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 that 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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