LEAR
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 honor 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! (1.4.289-303)
This has got to be one of the most bizarre speeches in the play. Here, King Lear is enraged by his daughter's betrayal of him that he curses her with "sterility" (the inability to produce children). If, however, the gods decide she will have children, Lear says he hopes she experiences a painful labor and has a "thankless child" to make her miserable for the rest of her life. Okay, Lear is clearly upset. But why does he lash out at his daughter's fertility like this?
LEAR
I'll tell thee. To Goneril. Life and death! I am
ashamed
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus,
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,
Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon
thee!
Th' untented woundings of a father's curse
Pierce every sense about thee! (1.4.311-318)
When Goneril reduces Lear's posse of knights (reducing any power Lear had left after he divided his kingdom), Lear accuses Goneril of "shaking [his] manhood." Without the kind of power and authority Lear once enjoyed as active king and family patriarch, he feels as though he's been stripped of his masculinity. Yowch.
LEAR
O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!
Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow!
Thy element's below!—Where is this daughter? (2.4.62-64)
When Lear's daughters betray him, he's outraged and full of grief. Here, he says he suffers from "Hysterica passio," a medical condition that was thought to afflict women.
Fun facts: literary critic Coppélia Kahn explains that "From ancient times through the nineteenth century, women suffering variously from choking, feelings of suffocation, partial paralysis, convulsions similar to those of epilepsy, aphasia, numbness, and lethargy were said to be ill of hysteria, caused by a wandering womb." In other words, because Lear is so upset or "hysterical," he compares his excessive emotions to that of an ailing woman. (The implication is that Lear is not acting like a "man" and that women have no control over their feelings.)