Enigma Cordelia

[Andy]

After reading King Lear, it was suggested that 'to understand Cordelia is to understand the whole play'. Does anybody agree, or disagree with this statement? And why?
I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts on the truth and implication of this statement. That having been said, dazzle me.

[shamus88]

Cordeila does seem to stand for all the morals and good ideas that are suggested in King Lear. However, I think that it is key to understand Lear, rather than Cordelia. This is not just because he is the central protagonist, but his volitile nature triggers the events, he furthers the narrative, and he unites all of the themes and political issues.

[IrishCanadian]

I'm going to have to dissagree with you shamus88, Lear was a bumbulling "fool" in the play who had no idea of what was going on around him. When he finds out that "mad" Edgar was smart he even tries to copy him because he wants to be kingly. He wants to have all his knites about him so that he can appear to be a king. He simply doesn't get it, has no idea what wisdom surrounded him and even goes mad himself when Cordelia dies.
Cordelia, I think, is the most important character in the play. She has a minor role (if your an actor that is) and yet carries the play as a piece of literature. The fool is my favorite character, but it is Cordielia that Shakespear uses for his examples of humanity both bad and good. For example she is courted by two men and when they find out that she lost her dowery one runs away. Sh is truthful to her fatrher and suffers the consequences of reality. But the (this is why Shakespear is so good) what is reality in the metaphisical sence (The Law of Nature as it is called in the play). Shakespear used Cordelia to exemplify that Truth is. I disagree but as a piece of li it is Cordelia that is always right. I would even go so far as to say that she had a happy life. A life of virtue as Aristotle would call it, this led to her appropriate end and left her in the arms of the father that she Truely loved as she dies.
In the meantime King Lear is left in the dark by his own fault.

[Petrarch's Love]

Well, I think we can at least all agree that if Lear had understood Cordelia in the first place the play would have been much cheerier. :lol: As for us understanding Cordelia, while I agree that Lear is the main character of the drama, it is only by understanding Cordelia's position that we get the full dramatic thrust of the play. Cordelia is that beacon for how things might have gone right against which we may reflect on the way everyone else has gone terribly wrong.

[The Unnamable]

Tonight I read King Lear again. There is no doubt in my mind that the Bard was not in a good mood with humanity when he wrote that one. In the last scene, Kent says:

“all's cheerless, dark and deadly.”

He’s right.

Dr Johnson wrote, “I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia’s death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as editor.”

Samuel Johnson Preface to Shakespeare

I can think of no other piece of ‘Literature’ that I find as emotionally eviscerating as that ending.

“No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!”

Why? Because we live in a universe where the ones you love are needlessly slaughtered while dogs and rats remain alive. That’s the truth about the nature of divine justice.

Unbearable.