For, as I am a man, I think this lady,
To be my child Cordelia.”[74:1]
Cordelia’s heart-felt reply:
“And so I am, I am.”[74:2]
Kent’s loyal assertion that his master is in his “own kingdom,” and the old father’s final
“Pray you now, forget and forgive,”[74:3]
as if he were hardly convinced even yet that Cordelia’s end was not revenge.
With such tender care as might now have been his lot, the old King would surely have recovered something like his former state of mind. But this is not to be, and our dramatic selves at least will not wish that it should be so. When Lear enters, with Cordelia dead in his arms and the rest following behind, we feel perhaps as nowhere else his tragic greatness. One wrathful speech, one tender reminiscence, and another of the fiercest:
“Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman,