Lear [pointing to Miranda] What, in Goneril’s palace? Did she not with her own hands push her old father out of door? [To Miranda] Nay, mistress daughter; I’ll not bide with you. A million murrains light upon thy unnatural head; ten million plagues burn in thy blood; a million pains lurk in thy wretched bones, thou piece of painted earth whom ’twere foul shame to call a woman.
Miranda [affrighted] O Ferdinand, what means this strange old man?
There burns a direful lustre in his eye
And I do fear some certain harm from him.
Ferdinand. Sweet, do not so. He is but mad o’er some
Past wrong, and ’tis the quality of such
To take the true for false, and thus cry out
On him that’s near, the guilty one not by.
See, he is faint and old, and cannot harm.
Fool. Good nuncle, methinks the sun hath made of thee a very owl, for she whom thou callest upon so loudly is not so eld by twenty summers as thy daughter Goneril.