Goneril is not only cruel but also dissolute. She despises her husband, and discloses her love to the villain. Edmund, who has obtained his father’s title of Gloucester. Edmund goes away, and a conversation takes place between Goneril and her husband. The Duke of Albany, the only character who shows human feelings, has already grown dissatisfied with his wife’s treatment of her father and now definitely takes Lear’s part, but he expresses himself in words which destroy one’s belief in his feelings. He says that a bear would lick Lear’s reverence, and that if the heavens do not send their visible spirits to tame these vile offences, humanity must prey on itself like monsters, and so forth.

Goneril does not listen to him, and he then begins to denounce her.

He says:

See thyself, devil! Proper deformity seems not in the fiend So horrid, as in woman.

“O vain fool!” says Goneril.

Thou changed and self-cover’d thing, for shame, Be-monster not thy feature. Were it my fitness To let these hands obey my blood, They are apt enough to dislocate and tear Thy flesh and bones:--Howe’er thou art a fiend, A woman’s shape doth shield thee,

continues the Duke.

After this a messenger enters and announces that the Duke of Cornwall, wounded by a servant while he was tearing out Gloucester’s eyes, has died. Goneril is glad, but already anticipates with fear that Regan, being now a widow, will snatch Edmund from her. This ends the second scene.