Cordelia

“ But Cordelia, disgusted with the flattery of her sisters, whose hearts she knew were far from their lips, and seeing that all their coaxing speeches were only intended to wheedle the old king out of his dominions, that they and their husbands might reign in his lifetime, made no other reply but this,—that she loved his majesty according to her duty, neither more nor less. ”

“ Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most lov'd, despis'd! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon. Be it lawful I take up what's cast away. Gods, gods! 'tis strange that from their cold'st neglect My love should kindle to inflam'd respect. Thy dow'rless daughter, King, thrown to my chance, Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France. Not all the dukes in wat'rish Burgundy Can buy this unpriz'd precious maid of me. Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind. Thou losest here, a better where to find. ”

“ Cordelia met him in the outer hall. She had not been present at the interview just closed; but she could not let him go without seeing, and speaking with him before he went. She wanted to thank him for the pleasure he had afforded her; she wanted to bless him, and she wanted to kiss him.
“Oh, my dear love!” she murmured, with her hands on his shoulders, and her eyes gazing up into his own. “I can not tell you how happy I am. Will anything ever come to mar the perfect bliss?”
“Let us hope not, my darling. My trust is in heaven, and in your truth. I do not think either can fail me. ”

“ Of the five personages subjected to the action of misfortune, Cordelia, a heavenly figure, hovers almost invisible and half-vailed over the composition, which she fills with her presence, although she is almost always absent from it. She suffers, but never complains, never defends herself: she acts, but her action is manifested only by its results; serene regarding her own fate, reserved and restrained even in her most legitimate feelings, she passes and disappears like a denizen of a better world, who has traversed this world of ours without experiencing any mere earthly emotion. ”

“ Cordelia, true and loyal as she is, and tender at heart, does not approach her in strength and dignity. But the duty of the Greek heroine does not end with her father’s death. She lays down her life at last that the false-hearted brother, who has given her no gentle consideration in her days of helplessness and despair, may not lie unburied on the plains of Thebes, and so wander without rest in Hades. She laments the lost pleasures of living. No husband or children are to be hers. Yet no enthusiasm of passion or romance tempers this “cold statue’s fine-wrought grace.” ”

“ In King Lear, that tempestuous drama, which is nothing but a sequence of betrayals and horrible torments, goodness is impersonated and takes the name of Cordelia, shining in the midst of the tempest, as when the sky is dark and we look, not upon the darkness, but upon the single star that is scintillating there. ”

“ Spaulding, in turn, was not ungrateful for what she considered Cordelia's good offices in this case. She even confessed to her young ward the timid fear that a great artist like Repellier, reproducing on his canvas feature by feature the very face in which a vast but heroically hidden passion burned, might some day read the soul of the picture, where the soul of the woman had passed unnoticed. Cordelia agreed that such cases were not unknown, but honorably kept her own counsel in the matter and even bravely fought down within herself the last inner voice of flippancy. ”

“ What is it, then, which lends to Cordelia that peculiar and individual truth of character, which distinguishes her from every other human being?
It is a natural reserve, a tardiness of disposition, "which often leaves the history unspoke which it intends to do;" a subdued quietness of deportment and expression, a veiled shyness thrown over all her emotions, her language and her manner; making the outward demonstration invariably fall short of what we know to be the feeling within. ”

“ Cordelia then told him simply that she loved him as she ought to love a father who had bred and reared her; that she should always honor and obey him above all others; but if she had a husband, she should think it her duty to give him half her love and care, and not, like her sisters, give her father all.
On this Lear went into one of his terrible fits of rage. He was so sorely disappointed at Cordelia’s answer that he could not wait to let his reason see how wise it was. He stamped and raved, and without delay divided the large portion he had reserved for Cordelia between her sisters. ”

“ For with all her activity and with all the attention she seemed to receive, Cordelia's life was still a desolately lonely one. An early girlish pose of protesting a fear of men had crystallized into a habit of evading them, except in not infrequent cases of late where they stepped before her as instruments of literary destiny. Good men, she had once said, are like good roads: made for walking over. As the belle of her little Kentucky town she had held herself proudly above each and all of her young suitors. ”

“ Cordelia is goodness itself in its original well-spring, limpid and shining as it gushes forth: she represents moral beauty and is therefore both courageous and hesitating, modest and dignified, ready to disdain contests, where they are of no avail, but also ready to fight bravely, when to do so is of service. ”

“ We see the unconscious elevation of Cordelia's mind, not so much superior as invulnerable to mortal ills; we see this dignity and lovely pride cast down by pity and love, and then in answer to Lear's troubled and anxious look we hear in measured and steadfast tones the reassurance of perfect peace. ”

“ But Love detains me from Death's peacefull Cell, Still whispering me Cordelia's in distress; Unkinde as she is I cannot see her wretched, But must be neer to wait upon her Fortune. Who knows but the white minute yet may come When Edgar may do service to Cordelia, That charming Hope still ties me to the Oar Of painfull Life, and makes me too, submit To th' humblest shifts to keep that Life a foot ”

“ But (I am forced to dwell on the point, because I am sure to slur it over is to be false to Shakespeare) this dumbness of love was not the sole source of misunderstanding. If this had been all, even Lear could have seen the love in Cordelia’s eyes when, to his question ‘What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?’ she answered ‘Nothing.’ But it did not shine there. She is not merely silent, nor does she merely answer ‘Nothing.’ She tells him that she loves him ‘according to her bond, nor more nor less’; and his answer,
How now, Cordelia! ”

