Bradley and other objections. Memorial reconstruction. Cordelia, King Lear And His Fool

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CORDELIA, KING LEAR AND HIS FOOL.

CHAPTER X

BRADLEY'S AND OTHER OBJECTIONS.

As we have already seen, A.C. Bradley in his Lecture on King Lear, published in Shakespearean Tragedy[1], speaks of Shakespeare's carelessness of detail:

Once more, (a) why does Edgar not reveal himself to his blind father, as he truly says he ought to have done? The answer is left to mere conjecture. (b) Why does Kent so carefully preserve his incognito till the last scene? He says he does it for an important purpose, but what the purpose is we have to guess. (c) Why Burgundy rather than France should have first choice of Cordelia's hand is a question we cannot help asking, but there is no hint of any answer. (d) I have referred already to the strange obscurity regarding Edmund's delay in trying to save his victims, and I will not extend this list of examples. No one of such defects is surprising when considered by itself, but their number is surely significant. Taken in conjunction with other symptoms it means that Shakespeare, set upon the dramatic effect of the scenes and upon certain effects not wholly dramatic, was exceptionally careless of probability, clearness and consistency in smaller matters, introducing what was convenient or striking for a momentary purpose without troubling himself about anything more than the moment. In presence of these signs it seems doubtful whether his failure to give information about the fate of the Fool was due to anything more than carelessness or an impatient desire to reduce his overloaded material.

We have already shown that the Fool pronounced her own departure from the play in the couplet at the end of Act 1, and in her last words in the play "I'll go to bed at noon." The real person in the Fool's motley knew that there would come a time when she would give up the motley, and the character, Fool, would cease to be. The question is, who was the real person? And it is my contention that at the end of the play, when Lear is holding his dead daughter Cordelia, and says:

And my poor fool is hang'd! 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!

Pray you, undo this button: thank you, Sir.

Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips,

Look there, look there!

we are meant to understand that Cordelia had been the Fool. In the spirit of Antigone, Leonatus, and Edgar, Cordelia had led her blind (to reality) father towards what she hoped would be the safety of the French troops. The words "poor fool" have already been applied to the Fool by Lear as they were approaching the hovel (3.2.72). The words "Thou'lt come no more", however, suggest someone who was in the habit of coming into the King's presence as the Fool did at the beginning after being called for several times. Lear is lamenting the fact that the Fool won't come into his presence any longer and won't bring the joy that he usually did. When Lear says, "Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there", the Fool who had at first been more knave than Fool, who had tossed back at Lear his "my boy" and spoken of a "sweet Fool" and of "She that's a maid now", who had become Lear's "Poor Fool" and "my good boy" at the approach to the hovel, is finally for Lear a female, "Look on her, look, her lips", and his daughter Cordelia. Lear is trying to tell those around him that Cordelia had been his Fool, but the realisation that the Fool and Cordelia were one and the same is too much for his heart to sustain and he dies before those around him make the connection. They think that Lear "knowes not what he sees" (Quarto 5.3.293). This is only about 200 lines after we have heard Edgar report the death of his father following Edgar's disclosure to him, and moments after Kent has revealed his disguise to Lear and his disguised name, Caius, to us. We do not know Kent's disguised name until just before we are told the real identity of the Fool. They are revealed to us at virtually the same time in the play, the denouement,[2] and confirm any suspicions we might have had along the way that Cordelia was the Fool.

