CORDELIA.
There is in the beauty of Cordelia's character an effect too sacred for words, and almost too deep for tears; within her heart is a fathomless well of purest affection, but its waters sleep in silence and obscurity,—never failing in their depth and never overflowing in their fulness. Every thing in her seems to lie beyond our view, and affects us in a manner which we feel rather than perceive. The character appears to have no surface, no salient points upon which the fancy can readily seize: there is little external development of intellect, less of passion, and still less of imagination. It is completely made out in the course of a few scenes, and we are surprised to find that in those few scenes there is matter for a life of reflection, and materials enough for twenty heroines. If Lear be the grandest of Shakspeare's tragedies, Cordelia in herself, as a human being, governed by the purest and holiest impulses and motives, the most refined from all dross of selfishness and passion, approaches near to perfection; and in her adaptation, as a dramatic personage, to a determinate plan of action, may be pronounced altogether perfect. The character, to speak of it critically as a poetical conception, is not, however, to be comprehended at once, or easily; and in the same manner Cordelia, as a woman, is one whom we must have loved before we could have known her, and known her long before we could have known her truly.
Most people, I believe, have heard the story of the young German artist Müller, who, while employed in copying and engraving Raffaelle's Madonna del Sisto, was so penetrated by its celestial beauty, so distrusted his own power to do justice to it, that between admiration and despair he fell into a sadness; thence through the usual gradations, into a melancholy, thence into madness; and died just as he had put the finishing stroke to his own matchless work, which had occupied him for eight years. With some slight tinge of this concentrated kind of enthusiasm I have learned to contemplate the character of Cordelia; I have looked into it till the revelation of its hidden beauty, and an intense feeling of the wonderful genius which created it, have filled me at once with delight and despair. Like poor Müller, but with more reason, I do despair of ever conveying, through a different and inferior medium, the impression made on my own mind to the mind of another.
Schlegel, the most eloquent of critics, concludes his remarks on King Lear with these words: "Of the heavenly beauty of soul of Cordelia, I will not venture to speak." Now if I attempt what Schlegel and others have left undone, it is because I feel that this general acknowledgment of her excellence can neither satisfy those who have studied the character, nor convey a just conception of it to the mere reader. Amid the awful, the overpowering interest of the story, amid the terrible convulsions of passion and suffering, and pictures of moral and physical wretchedness which harrow up the soul, the tender influence of Cordelia, like that of a celestial visitant, is felt and acknowledged without being quite understood. Like a soft star that shines for a moment from behind a stormy cloud and the next is swallowed up in tempest and darkness, the impression it leaves is beautiful and deep,—but vague. Speak of Cordelia to a critic or to a general reader, all agree in the beauty of the portrait, for all must feel it; but when we come to details, I have heard more various and opposite opinions relative to her than any other of Shakspeare's characters—a proof of what I have advanced in the first instance, that from the simplicity with which the character is dramatically treated, and the small space it occupies, few are aware of its internal power, or its wonderful depth of purpose.
It appears to me that the whole character rests upon the two sublimest principles of human action, the love of truth and the sense of duty; but these, when they stand alone, (as in the Antigone,) are apt to strike us as severe and cold. Shakspeare has, therefore, wreathed them round with the dearest attributes of our feminine nature, the power of feeling and inspiring affection. The first part of the play shows us how Cordelia is loved, the second part how she can love. To her father she is the object of a secret preference, his agony at her supposed unkindness draws from him the confession, that he had loved her most, and "thought to set his rest on her kind nursery." Till then she had been "his best object, the argument of his praise, balm of his age, most best, most dearest!" The faithful and worthy Kent is ready to brave death and exile in her defence: and afterwards a farther impression of her benign sweetness is conveyed in a simple and beautiful manner, when we are told that "since the lady Cordelia went to France, her father's poor fool had much pined away." We have her sensibility "when patience and sorrow strove which should express her goodliest:" and all her filial tenderness when she commits her poor father to the care of the physician, when she hangs over him as he is sleeping, and kisses him as she contemplates the wreck of grief and majesty.
O my dear father! restoration hang
Its medicine on my lips: and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made!
