Cordelia

Cordelia

1. Virtue Devotion Truth Purity

   • 'What shall Cordelia speak? Love and be silent'

2. Stubborn Proud?

   • 'Nothing, my lord.'
     • R.A. Foakes: 'Standing up to him against all expectations.', 'obstinate and self-willed in her response to her king and father'
       • In the collective consciousness at the time children were believed to have been appointed by God for the primary purpose to honour and obey their parents.
         • Such obedience is demonstrated in the letter form newly-married Princess Elizabeth to her father James I, April 1613. In in she makes no mention of her husband Prince Frederick of Bohemia. For most part confessing (reassuring) her 'ardent affections' to her father which Lear attempts to get hold of from Cordelia in A1,s1. Monopolise Cordelia's love. Cordelia can not as she declares her husband 'shall carry half [her] love, half [her] care and duty.Lear;s reaction seems most childish and pitiful.'

3. Honesty

   • 'I can not heave my heart into my mouth. I love you majesty according to my bond, no more nor less.'

4. Courageous Christ-like

   • ' O dear father, it is thy business that I go about'

5. Beauty Femininity Vulnerability

   • Kent: '[Cordelia's tears] As pearls from diamonds dropped'

6. Mercy Restoration

   • 'All you unpublished virtues of the earth/ Spring with my tears.'
     • R.A. Foakes: 'agent of Lear's regeneration', 'a saintly martyr', ' an embodiment of love'
     • Alison Findlay: Cordelia's return sign for her 'unqualified love' for Lear.'

7. Nurture Comfort Security

   • Adelman: 'Lear hopped to set his rest on Cordelia's 'kind nursery' as if to find in her a mother'
   • Coppelia Kahn: '[Cordelia] is the only loving women in Lear's world'