Cordelia is in the French camp when she receives word of her father. He was just seen wandering the fields: "as mad as the vex'd sea; singing aloud; crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow weeds, with harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow in our sustaining corn." The image is precise and terrible: a king crowned not with gold but with the common rubbish of neglected fields.
She sends a hundred soldiers to search every acre. To the physician she says that whoever can restore Lear's mind may take all her outward wealth. The physician tells her the cure is not complicated in principle, "our foster nurse of nature is repose", but Lear must be found before his uncontrolled rage destroys the life that has no means left to sustain it.
Cordelia speaks a prayer to the earth: "All bless'd secrets, all you unpublish'd virtues of the earth, spring with my tears! Be aidant and remediate in the good man's distress!"
A messenger arrives: British forces are marching toward them. Cordelia is unsurprised: the preparation has been made. But her mind is on her father, and she says so plainly. She did not come here for France's military ambitions or territorial gain. "No blown ambition doth our arms incite, but love, dear love, and our ag'd father's right."
It is the clearest statement of motive in the play, delivered with complete simplicity. She crossed the sea, brought an army, and put herself in the path of war; for love of the man who told her she was nothing to him.
The scene ends with her hoping she will soon hear and see him. She does not know yet how close he is, or how far.
Coming Up in Chapter 20
As Cordelia searches for her father, we return to Gloucester's castle where the final pieces of Edmund's deadly game fall into place. The confrontation everyone has been building toward is about to explode.