Had you not been their father, these white flakes
Had challenged pity of them! Was this a face
To be exposed against the warring winds,
To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder
In the most terrible and nimble stroke
Of quick cross lightning? to watch, (poor perdu!)
With thin helm? mine enemy's dog,
Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
Against my fire.
Her mild magnanimity shines out in her farewell to her sisters, of whose real character she is perfectly aware:—
Ye jewels of our father! with washed eyes
Cordelia leaves you! I know ye what ye are,
And like a sister, am most loath to call
Your faults as they are nam'd. Use well our father,
To your professed bosoms I commit him.
But yet, alas! stood I within his grace,
I would commend him to a better place;
So farewell to you both.
GONERIL.
Prescribe not us our duties!
The modest pride with which she replies to the Duke of Burgundy is admirable; this whole passage is too illustrative of the peculiar character of Cordelia, as well as too exquisite, to be mutilated
I yet beseech your majesty,
(If, for I want that glib and oily heart,
To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend
I'll do't before I speak,) that you make known,
It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,
No unchaste action, or dishonored step
That hath deprived me of your grace and favor;
But even for want of that, for which I am richer;
A still soliciting eye, and such a tongue
I am glad I have not, tho' not to have it
Hath lost me in your liking.
LEAR.
Better thou
Hadst not been born, than not to have pleased me better.
FRANCE.
Is it but this? a tardiness of nature,
That often leaves the history unspoke
Which it intends to do?—My lord of Burgundy,
What say you to the lady? love is not love
When it is mingled with respects that stand
Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?
She is herself a dowry.
BURGUNDY.
Royal Lear,
Give but that portion which yourself proposed,
And here I take Cordelia by the hand
Duchess of Burgundy.
LEAR.
Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.
BURGUNDY.
I am sorry, then, you have lost a father
That you must lose a husband.
CORDELIA.
Peace be with Burgundy!
Since that respects of fortune are his love,
I shall not be his wife.
FRANCE.
Fairest Cordelia! thou art more rich, being poor,
Most choice, forsaken, and most lov'd, despised!
Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.
She takes up arms, "not for ambition, but a dear father's right." In her speech after her defeat, we have a calm fortitude and elevation of soul, arising from the consciousness of duty, and lifting her above all consideration of self. She observes,—
We are not the first
Who with best meaning have incurred the worst!
She thinks and fears only for her father.
For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down;
Myself would else out-frown false fortune's frown.
To complete the picture, her very voice is characteristic, "ever soft, gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman."
But it will be said, that the qualities here exemplified—as sensibility, gentleness, magnanimity, fortitude, generous affection—are qualities which belong, in their perfection, to others of Shakspeare's characters—to Imogen, for instance, who unites them all; and yet Imogen and Cordelia are wholly unlike each other. Even though we should reverse their situations, and give to Imogen the filial devotion of Cordelia, and to Cordelia the conjugal virtues of Imogen, still they would remain perfectly distinct as women. 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. Not only is the portrait singularly beautiful and interesting in itself, but the conduct of Cordelia, and the part which she bears in the beginning of the story, is rendered consistent and natural by the wonderful truth and delicacy with which this peculiar disposition is sustained throughout the play.
In early youth, and more particularly if we are gifted with a lively imagination, such a character as that of Cordelia is calculated above every other to impress and captivate us. Any thing like mystery, any thing withheld or withdrawn from our notice, seizes on our fancy by awakening our curiosity. Then we are won more by what we half perceive and half create, than by what is openly expressed and freely bestowed. But this feeling is a part of our young life: when time and years have chilled us, when we can no longer afford to send our souls abroad, nor from our own superfluity of life and sensibility spare the materials out of which we build a shrine for our idol—then do we seek, we ask, we thirst for that warmth of frank, confiding tenderness, which revives in us the withered affections and feelings, buried but not dead. Then the excess of love is welcomed, not repelled: it is gracious to us as the sun and dew to the seared and riven trunk, with its few green leaves. Lear is old—"fourscore and upward"—but we see what he has been in former days: the ardent passions of youth have turned to rashness and wilfulness: he is long passed that age when we are more blessed in what we bestow than in what we receive. When he says to his daughters, "I gave ye all!" we feel that he requires all in return, with a jealous, restless, exacting affection which defeats its own wishes. How many such are there in the world! How many to sympathize with the fiery, fond old man, when he shrinks as if petrified from Cordelia's quiet calm reply!
