What does the following quote from King Lear mean?If yet beseech your majesty- If for I want that glib and oily art, To speak and purpose...

It is hard not to hear these words from Cordelia, said to
her beloved father, Lear, and not to scream silently at Lear in the hope of making him
realise just how stupid he is being! Cordelia, having refused to verbally flatter her
father with words, as her sisters Regan and Goneril have so insincerely done, now faces
her father's full wrath and punishment. It is interesting how the King of France
reflects on what he has seen just before Cordelia makes this speech in Act I scene
1:

This is
most strange,

That she whom even but now was your best
objhect,

The argument of your praise, balm of your
age,

The best, the dearest, should in this trice of
time

Commit a thing so monstrous to
dismantle

So many folds of
favour.

Having enjoyed the
position of favourite daughter, her unwillingness to flatter her father's vanity now
makes her the least favourite daughter. In the speech that Cordelia makes, she draws a
clear comparison between herself and her sisters, and their "glib and oily art/To speak
and purpose not" (to speak but not to do it) and her own actions that come before her
speech. She asks her father to make it known that she has lost her favour not through
any sin or crime, such as "murder" or "unchaste action" so that her name may remain
clear. She remains defiant in being glad that she does not have a "Still-soliciting eye"
and a flattering tongue, even though that means she lost her father's
favour.

One can't help but be impressed by Cordelia's
character. She remains true to herself and what she believes is right, and her speech
shows the danger of trusting in words alone and not in actions--a danger that Lear
himself will realise later on.