A Short Dialogue From Shakespeare’s King Lear
“Cordelia. We are not the first Who, with best meaning, have
incurr’d the worst. For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down; myself could else
out-frown falSe Fortune’s frown. Shall we not see these daughters and these
sisters?
Lear. No, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison; we two alone
will sing like birds I’ the cage” when thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel
down, and ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live and pray, and sing, and tell
old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues talk of court
news; and we’ll talk with them too, who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s
out; and take upon’s the mystery of
things, as if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out, in a wall’d prison,
packs and sects of great ones that ebb and flow like the moon.”
England’s greatest dramatist William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote the
tragic play ‘King Lear” in 1605.
Here is a short outline of the play for the purpose of this dialogue. “Lear,
80-year old, King of Britain wishes to retire after many years as ruler, and
divides his kingdom among his three daughters. When the moment for the actual
distribution of the territory is at hand, he somewhat childishly proposes to
make his gifts dependent upon each daughter’s declaration of love for him. The
two eldest, Goneril, and Regan, are over-fulsome in their protestations, and
the old king is highly pleased. As he turns expectantly to Cordelia, the
youngest, to hear what she shall say “to draw a third more opulent than her
sisters, he is hurt by her simple and sincere expression of duty and affection.
Enraged at her apparent coolness, he casts her off completely, arranges to live
with each of her elder sisters in turn, and presents Cordelia dowerless to her
sisters.
As the plot progresses, the
two eldest daughters turn out to be most ungrateful, and cruel to their father.
However, the youngest one Cordelia stands by him like a guardian angel.
The dialogue quoted above is a little earlier
than Cordelia is hanged to death and the broken-hearted father dies trying to
revive her. These were his last words:
“Upon such
sacrifices, my Cordelia, the gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee?
He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven, and fire us hence like foxes.
Wipe thine eyes; the good years shall devour them, flesh and fell, ere they
shall make us weep; we’ll see ‘em starve first.”
According to
a critic Goneril is a kite: her ingratitude has a serpent’s tooth: she has
struck her father most serpent like upon the very heart: her visage is wolfish:
she has tied sharp-toothed unkindness like a vulture on her father’s breast;
for her husband she is a gilded serpent….She and Regan are dog-hearted: they
are tiger, not daughters; each is an adder to the other: the flesh of each is covered
with the fell (skin) of a beast.”
2nd January 2020 G.R.KANWAL
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