ama, Leir asks
his daughters about their love for him, Cordelia does not say, as
Shakespeare has it, that she will not give her father all her love, but
will love her husband, too, should she marry--which is quite
unnatural--but simply says that she can not express her love in words,
but hopes that her actions will prove it. Goneril and Regan remark that
Cordelia's answer is not an answer, and that the father can not meekly
accept such indifference, so that what is wanting in
Shakespeare--_i.e._, the explanation of Lear's anger which caused him to
disinherit his youngest daughter,--exists in the old drama. Leir is
annoyed by the failure of his scheme, and the poisonous words of his
eldest daughters irritate him still more. After the division of the
kingdom between the elder daughters, there follows in the older drama a
scene between Cordelia and the King of Gaul, setting forth, instead of
the colorless Cordelia of Shakespeare, a very definite and attractive
character of the truthful, tender, and self-sacrificing youngest
daughter. While Cordelia, without grieving that she has been deprived of
a portion of the heritage, sits sorrowing at having lost her father's
love, and looking forward to earn her bread by her labor, there comes
the King of Gaul, who, in the disguise of a pilgrim, desires to choose a
bride from among Leir's daughters. He asks Cordelia why she is sad. She
tells him the cause of her grief. The King of Gaul, still in the guise
of a pilgrim, falls in love with her, and offers to arrange a marriage
for her with the King of Gaul, but she says she will marry only a man
whom she loves. Then the pilgrim, still disguised, offers her his hand
and heart and Cordelia confesses she loves the pilgrim and consents to
marry him, notwithstanding the poverty that awaits her. Then the pilgrim
discloses to her that he it is who is the King of Gaul, and Cordelia
marries him. Instead of this scene, Lear, according to Shakespeare,
offers Cordelia's two suitors to take her without dowry, and one
cynically refuses, while the other, one does not know why, accepts her.
After this, in the old drama, as in Shakespeare's, Leir undergoes the
insults of Goneril, into whose house he has removed, but he bears these
insults in a very different way from that represented by Shakespeare: he
feels that by his conduct toward Cordelia, he has deserved this, and
humbly submits. As in Shakespeare's drama, so also in the older drama,
the courtiers