LEAR.
Now our joy,
Although the last not least—
What can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters'? Speak!
CORDELIA.
Nothing, my lord.
LEAR.
Nothing!
CORDELIA.
Nothing.
LEAR.
Nothing can come of nothing: speak again!
CORDELIA.
Unhappy that I am! I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more, nor less.
Now this is perfectly natural. Cordelia has penetrated the vile characters of her sisters. Is it not obvious, that, in proportion as her own mind is pure and guileless, she must be disgusted with their gross hypocrisy and exaggeration, their empty protestations, their "plaited cunning;" and would retire from all competition with what she so disdains and abhors,—even into the opposite extreme? In such a case, as she says herself—
What should Cordelia do?—love and be silent?
For the very expressions of Lear—
What can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters'?
are enough to strike dumb forever a generous, delicate, but shy disposition, such as Cordelia's, by holding out a bribe for professions.
If Cordelia were not thus portrayed, this deliberate coolness would strike us as verging on harshness or obstinacy; but it is beautifully represented as a certain modification of character, the necessary result of feelings habitually, if not naturally, repressed: and through the whole play we trace the same peculiar and individual disposition—the same absence of all display—the same sobriety of speech veiling the most profound affections—the same quiet steadiness of purpose—the same shrinking from all exhibition of emotion.
"Tous les sentimens naturels ont leur pudeur," was a vivâ voce observation of Madame de Staël, when disgusted by the sentimental affectation of her imitators. This "pudeur," carried to an excess, appears to me the peculiar characteristic of Cordelia. Thus, in the description of her deportment when she receives the letter of the Earl of Kent, informing her of the cruelty of her sisters and the wretched condition of Lear, we seem to have her before us:—
KENT.
Did your letters pierce the queen to any demonstration of grief?
GENTLEMAN.
Ay, sir, she took them, and read them in my presence
And now and then an ample tear stole down
Her delicate cheek. It seemed she was a queen
Over her passion; who, most rebel-like
Sought to be king over her.
KENT.
O then it moved her!
GENTLEMAN.
Not to a rage.
Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of father
Pantingly forth, as if it pressed her heart,
Cried, Sisters! sisters! Shame of ladies! Sisters!
What, i' the storm? i' the night?
Let pity not be believed. Then she shook
The holy water from her heavenly eyes;
* * * *
Then away she started,
To deal with grief alone.
Here the last line—the image brought before us of Cordelia starting away from observation, "to deal with grief alone," is as exquisitely beautiful as it is characteristic.
But all the passages hitherto quoted must yield in beauty and power to that scene, in which her poor father recognizes her, and in the intervals of distraction asks forgiveness of his wronged child. The subdued pathos and simplicity of Cordelia's character, her quiet but intense feeling, the misery and humiliation of the bewildered old man, are brought before us in so few words, and at the same time sustained with such a deep intuitive knowledge of the innermost workings of the human heart, that as there is nothing surpassing this scene in Shakspeare himself, so there is nothing that can be compared to it in any other writer.
CORDELIA.
How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?
LEAR.
You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.
CORDELIA.
Sir, do you know me?
LEAR.
You are a spirit, I know: when did you die?
CORDELIA.
Still, still far wide!
PHYSICIAN.
He's scarce awake: let him alone awhile.
LEAR.
Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight!
I am mightily abused. I should even die with pity
To see another thus. I know not what to say.
I will not swear these are my hands: Let's see.
I feel this pin prick. Would I were assured
Of my condition.
CORDELIA.
O look upon me, sir,
And hold your hands in benediction o'er me—
No, sir, you must not kneel.
LEAR.
Pray, do not mock me:
I am a very foolish, fond old man,
Fourscore and upwards; and to deal plainly with you,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you, and know this man,
Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
CORDELIA.
And so I am, I am.
LEAR.
Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray you weep not
If you have poison for me I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.
CORDELIA.
No cause, no cause!
As we do not estimate Cordelia's affection for her father by the coldness of her language, so neither should we measure her indignation against her sisters by the mildness of her expressions. What, in fact, can be more eloquently significant, and at the same time more characteristic of Cordelia, than the single line when she and her father are conveyed to their prison:—
Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?
