He breaks from Goneril and flings abruptly out by the door near the bed.
Gormflaith.
My King, you leave me!
Goneril. Soon we follow him:
But, ah, poor fragile beauty, you cannot rise
While this grave burden weights your drooping head.
Laying her hand caressingly on Gormflaith's neck, she gradually forces her head farther and farther down.
You were not nurtured to sustain a crown,
Your unanointed parents could not breed
The spirit that ten hundred years must ripen.
Lo, how you sink and fail.
Gormflaith. You had best take care,
For where my neck has bruises yours shall have wounds.
The King knows of your wolfish snapping at me:
He will protect me.
Goneril. Ay, if he is in time.
Gormflaith, taking off the crown and holding it up blindly toward Goneril with one hand.
Take it and let me go!
Goneril. Nay, not to me:
You are the Queen's, to serve her even in death.
Yield her her own. Approach her: do not fear;
She will not chide you or forgive you now.
Go on your knees; the crown still holds you down.
Gormflaith stumbles forward on her knees and lays the crown on the bed, then crouches motionlessly against the bedside.
Goneril, taking the crown and putting it on the dead Queen's head.
Mother and Queen, to you this holiest circlet
Returns, by you renews its purpose and pride;
Though it is sullied with a menial warmth,
Your august coldness shall rehallow it,
And when the young lewd blood that lent it heat
Is also cooler we can well forget.
She steps to Gormflaith.