Lear. Pray, do not mock me: I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward; Not an hour more, nor less: and, to deal plainly, I fear, I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks, I shou'd know you, and know this man; Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant What place this is; and all the skill I have Remembers not these garments; nor I know not Where I did lodge last night: do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia. Cordelia. And so I am, I am! Almost equal to this in awful beauty is their consolation of each other when, after the triumph of their enemies, they are led to prison. 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, 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 us 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 by the moon. Edmund. Take them away. Lear. Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, The gods themselves throw incense. The concluding events are sad, painfully sad; but their pathos is extreme. The oppression of the feelings is relieved by the very interest we take in the misfortunes of others, and by the reflections to which they give birth. Cordelia is hanged in prison by the orders of the bastard Edmund, which are known too late to be countermanded, and Lear dies broken-hearted, lamenting over her. Lear. And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life: Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life. And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!-- Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.--- He dies, and indeed we feel the truth of what Kent says on the occasion-- Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates him, That would upon the rack of the rough world Stretch him out longer. Yet a happy ending has been contrived for this play, which is approved of by Dr. Johnson and condemned by Schlegel. A better authority than either, on any subject in which poetry and feeling are concerned, has given it in favour of Shakespeare, in some remarks on the acting of Lear, with which we shall conclude this account.