lear felt at being talked to thus. An old king who had given up to this daughter half his kingdom, the command of his great armies, and his right to rule; he to whom thousands had been a small retinue, to be now denied a mere handful of attendants. The passionate old man was so choked with rage and grief, he could scarcely speak. When he tried to reply, his tears almost stopped him. Goneril stood gazing unmoved on her aged father’s wounded feeling, and at length he told her that he would leave her inhospitable roof, for he had yet another daughter who would not treat him thus. Surely Nature could not produce another monster such as she. When she answered this with more bitter insults, he cursed her with a curse so terrible, that one can hardly imagine how she could have heard it and not fallen on her knees and called on God for mercy.
Lear then left her castle gates with all his train, and set out for Regan’s palace. Just before this happened, the Earl of Kent, whom Lear had banished, fearing his old master would ​need some trusty friend, had returned in disguise to Britain. He offered himself to Lear as his servant, and Lear, who did not recognize him, had accepted him. He now called Kent, and sent him as his messenger to Regan, to inform her of her sister’s wicked conduct, and bid her prepare to receive him.
Kent hurried off without delay, but the end proved that Goneril outwitted him. This wicked woman, the moment Lear left her palace, sent a messenger post-haste to Regan, counseling her to oppose all Lear’s wishes, and deprive him of all state, lest with his hundred men he should prove dangerous to their power. The Duke of Albany, who was a kind-hearted man, but incapable of controlling so bad a wife, tried in vain to soften her heart. All his sympathy for Lear seemed but to strengthen her purpose.
Regan received her sister’s messenger, and immediately followed her advice. When Kent arrived at her court, he was punished for some slight offense by being placed with his feet in the stocks. Very soon Lear arrived, to find his messenger thus insulted, his message unheeded, and himself received with pointed coldness by the daughter on whom all his hopes were laid.
The poor king placed much constraint upon himself at first, and tried to reason mildly with ​Regan against taking her sister’s part; but when he found his words did not move her, and that she was even more harsh and unyielding than Goneril, he burst out into ravings of despair. To add to his misery, Goneril came then to Regan’s court, attended by a train more numerous and grand than had attended Lear in the days of his magnificence; and he saw Regan, who had refused him welcome, embrace and kiss this wicked daughter. At this sight he was convinced that they were leagued against him, and that he should find no pity there. He declared that he would quit them both; that the elements would be more kind than such vipers as these; and so rushed madly from the chamber, through the court, outside the court-yard gates.
When Lear thus fled from the luxurious palace-hall in which he had held this last meeting with his daughters, it was beginning to grow dark, and a terrible storm was coming on. Already they heard the loud roll of thunder and saw the sharp flashes of lightning. But though some nobles in Regan’s court, more tender hearted than these stony women, pleaded for the king, and besought them not to let him go out into a night when even beasts ought to be sheltered, they alone were pitiless. They helped to drive their poor old father forth, and locked after ​him their heavy castle gates. There, outside in the rude storm, with no attendants but his faithful Kent and a poor jester, who had been his sport when he was king, stood the once mighty Lear. The hail fell in large stones upon his head, stripped of its royal crown, and the wild wind blew his long white hairs about his face. The whole country was a barren heath, without a house to give them shelter; and thus buffeted by storms and wounded in his heart’s core, is it to be wondered at that he lost his reason and became insane?
Before the night was over, a kind lord, named Gloster, came to seek them, and took them to a farm-house where Lear could be warmed and fed. But it could not restore his reason, and he knew no more the faces of his friends, but raved madly of his daughters.
In the mean time the Earl of Kent, who had been so faithful to his old master, had been busy at work for him. He had been sending messengers to France, where Cordelia and her husband dwelt, telling of the manner in which the cruel sisters treated Lear; and the French king had already begun to march an army toward Britain. On the very night that Lear was driven out, he landed his troops at Dover, the nearest English seaport from France.
As soon as the storm cleared, Gloster told ​Kent that he thought the sisters had formed a plot to have their old father murdered, and Kent resolved to hurry on with his helpless charge to the French camp. When he reached there, he found the King of France had gone back into his own country on some sudden business, but he saw Cordelia, who was left in charge of the the army, and told her the sad story of her father’s wrongs. Lear could not be persuaded to enter the camp; but escaped from Kent, and went roving up and down the open country, crowning himself with weeds, and imagining himself again a king. Cordelia sent her trustiest guards to find him; and when at length he was weary and footsore, they found him, and brought him to the queen’s tent, where he fell into a deep slumber.
While he slept Cordelia watched his breathing as if he were a sick child, and wept over his poor white head, so beaten by the storm. By and by he waked. With the deep slumber his madness had gone away, and he recognized his youngest and dearest daughter weeping by his couch. How happy he was to find he had one child who loved him, and how grieved that he had not understood her sooner!
While they were in the first joy of meeting, news came that the good old Gloster had been most cruelly treated for being kind to Lear, and ​that while the wicked sisters and Regan’s husband were practicing horrible tortures on the old man, one of Gloster’s servants had interfered and, trying to protect his lord, was killed, but not until he had partly avenged Gloster’s wrongs, by giving the Duke of Cornwall his death-stab. Regan, thus left a widow, had put her soldiers under command of a crafty Lord Edmund, with whom she was in love and meant to marry, and had joined her army to that of her sister Goneril, to march against the French at Dover.
Cordelia did the best so young a bride could do without her husband, and marched her army out to meet them. But she was too much taken at disadvantage. The French troops were put to flight, and Lear and Cordelia were taken prisoners, and sent to a dungeon. They were consigned to prison by the orders of the miserable Edmund, who was commander of Regan’s forces; and when the Duke of Albany, who was the rightful general of the whole army, demanded the royal prisoners, Edmund refused to give them up.
And here it came out that both these bad sisters loved this base Edmund, who was a lowborn fellow, and that Regan had intended to marry him since her husband had died, while Goneril was plotting to murder the kind-hearted ​Duke of Albany, her husband, that she might be free to unite herself to Edmund. Albany openly accused Goneril of her crime, and showed her the letter in which she had plotted against his life. Then Goneril went out from Albany’s presence maddened to frenzy, and first giving Regan a draught of deadly poison, she stabbed herself, and news was brought to the camp of the miserable end of both these unnatural women.
As soon as he could, while all these horrors were happening, the Duke sent to Lear’s prison to have him liberated; but alas! he sent too late. Edmund had before given orders that the prisoners should be secretly murdered, and when they arrived at the prison, they met Lear bearing out Cordelia in his arms, quite dead. It was pitiful to see how the old wronged king wept this last dear daughter, whose love had proved the only real love of all. He laid his ear upon her heart, to see if there were not the faintest beat, and watched eagerly for one little sign of breath; and when he found that she lay cold and still, his poor heart, that had borne so many sorrows, gave way at last, and with one bursting sigh, quite broke, and he fell dead beside her.
Such was the tragic end of King Lear and his three daughters.