treatment of Regan than he had
experienced from her sister Goneril. As if willing to outdo her sister
in unequal behaviour, she declared that she thought fifty knights too
many to wait upon him: that five-and-twenty were enough. Then Lear,
nigh heart-broken, turned to Goneril and said that he would go back
with her, for her fifty doubled five-and-twenty, and so her love was
twice as much as Regan's. But Goneril excused herself, and said, what
need of so many as five-and-twenty? or even ten? or five? when he might
be waited upon by her servants, or her sister's servants? So these two
wicked daughters, as if they strove to exceed each other in cruelty to
their old father, who had been so good to them, by little and little
would have abated him of all his train, all respect (little enough for
him that once commanded a kingdom), which was left him to show that he
had once been a king! Not that a splendid train is essential to
happiness, but from a king to a beggar is a hard change, from
commanding millions to be without one attendant; and it was the
ingratitude in his daughters' denying it, more than what he would
suffer by the want of it, which pierced this poor king to the heart;
insomuch, that with this double ill-usage, a vexation for having so
foolishly given away a kingdom, his wits began to be unsettled, and
while he said e knew not what, he vowed revenge against those
unnatural hags, and to make examples of them that should be a terror to
the earth!

While he was thus idly threatening what his weak arm could never
execute, night came on, and a loud storm of thunder and lightning with
rain; and his daughters still persisting in their resolution not to
admit his followers, he called for his horses, and chose rather to
encounter the utmost fury of the storm abroad, than stay under the same
roof with these ungrateful daughters: and they, saying that the
injuries which wilful men procure to themselves are their just
punishment, suffered him to go in that condition and shut their doors
upon him.

The wind were high, and the rain and storm increased, when the old man
sallied forth to combat with the elements, less sharp than his
daughters' unkindness. For many miles about there was scarce a bush;
and there upon a heath, exposed to the fury of the storm in a dark
night, did king Lear wander out, and defy the winds and the thunder;
and he bid the winds to blow the earth into the sea, or swell the waves
of the sea till th