Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Adaptations; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stories, plots, etc. -- Juvenile literature
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 tb at 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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