rror is generally fully recognised by the
reader owing to his sympathy with Cordelia, though, as we have seen, he
often loses the memory of it as the play advances. But this is not so, I
think, with the repetition of this error, in the quarrel with Goneril.
Here the daughter excites so much detestation, and the father so much
sympathy, that we often fail to receive the due impression of his
violence. There is not here, of course, the _injustice_ of his rejection
of Cordelia, but there is precisely the same [Greek: hubris]. This had
been shown most strikingly in the first scene when, _immediately_ upon
the apparently cold words of Cordelia, 'So young, my lord, and true,'
there comes this dreadful answer:

Let it be so; thy truth then be thy dower.
For, by the sacred radiance of the sun,
The mysteries of Hecate and the night;
By all the operation of the orbs
From whom we do exist and cease to be;
Here I disclaim all my paternal care,
Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter.

Now the dramatic effect of this passage is exactly, and doubtless
intentionally, repeated in the curse pronounced against Goneril. This
does not come after the daughters have openly and wholly turned against
their father. Up to the moment of its utterance Goneril has done no more
than to require him 'a little to disquantity' and reform his train of
knights. Certainly her manner and spirit in making this demand are
hateful, and probably her accusations against the knights are false; and
we should expect from any father in Lear's position passionate distress
and indignation. But surely the famous words which form Lear's immediate
reply were meant to be nothing short of frightful:

Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fr