Word: cordelia
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...find no fault with Carnovsky's handling of his subdued dementia, the reconciliation with Cordelia, and his death--with one exception, and this seems a serious flaw...
...Lear has Cordelia's lifeless body before him, and mourns her. Carnovsky delivers all these lines in the same mood--one of depression. This is, I believe, a misinterpretation. Shakespeare wants a change of mood here, and he makes it possible by inserting the infinitely touching but essentially irrelevant "button" line...
...repeats it as if she did not quite believe it. The fact is, no one is really convinced that the tormented figures of modern drama have the stature of tragic heroes. The measure of that disbelief is to imagine Jocasta asking an audience to pay attention to Oedipus, or Cordelia to Lear. Try not paying attention to them...
Rewriter Sir William Davenant, Shakespeare's godson, refined this into: "Now friend, what means thy change of countenance?" Romeo and Juliet stayed alive; "false Cressid" remained true to Troilus; and in the most bizarre happy ending of the lot, King Lear's daughter Cordelia married Edgar, and Lear was offered back his kingdom. Adapter Nahum Tate, who also edited out Lear's Fool (this cut lasted for 157 years), solemnly declared that his only purpose was "making the tale conclude in a success for the innocent distressed persons...
Shakespeare's breathtaking change of pace carries a man to the brink of eternity and then restores him to common humanity. On seeing Cordelia's body, the grief-stricken Lear cries: "Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life and thou no breath at all?" In the extremity of human despair ("Thou'lt come no more") he utters his towering, fivefold "Never, never, never, never, never!" Then the dam of his unbearable anguish breaks with the homely request, "Pray you undo this button." No one but Shakespeare would have dared put those two lines together...