The irony here is so bitter and intense, and at the same time so quiet, so feminine, so dignified in the expression, that who but Cordelia would have uttered it in the same manner, or would have condensed such ample meaning into so few and simple words?
We lose sight of Cordelia during the whole of the second and third, and great part of the fourth act; but towards the conclusion she reappears. Just as our sense of human misery and wickedness being carried to its extreme height, becomes nearly intolerable, "like an engine wrenching our frame of nature from its fixed place," then, like a redeeming angel, she descends to mingle in the scene, "loosening the springs of pity in our eyes," and relieving the impressions of pain and terror by those of admiration and a tender pleasure. For the catastrophe, it is indeed terrible! wondrous terrible! When Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms, compassion and awe so seize on all our faculties, that we are left only to silence and to tears. But if I might judge from my own sensations, the catastrophe of Lear is not so overwhelming as the catastrophe of Othello. We do not turn away with the same feeling of absolute unmitigated despair. Cordelia is a saint ready prepared for heaven—our earth is not good enough for her: and Lear!—O who, after sufferings and tortures such as his, would wish to see his life prolonged? What replace a sceptre in that shaking hand?—a crown upon that old gray head, on which the tempest had poured in its wrath?—on which the deep dread bolted thunders and the winged lightnings had spent their fury? O never, never!
Let him pass! he hates him
That would upon the rack of this rough world
Stretch him out longer.
In the story of King Lear and his three daughters, as it is related in the "delectable and mellifluous" romance of Perceforest, and in the Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the conclusion is fortunate. Cordelia defeats her sisters, and replaces her father on his throne. Spenser, in his version of the story, has followed these authorities. Shakspeare has preferred the catastrophe of the old ballad, founded apparently on some lost tradition. I suppose it is by way of amending his errors, and bringing back this daring innovator to sober history, that it has been thought fit to alter the play of Lear for the stage, as they have altered Romeo and Juliet: they have converted the seraph-like Cordelia into a puling love heroine, and sent her off victorious at the end of the play—exit with drums and colors flying—to be married to Edgar. Now any thing more absurd, more discordant with all our previous impressions, and with the characters as unfolded to us, can hardly be imagined. "I cannot conceive," says Schlegel, "what ideas of art and dramatic connection those persons have, who suppose we can at pleasure tack a double conclusion to a tragedy—a melancholy one for hard-hearted spectators, and a merry one for those of softer mould." The fierce manners depicted in this play, the extremes of virtue and vice in the persons, belong to the remote period of the story.[64] 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; less distinctly herself; that is, a woman of a steady mind, of calm but deep affections, of inflexible truth, of few words, and of reserved deportment.
As to Regan and Goneril—"tigers, not daughters"—we might wish to regard them as mere hateful chimeras, impossible as they are detestable; but fortunately there was once a Tullia. I know not where to look for the prototype of Cordelia: there was a Julia Alpinula, the young priestess of Aventicum,[65] who, unable to save her father's life by the sacrifice of her own, died with him—"infelix patris, infelix proles"—but this is all we know of her. There was the Roman daughter, too. I remember seeing at Genoa, Guido's "Pieta Romana," in which the expression of the female bending over the aged parent, who feeds from her bosom, is perfect,—but it is not a Cordelia: only Raffaelle could have painted Cordelia.
But the character which at once suggests itself in comparison with Cordelia, as the heroine of filial tenderness and piety, is certainly the Antigone of Sophocles. As poetical conceptions, they rest on the same basis: they are both pure abstractions of truth, piety, and natural affection; and in both, love, as a passion, is kept entirely out of sight: for though the womanly character is sustained, by making them the objects of devoted attachment, yet to have portrayed them as influenced by passion, would have destroyed that unity of purpose and feeling which is one source of power; and, besides, have disturbed that serene purity and grandeur of soul, which equally distinguishes both heroines. The spirit, however, in which the two characters are conceived, is as different as possible; and we must not fail to remark, that Antigone, who plays a principal part in two fine tragedies, and is distinctly and completely made out, is considered as a masterpiece, the very triumph of the ancient classical drama; whereas, there are many among Shakspeare's characters which are equal to Cordelia as dramatic conceptions, and superior to her in finishing of outline, as well as in the richness of the poetical coloring.