Bradley's question concerning the delay in Edgar's revealing himself to his father is not quite the full picture, for not only does Edgar delay, but Shakespeare further delays telling us the circumstances of the revelation for he does not present us with Edgar informing his father, but Edgar informing others of what happened when he informed his father. If we'd seen Gloucester's death it would probably have been at the end of the previous scene further away from the denouement it foreshadows. But this way Shakespeare can have Edgar tell us the cause of Gloucester's death - his heart was too weak to support the news that Edgar had been Poor Tom, and bring the climax of the secondary plot closer to the climax of the main plot. With the climax of the secondary plot happening off stage, Shakespeare prepares the way for the on stage death of Lear for similar reasons. A lot of critical literature has been written about the ending of Lear. We ought to see that Shakespeare has commented on the end of the main plot in the ending of the secondary plot. Shakespeare really does stretch out the timing of Edgar's disclosure having him suggest that he felt he had to be armed against the prospect of his blind father not giving him his blessing![3] As weak an excuse as this is, it has the effect of stalling Gloucester's death, and bringing Edgar's report of it closer to Lear's death on which it is a comment.

Bradley also notices the delay in Edmund's attempt to save his victims. It's interesting that much of the time between Edmund's determination that he would "perchance do good" (5.3.199) and his sending an officer with a sword to try to redeem Lear and Cordelia (5.3.250), is taken up (in the Quarto) with Edgar's account of how Kent had "Told the most piteous tale of Lear and him That ever ear receiv'd", with Kent's entrance to the compliment of Albany, and Kent's taking precious moments asking and being informed concerning the bodies of Goneril and Regan. From the officer's confirmation that Lear had killed the slave "that was a-hanging" Cordelia, we see that the praise that Kent received could well have cost Cordelia her life. If Kent had not said anything to Edgar, and if he had not appeared and received the compliment of Albany, and an explanation of Goneril's and Regan's deaths, Cordelia's death might have been averted by the reprieve. When Kent first presents himself to Lear at the end of the play he kneels and says "O my good master!" Lear responds "Prithee, away." Then Edgar seeks to mediate with "'Tis noble Kent, your friend" which is juxtaposed by Lear's "A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!" I take it that when the officer with the reprieve got to the prison he released Lear, but Cordelia was already being hanged by Edmund's captain, and when the released Lear found them he slew the captain as he was in the process of hanging her. Lear must have known of the reprieve, since he himself had been released, and realised that if the reprieve had been a few minutes earlier Cordelia's life would have been spared too. Lear's "plague upon you, murderers, traitors all" juxtaposes the attempted introduction of Kent to Lear. While this may not necessarily represent any attributing of blame to Kent by Lear, since Lear does not understand who Kent is, and he will receive him a little more respectfully though somewhat indifferently a few lines later with "You are welcome hither", an audience that had seen Edgar's report of Kent and his subsequent praise delay the sending of the reprieve might not have thought too kindly of Kent. They could have seen him partly responsible for Cordelia's death.

Concerning the overall timing of the play Eccles[4] had difficulty with Lear's response to Goneril's cutting his train of men in half, "What fifty of my followers at a clap? Within a fortnight?" (1.4.291). He sees Shakespeare implying that this was within two weeks of the events of Act 1 Scene 1, and accuses Shakespeare of carelessness, having "indistinct ideas concerning the progress of the action" and liable to "unhappy oversights." Eccles believed that Lear may have sojourned several times at Goneril's and Regan's before this "fortnight." "It is 'utterly impossible' that this 'fortnight' can refer to the very first fortnight after the division of the kingdom, because this does not allow sufficient time for the tidings of Lear's cruel treatment to reach Cordelia, or for her to undertake that invasion of the kingdom which is already on foot." As a result of his difficulty Eccles felt it necessary to rearrange the scenes of the play. But there is an immediacy in the action the sisters propose at the end of Scene 1:

GONERIL: Sister, it is not a little I have to say of what

most nearly appertains to us both. I think our father will

hence to‑night.

REGAN: That's most certain, and with you; next month

with us.

GONERIL: You see how full of changes his age is; the

observation we have made of it hath not been little: he

always lov'd our sister most; and with what poor judgment

he hath now cast her off appears too grossly.

REGAN: 'Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever

but slenderly known himself.

GONERIL: The best and soundest of his time hath been

but rash; then must we look to receive from his age, not

alone the imperfections of long‑engraffed condition, but

therewithal the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric

years bring with them.