“ Why are you crying so?"
"T-that's why," stuttered Cordelia, smiling through tear-wet eyes. "It's because I d-did find him, and I'm so glad, and everything!"
"But, if you're glad, why cry?" began Hermit Joe's son, in puzzled wonder, but Genevieve patted Cordelia's back, and smiled cheerily.
"That's all right, Cordelia," she declared. "I know just how you feel. Now you know what was the matter with me when you girls gave me the Texas yell at the station. Just cry all you like!" ”

“ For little as she had ever shown any sign of sacrificing her artistic aspirations in the rose-grown temple of matrimony, the hunger of the unmated and maturing animal, the wavering passion that arises at times involuntarily in the breast of the coldest priestess amid her coldest marbles, quiescent, but quiescent only as a tiger sleeping in its noonday cave, was now not unknown to the heart of Cordelia Vaughan. She wanted to be loved ”

“ Such is this drama, "King Lear."
The father is the pretext for the daughter. This admirable human creation, Lear, serves as a support to that ineffable divine creation, Cordelia. The reason why that chaos of crimes, vices, madnesses, and miseries exists is, for the more splendid setting forth of virtue. Shakespeare, carrying Cordelia in his thoughts, created that tragedy like a god who, having an Aurora to put forward, makes a world expressly for it.
And what a figure is that father! What a caryatid! He is man bent down by weight, but shifts his burdens for others that are heavier. ”

“ Then Cordelia spoke in a fainting voice.
"There's—somebody else—hanging out clothes—in the vacant lot," she gasped, and clutched at a chair for support.
"Who?" cried Mrs. Townsend, rousing to indignation, for already she had assumed a proprietorship in the vacant lot. "Is it the folks in the next house? I'd like to know what right they have! We are next to that vacant lot."
"I—dunno—who it is," gasped Cordelia. "Why, we've seen that girl next door go to mass every morning," said Mrs. Townsend. "She's got a fiery red head. Seems as if you might know her by this time, Cordelia." ”

“ When Lear awakes with the loud music ringing in his ears, and finds himself once more in royal state and apparel, and with Cordelia at his feet, fancy flashes upon him the idea that he has passed the dread bourne of life. ”

“ It was Cordelia who attracted Elsa Muller's sweetheart, Yank Hurst, to her side, and left Elsa to die yearning for his return. And it was Cordelia who threw Hurst aside when he took to drink and stabbed the young man who, during a mere walk from church, took his place beside Cordelia. And yet Cordelia was only ambitious, not wicked. Few men live who would not look twice at her. She was not of the stunted tenement type, like her friends Rosie Mulvey and Minnie Bechman and Julia Moriarty. ”

“ According to the classical ideas of virtue and heroism, the character is sublime, and in the delineation there is a severe simplicity mingled with its Grecian grace, a unity, a grandeur, an elegance, which appeal to our taste and our understanding, while they fill and exalt the imagination: but in Cordelia it is not the [Pg 301] external coloring or form, it is not what she says or does, but what she is in herself, what she feels, thinks, and suffers, which continually awaken our sympathy and interest. The heroism of Cordelia is more passive and tender—it melts into our heart ”

“ Spaulding's one romance—wilful and unreasonable, yet none the less golden. Wealth had brought her many things, but out of the midst of her opulence she reached eagerly for the unattainable—seeking, without knowing it, for life's relieving burden of sorrow, for her woman's due heritage of tears.
"You ought to be happy," Cordelia one day had said to her; "you get everything you want." She had been trying to scold Cordelia out of a passing mood of discontent. ”

“ Lear was very much pleased with Regan's professions, and turned to his youngest daughter, Cordelia. “Now, our joy, though last not least,” he said, “the best part of my kingdom have I kept for you. What can you say?”
“Nothing, my lord,” answered Cordelia.
“Nothing can come of nothing. Speak again,” said the King. ”

“ He was happy, and Cordelia was in an ecstasy by the time he had paid a shock-headed, bare-armed German waiter, and they were again on the avenue side by side. She put out her hand and rested it on his arm again—to make sure she was Clarice.
One would like to know whether, in the breasts of such as these, familiar environment exerts any remarkable influence. If so, it could have been in but one direction. For that part of town was one vast nursery. Everywhere, on every side, were the swarming babies—a baby for every flag-stone in the pavements. ”

“ From that first-night performance of Cordelia's much-talked-of drama Hartley carried away many mixed feelings.
It was when the perfunctory applause that came at the end of the first act had died dishearteningly away that Cordelia had turned to him and confessed, as though acting under some sudden impulse, that the work of making the play from her book had not been performed by her alone.
"They insisted on having their own men do it," she explained. "They keep men under salary for just that sort of thing." ”

“ She tends to become to us predominantly pathetic, the sweetest and most pathetic of Shakespeare's women, as innocent as Miranda and as loving as Viola, yet suffering more deeply than Cordelia or Imogen. And she seems to lack that independence and strength of spirit which Cordelia and Imogen possess, and which in a manner raises them above suffering. She appears passive and defenceless, and can oppose to wrong nothing but the infinite endurance and forgiveness of a love that knows not how to resist or resent. ”

“ There is no attempt at character in the old narratives; Regan and Goneril are monsters of ingratitude, and Cordelia merely distinguished by her filial piety; whereas, in Shakspeare, this filial piety is an affection quite distinct from the qualities which serve to individualize the human being; we have a perception of innate character apart from all accidental circumstance: we see that if Cordelia had never known her father, had never been rejected from his love, had never been a born princess or a crowned queen, she would not have been less Cordelia ”

“ No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e’er lov’d, or father found;
A love that makes breath poor and speech unable;
Beyond all manner of so much I love you.
CORDELIA.
[Aside.] What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.
LEAR.
Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,
With shadowy forests and with champains rich’d,
With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,
We make thee lady: to thine and Albany’s issue
Be this perpetual.—What says our second daughter,
Our dearest Regan, wife of Cornwall? Speak. ”