presence of
Goneril herself, in many a bitter taunt and jest which cut to the quick:
such as comparing the king to the hedge-sparrow, who feeds the young of
the cuckoo till they grow old enough, and then has its head bit off for
its pains; and saying, that an ass may know when the cart draws the
horse (meaning that Lear's daughters, that ought to go behind, now
ranked before their father); and that Lear was no longer Lear, but the
shadow of Lear: for which free speeches he was once or twice threatened
to be whipped.

The coolness and falling off of respect which Lear had begun to
perceive, were not all which this foolish fond father was to suffer from
his unworthy daughter: she now plainly told him that his staying in her
palace was inconvenient so long as he insisted upon keeping up an
establishment of a hundred knights; that this establishment was useless
and expensive, and only served to fill her court with riot and feasting;
and she prayed him that he would lessen their number, and keep none but
old men about him, such as himself, and fitting his age.

Lear at first could not believe his eyes or ears, nor that it was his
daughter who spoke so unkindly. He could not believe that she who had
received a crown from him could seek to cut off his train, and grudge
him the respect due to his old age. But she, persisting in her undutiful
demand, the old man's rage was so excited, that he called her a detested
kite, and said that she spoke an untruth; and so indeed she did, for
the hundred knights were all men of choice behaviour and sobriety of
manners, skilled in all particulars of duty, and not given to rioting or
feasting, as she said. And he bid his horses to be prepared, for he
would go to his other daughter, Regan, he and his hundred knights; and
he spoke of ingratitude, and said it was a marble-hearted devil, and
showed more hideous in a child than the sea-monster. And he cursed his
eldest daughter Goneril so as was terrible to hear; praying that she
might never have a child, or if she had, that it might live to return
that scorn and contempt upon her which she had shown to him: that she
might feel how sharper than a serpent's tooth it was to have a thankless
child. And Goneril's husband, the Duke of Albany, beginning to excuse
himself for any share which Lear might suppose he had in the unkindness,
Lear would not hear him out, but in a rage ordered his horses to be
saddled, and set out with his followers for the ab