Word: cordelia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...standard criticism of Lear is that it is insufficiently motivated: Why do the malicious whims of two ungrateful daughters plunge the old man into a frenzy of madness and remorse? Why does his single action - the banishment of Cordelia - cause his universe to crumble about...
Sense of Loss. Nothing that Lear has done or will do can account for the disasters that overtake him or for the death of Cordelia, which Carnovsky finds "so needless it is unbearable." As Carnovsky interprets him, Lear is a man stripped of everything except the strength to protest. His final act, he points out, "is to accuse the gods, to say if you can do this, then life is not worth living. Lear then consents to die." What gives Lear dignity at last is his unflinching involvement in his own destruction. Through him, Carnovsky thinks, Shakespeare was saying...
What does he see on Cordelia's lips? We don't know. For us, as for John Henry Newman, "Omnia exeunt in mysterium." But for Lear, the ultimate question is answered, and the answer comes as a sudden flash of enlightenment analogous to the Buddhists' satorl. This ecstatic discovery is what Lear should convey to us in his last two lines...
...have, of course, no use for the idiotic happy ending, with Lear restored to the throne and Cordelia blissfully married, that for ages afflicted productions of the play until Macready restored Shakespeare's original text exactly a century and a quarter...
...Lear's three daughters, Carrie Nye's Regan has strength and all the requisite viciousness. The other two are the chief disappointments in the cast. Rosemary Murphy looks hateful enough for the arch-villainous Goneril, but she lacks the requisite venom in her diction. Cordelia does not have many lines, but is a fully drawn character. As Anne Draper plays her, she emerges rather neutral. The role is pivotal for Cordelia represents the future ideal of love (as Edmund represents the primitive past and Lear the civilized present). This Cordelia does not emanate sufficient love...