Page 1783 - Shakespeare - Vol. 3

Will you, with those infirmities she owes,
Unfriended, new-adopted to our hate,
Dower’d with our curse and stranger’d with our oath,
Take her, or leave her?

BURGUNDY
Pardon me, royal Sir;

Election makes not up in such conditions. [205]

LEAR
Then leave her, sir; for, by the power that made me,
I tell you all her wealth. (To France.) For you, great King,
I would not from your love make such a stray

To match you where I hate; therefore beseech you
T’avert your liking a more worthier way [210]
Than on a wretch whom Nature is asham’d
Almost t’acknowledge hers.

FRANCE
This is most strange,

That she, whom even but now was your best object,
The argument of your praise, balm of your age,
The best, the dearest, should in this trice of time [215]

Commit a thing so monstrous, to dismantle
So many folds of favour. Sure, her offence
Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it, or your fore-vouch’d affection
Fall into taint; which to believe of her, [220]

Must be a faith that reason without miracle
Should never plant in me.

CORDELIA
I yet beseech your Majesty,
(If for I want that glib and oily art

To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend,
I’ll do’t before I speak), that you make known [225]
It is no vicious blot, murther or foulness,
No unchaste action, or dishonour’d step,