, Perillus--Kent--who had interceded for Cordelia and was
therefore banished--comes to Leir and assures him of his love, but under
no disguise, but simply as a faithful old servant who does not abandon
his king in a moment of need. Leir tells him what, according to
Shakespeare, he tells Cordelia in the last scene, that, if the daughters
whom he has benefited hate him, a retainer to whom he has done no good
can not love him. But Perillus--Kent--assures the King of his love
toward him, and Leir, pacified, goes on to Regan. In the older drama
there are no tempests nor tearing out of gray hairs, but there is the
weakened and humbled old man, Leir, overpowered with grief, and banished
by his other daughter also, who even wishes to kill him. Turned out by
his elder daughters, Leir, according to the older drama, as a last
resource, goes with Perillus to Cordelia. Instead of the unnatural
banishment of Lear during the tempest, and his roaming about the heath,
Leir, with Perillus, in the older drama, during their journey to France,
very naturally reach the last degree of destitution, sell their clothes
in order to pay for their crossing over the sea, and, in the attire of
fishermen, exhausted by cold and hunger, approach Cordelia's house.
Here, again, instead of the unnatural combined ravings of the fool,
Lear, and Edgar, as represented by Shakespeare, there follows in the
older drama a natural scene of reunion between the daughter and the
father. Cordelia--who, notwithstanding her happiness, has all the time
been grieving about her father and praying to God to forgive her sisters
who had done him so much wrong--meets her father in his extreme want,
and wishes immediately to disclose herself to him, but her husband
advises her not to do this, in order not to agitate her weak father. She
accepts the counsel and takes Leir into her house without disclosing
herself to him, and nurses him. Leir gradually revives, and then the
daughter asks him who he is and how he lived formerly:

"If from the first," says Leir, "I should relate the cause,
I would make a heart of adamant to weep.
And thou, poor soul, kind-hearted as thou art,
Dost weep already, ere I do begin."

Cordelia: "For God's love tell it, and when you have done
I'll tell the reason why I weep so soon."

And Leir relates all he has suffered from his elder daughters, and says
that now he wishes to find shelter with the child who would be in the
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