this, that she loved his
majesty according to her duty, neither more nor less.

The king, shocked with this appearance of ingratitude in his favourite
child, desired her to consider her words, and to mend her speech, lest
it should mar her fortunes.

Cordelia then told her father, that he was her father, that he had
given her breeding, and loved her, that she returned those duties back
as was most fit, and did obey him, love him, and most honour him.
But that she could not frame her mouth to such large speeches as her
sisters had done, or promise to love nothing else in the world. Why
had her sisters husbands, if (as they said) they had no love for any
thing but their father? If she should ever wed, she was sure the lord
to whom she gave her hand would want half her love, half of her care
and duty; she should never marry like her sisters, to love her father
all.

Cordelia, who in earnest loved her old father, even almost as
extravagantly as her sisters pretended to do, would have plainly told
him so at any other time, in more daughter-like and loving terms,
and without these qualifications which did indeed sound a little
ungracious: but after the crafty flattering speeches of her sisters,
which she had seen draw such extravagant rewards, she thought the
handsomest thing she could do was to love and be silent. This put her
affection out of suspicion of mercenary ends, and shewed that
she loved, but not for gain; and that her professions, the less
ostentatious they were, had so much the more of truth and sincerity
than her sisters.

This plainness of speech, which Lear called pride, so enraged the old
monarch--who in his best of times always shewed much of spleen and
rashness, and in whom the dotage incident to old age had so clouded
over his reason, that he could not discern truth from flattery, nor
a gay painted speech from words that came from the heart--that in a
fury of resentment he retracted the third part of his kingdom which
yet remained, and which he had reserved for Cordelia, and gave it
away from her, sharing it equally between her two sisters and their
husbands, the dukes of Albany and Cornwall: whom he now called to him,
and in presence of all his courtiers, bestowing a coronet between
them, invested them jointly with all the power, revenue, and execution
of government, only retaining to himself the name of king; all the
rest of royalty he resigned: with this reservation, that himself, with
a hundred k