Shakespeare's Stories for Young Readers

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Book: Shakespeare's Stories for Young Readers Read Online Free PDF
Author: E. Nesbit
whom he only knew as his servant, and his Fool, who was faithful to him although he had given away his kingdom. Goneril was not contented with letting her father suffer insults at the hands of her servants. She told him plainly that his train of one hundred knights only served to fill her Court with riot and feasting; and so she begged him to dismiss them, and only keep a few old men about him such as himself.
    â€œMy train are men who know all parts of duty,” said Lear. “Saddle my horses, call my train together. Goneril, I will not trouble you further—yet I have left another daughter.”
    And he cursed his daughter, Goneril, praying that she might never have a child, or that if she had, it might treat her as cruelly as she had treated him. And his horses being saddled, he set out with his followers for the castle of Regan, his other daughter. Lear sent on his servant Caius, who was really the Earl of Kent, with letters to his daughter to say he was coming. But Caius fell in with a messenger of Goneril—in fact that very steward whom he had tripped into the gutter—and beat him soundly for the mischief-maker that he was; and Regan, when she heard it, put Caius in the stocks, not respecting him as a messenger coming from her father. And she who had formerly outdone her sister in professions of attachment to the King, now seemed to outdo her in undutiful conduct, saying that fifty knights were too many to wait on him, that five-and-twenty were enough, and Goneril (who had hurried thither to prevent Regan showing any kindness to the old King) said five-and-twenty were too many, or even ten, or even five, since her servants could wait on him.
    â€œWhat need one?” said Regan.
    Then when Lear saw that what they really wanted was to drive him away from them, he cursed them both and left them. It was a wild and stormy night, yet those cruel daughters did not care what became of their father in the cold and the rain, but they shut the castle doors and went in out of the storm. All night he wandered about the heath half mad with misery, and with no companion but the poor Fool. But presently his servant, Caius, the good Earl of Kent, met him, and at last persuaded him to lie down in a wretched little hovel which stood upon the heath. At daybreak the Earl of Kent removed his royal master to Dover, where his old friends were, and then hurried to the Court of France and told Cordelia what had happened.
    Her husband gave her an army to go to the assistance of her father, and with it she landed at Dover. Here she found poor King Lear, now quite mad, wandering about the fields, singing aloud to himself and wearing a crown of nettles and weeds. They brought him back and fed and clothed him, and the doctors gave him such medicines as they thought might bring him back to his right mind, and by-and-by he woke better, but still not quite himself. Then Cordelia came to him and kissed him, to make up, as she said, for her sisters. At first he hardly knew her.
    â€œPray do not mock me,” he said. “I am a very foolish, fond old man, four-score and upward, and to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. I think I should know you, though I do not know these garments, nor do I know where I lodged last night. Do not laugh at me, though, as I am a man, I think this lady must be my daughter, Cordelia.”
    â€œAnd so I am—I am,” cried Cordelia. “Come with me.”
    â€œYou must bear with me,” said Lear; “forget and forgive. I am old and foolish.”
    And now he knew at last which of his children it was that had loved him best, and who was worthy of his love; and from that time they were not parted.
    Goneril and Regan joined their armies to fight Cordelia’s army, and were successful: and Cordelia and her father were thrown into prison. Then Goneril’s husband, the Duke of Albany, who was a good man, and had not known how wicked his wife was, heard the truth of
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