Goneril
You strike my people, and your disordered rabble
Make servants of their betters.
Lear
Woe that too late repents!— Is it your will?
Speak, sir.— Prepare my horses.
Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous when thou show’st thee in a child
Than the sea-monster!
Albany
Pray, sir, be patient.
Lear
Detested kite, thou liest.
My train are men of choice and rarest parts,
That all particulars of duty know
And in the most exact regard support
The worships of their name. O, most small fault,
How ugly didst thou in Cordelia show!
Which, like an engine, wrenched my frame of nature
From the fixed place, drew from my heart all love,
And added to the gall. O Lear, Lear, Lear!
Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in,
And thy dear judgement out!— Go, go, my people.
Why do you think Lear’s knights are so important to him?
Like a piece of machinery, wrenched my normal way of being out of place, which drained the love from my heart and made it bitter.
Albany
My lord, I am guiltless as I am ignorant
Of what hath moved you.
Lear
It may be so, my lord.—
Hear, nature, hear, dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful:
Into her womb convey sterility,
Dry up in her the organs of increase,
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her: if she must teem,
Create her child of spleen, that it may live
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her:
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child!— Away, away!
How do you think Goneril might feel hearing her husband and her father talk to each other in this way?
If she must have children, let her child be made of spite so that it grows to torment her in its unnatural and perverse behaviours.