esent the pitiful
condition of her royal father, and set out in such lively colours the
inhumanity of her sisters, that this good and loving child with many
tears besought the king her husband, that he would give her leave
to embark for England with a sufficient power to subdue these cruel
daughters and their husbands, and restore the old king her father to
his throne; which being granted, she set forth, and with a royal army
landed at Dover.

Lear having by some chance escaped from the guardians which the good
earl of Kent had put over him to take care of him in his lunacy,
was found by some of Cordelia's train, wandering about the fields
near Dover, in a pitiable condition, stark mad and singing aloud
to himself, with a crown upon his head which he had made of straw,
and nettles, and other wild weeds that he had picked up in the
corn-fields. By the advice of the physicians, Cordelia, though
earnestly desirous of seeing her father, was prevailed upon to put off
the meeting, till, by sleep and the operation of herbs which they gave
him, he should be restored to greater composure. By the aid of these
skilful physicians, to whom Cordelia promised all her gold and jewels
for the recovery of the old king, Lear was soon in a condition to see
his daughter.

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 ha