And when
'This even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of his poisoned chalice
To his own lips'—
when his 'dog-hearted daughters' have returned to his own bosom the cruel edge of that unnatural wrong which he has impiously dared to summon nature herself—violated nature—to witness, this is the greeting which the unnatural Goneril receives, on her return to her husband, when she complains to him of her welcome—
Goneril. I have been worth the whistle.
Albany. O Goneril!
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face.—I fear your disposition:
That nature, which contemns ITS ORIGIN,
CANNOT BE BORDERED CERTAIN IN ITSELF;
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her MATERIAL SAP, PERFORCE MUST WITHER,
And come to deadly use.
[Prima Philosophia. Axioms which are not limited to the particular parts of sciences, but 'such as are more common, and of a higher stage.']
Goneril. No more; the text is foolish. Albany. Tigers, not daughters,—
[You have practised on yourself—you have destroyed in yourself the nobler, fairer nature which the law of human kind—the law of human duty and affection—would have given you. Not DAUGHTERS,—Tigers.]
'A father, and a gracious aged man,
Whose reverence the head-lugged bear would lick,
Most barbarous, most DEGENERATE!'—
[degenerate—that is the point—most degenerate]—