Reg. I pray you, Sir, take patience; I have hope,
You less know how to value her desert,
Than she to scant her duty.
Lear. Say, how is that?”
Nothing is so heart-cutting as a cold unexpected defence or palliation of a cruelty passionately complained of, or so expressive of thorough hard-heartedness. And feel the excessive horror of Regan's “O, Sir, you are old!”—and then her drawing from that universal object of reverence and indulgence the very reason for her frightful conclusion—
“Say, you have wrong'd her!”
All Lear's faults increase our pity for him. We refuse to know them otherwise than as means of his sufferings, and aggravations of his daughters' ingratitude.
Ib. Lear's speech:—
“O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous,” &c.