When Œdipus, pursued by the vengeance of the gods, deprived of sight by his own mad act, and driven from Thebes by his subjects and his sons, wanders forth, abject and forlorn, he is supported by his daughter Antigone; who leads him from city to city, begs for him, and pleads for him against the harsh, rude men, who, struck more by his guilt than his misery, would drive him from his last asylum. In the opening of the "Œdipus Coloneus," where the wretched old man appears leaning on his child, and seats himself in the consecrated Grove of the Furies, the picture presented to us is wonderfully solemn and beautiful. The patient, duteous tenderness of Antigone; the scene in which she pleads for her brother Polynices, and supplicates her father to receive his offending son; her remonstrance to Polynices, when she entreats him not to carry the threatened war into his native country, are finely and powerfully delineated; and in her lamentation over Œdipus, when he perishes in the mysterious grove, there is a pathetic beauty, apparent even through the stiffness of the translation.
Alas! I only wished I might have died
With my poor father; wherefore should I ask
For longer life?
O I was fond of misery with him;
E'en what was most unlovely grew beloved
When he was with me. O my dearest father,
Beneath the earth now in deep darkness hid,
Worn as thou wert with age, to me thou still
Wert dear, and shalt be ever.
—Even as he wished he died,
In a strange land—for such was his desire—
A shady turf covered his lifeless limbs,
Nor unlamented fell! for O these eyes,
My father, still shall weep for thee, nor time
E'er blot thee from my memory.
The filial piety of Antigone is the most affecting part of the tragedy of "Œdipus Coloneus:" her sisterly affection, and her heroic self-devotion to a religious duty, form the plot of the tragedy called by her name. When her two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, had slain each other before the walls of Thebes, Creon issued an edict forbidding the rites of sepulture to Polynices, (as the invader of his country,) and awarding instant death to those who should dare to bury him. We know the importance which the ancients attached to the funeral obsequies, as alone securing their admission into the Elysian fields. Antigone, upon hearing the law of Creon, which thus carried vengeance beyond the grave, enters in the first scene, announcing her fixed resolution to brave the threatened punishment: her sister Ismene shrinks from sharing the peril of such an undertaking, and endeavors to dissuade her from it, on which Antigone replies:—
Wert thou to proffer what I do not ask—
Thy poor assistance—I would scorn it now;
Act as thou wilt, I'll bury him myself:
Let me perform but that, and death is welcome.
I'll do the pious deed, and lay me down
By my dear brother; loving and beloved,
We'll rest together.
She proceeds to execute her generous purpose; she covers with earth the mangled corse of Polynices, pours over it the accustomed libations, is detected in her pious office, and after nobly defending her conduct, is led to death by command of the tyrant: her sister Ismene, struck with shame and remorse, now comes forward to accuse herself as a partaker in the offence, and share her sister's punishment; but Antigone sternly and scornfully rejects her; and after pouring forth a beautiful lamentation on the misery of perishing "without the nuptial song—a virgin and a slave," she dies à l'antique—she strangles herself to avoid a lingering death.
Hemon, the son of Creon, unable to save her life, kills himself upon her grave: but throughout the whole tragedy we are left in doubt whether Antigone does or does not return the affection of this devoted lover.
Thus it will be seen that in the Antigone there is a great deal of what may be called the effect of situation, as well as a great deal of poetry and character: she says the most beautiful things in the world, performs the most heroic actions, and all her words and actions are so placed before us as to command our admiration. 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 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; and in the veiled loveliness and unostentatious delicacy of her character, there is an effect more profound and artless, if it be less striking and less elaborate than in the Grecian heroine. To Antigone we give our admiration, to Cordelia our tears. Antigone stands before us in her austere and statue-like beauty, like one of the marbles of the Parthenon. If Cordelia reminds us of any thing on earth, it is of one of the Madonnas in the old Italian pictures, "with downcast eyes beneath th' almighty dove?" and as that heavenly form is connected with our human sympathies only by the expression of maternal tenderness or maternal sorrow, even so Cordelia would be almost too angelic, were she not linked to our earthly feelings, bound to our very hearts, by her filial love, her wrongs, her sufferings, and her tears.