CORDELIA
By Jenny and Laura
Significant Quotations
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‘Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
according to my bond, no more nor less’. (pg 104) – At the start of King Lear,
Cordelia refuses to join her two sisters in exclaiming her love for her father in the
hope of getting a third of his kingdom. King Lear takes this to mean that Cordelia
doesn’t love him, so he refuses to look at her and disowns her as his daughter.
When Cordelia comes back into the play, she is the Queen of France and she
converses with Kent about her father. ‘cure this great breach in his abused nature;
Th’untuned and jarring senses O wind up of this child-changed father!’ (pg 236)
Shakespeare often uses the metaphor of discord in music to portray mental disorder
and this can be seen above. It is clear that Cordelia misses her Father and wants to
help him. Cordelia blames her two sisters for Lear’s descent into madness and this is
shown when she says, ‘repair those violent harms that my two sisters have in
their reverence made’. (pg 237)
Cordelia then meets her father at the end of the play and Lear realises how foolish he
has been to cast her out of his kingdom. He cannot believe his luck that he has found
her again and holds onto her tightly whilst telling her it will take divine intervention to
separate them again. She tells him that they ‘are not the first who with best
meaning have incurred the worst’. (pg 245) They then walk of stage and the next
time we see Cordelia is when Lear enters ‘with Cordelia in his arms’ (pg 259), after
she has been hanged.
Character Development
•At the very beginning of King Lear, she stands apart from her two sisters and
this shows her independence and the strength of her character. She refuses to
give in and declare her love for her father like her other sisters do.
•This power is immediately juxtaposed with the vulnerability we see when King
Lear throws her out of his kingdom. The King of France declares his love for
Cordelia and, as if she has regained her power from another male figure, she
leaves to become the Queen of France.
•The audience do not meet Cordelia again until the very end of the play when
she finds herself imprisoned with her Father. She shows no anger towards her
father or her sisters and seems to have forgiven them. She is still shown to be
a strong woman, in control of her emotions, and it is King Lear who weeps
when Cordelia is hanged.
Relationship with Other Characters
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She is the sister of Goneril and Regan and the daughter of King Lear
She marries the King of France
She can be compared with the Fool as in some regards they are quite
similar
She is respectful and loyal to Kent when they meet at the end of the play.
Do their actions or speech link them to
any of the themes in King Lear?
• Family relationships – Cordelia is thrown out of the
family and refuses to compete with her sisters for a piece
of the kingdom
• Sight – Lear banishes Cordelia from his sight as he
believes that she doesn’t love him and cannot bear to
look at her
• Filial ingratitude – Cordelia is abandoned by her Father
when she wont describe her affection for him
• Truth – Cordelia always tells the truth and is the only
‘good’ sister. She never takes on any disguise or lies
• Feminine power – She is shown to be a very strong
willed, independent woman and this is seen when she
follows France to carry on with her own life, without her
fathers protection or love.
Critical Readings
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Some interpretations of ‘King Lear’ believe the fool and Cordelia to be a
double role – this is seen in the last lines of the play when Lear laments,
‘And my poor fool is hanged’ when talking about Cordelia.
Gradually we realize that the Fool is Cordelia’s surrogate during her
absence. The two never appear in the same scene and hardly even refer to
each other, but we have been casually, and very subtly, made aware of their
mutual love.
There are similarities between Cordelia and the Fool, most obvious is the
fact that like Cordelia, the Fool is a truth-teller. Shakespeare subtly links the
two characters together through Lear, for example, as the Fool keeps
teasing Lear, Lear mutters to himself, ‘I did her wrong.’ It is clear that by
‘her’ he means Cordelia.
Despite her absence, Cordelia is present to him in his Fool. Instead of
threatening him with whipping, Lear, in the midst of his own suffering and
madness, treats him with the utmost tenderness, affectionately calling him
‘my boy.’ It’s his indirect way of expressing his love and regret for his
cruelty to his only true-hearted daughter.