REGAN: Such unconstant starts are we like to have from

him as this of Kent's banishment.

GONERIL: There is further compliment of leave-taking

between France and him. Pray you, let's hit together: if

our father carry authority with such dispositions as he

bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us.

REGAN: We shall further think on't.

GONERIL: We must do something, and i'th'heat. [Exeunt.]

There is absolutely no room for several months sojourn at Goneril's and Regan's before this mention of a "fortnight" at Goneril's.

There is some ambiguity however in the matter of this "fortnight." When Lear mentions the fortnight we could get the impression that the train has already been cut in half, that fifty men have been dismissed and a fortnight has already elapsed. But it is also possible that Lear has only just been told that Goneril, following on from her insistence that he "disquantity his train" "a little" (1.4.246), has now given notice that fifty of his men will go in the next fortnight and he comes back to question Goneril's decision. Lear's words are followed by question marks in both the Quarto and Folio. That fifty have not yet been dismissed seems to be the case from Goneril's suggestion that Regan will not "sustain him and his hundred knights" (1.4.331). When Lear gets to Regan at Gloucester's, Regan speaks of her sister as only having "restrained the riots of your followers" (2.4.140) but Lear says that Goneril "hath abated me of half my train" (2.4.156). But that Lear still has his hundred knights is evident from Regan's words, after the arrival of Goneril, at 2.4.200ff:

If, till the expiration of your month,

You will return and sojourn with my sister,

Dismissing half your train, come then to me....

Clearly Lear is being given the opportunity to dismiss half of his train when he gets back to Goneril's! We then have Lear's attempt to "haggle" with his daughters as to which one will show the greatest love in allowing him to keep the most knights. He starts out by suggesting that Regan will keep him and his hundred knights (2.4.229), and they take him down through fifty, twenty five, ten, five and one. The bargaining ends with Regan's "What need one?" (2.4.261). Clearly he still has his hundred, they have not been dismissed, even though they are not all following him around. If we can trust Oswald's report at 3.7.16,17, after Lear has been alone with the Fool in the storm, he has been fortunate enough to have thirty five or thirty six of his knights find him and take him to Dover.

Further there is no indication Lear ever stayed a month at Regan's. After at best a week or so at Goneril's he set out for Regan's where he was redirected to Gloucester's from where he was driven to Dover[5]. And there was no need for this several months Eccles wanted given the presence of Cordelia in the disguise of the Fool, and France, as we have shown also disguised in Lear's presence. Kent expressed surprise that the French were "already,/ Wise in our negligence" and had "secret feet" in the land. The reason the French were so well informed of the situation was that part of the French force never left England! Cordelia knew what her sisters would get up to ("I know you what you are...." 1.1.272) and stayed behind with France to guide Lear towards Dover where France had ordered the French troops to meet him.

It's time that we look again at two passages in James I's Basilikon Doron which we referred to earlier suggesting that the play turned on the principles James espoused therein. Towards the end of Book 1 we found:

Remember therefore in all your actions, of the great account that yee are one daie to make: in all the daies of your life euer learning to die, and liuing euery day as it were your last (p.107)

and then, the concluding paragraph of Book 1:

To conclude then, both this purpose of conscience and the first part of this booke; Keepe God more sparingly in your mouth, but aboundantly in your heart: be precise in effect, but sociall in shew: kythe [make known] more by your deeds then by your words the loue of vertue and hatred of vice: and delight more to be godlie and vertuous in deede then to be thought and called so; expecting more for your praise and reward in heauen then heere: and apply to all your outward actions Christes commaunde, to pray and giue your almes secretly: so shall ye on the one part be inwardly garnished with true Christian humility, not outwardly (with the proud Pharisie) glorying in your godlines: but saying, as Christ commandeth vs all, when we haue done all that we can, Inutiles serui sumus. And on the other part, ye shall eschew outwardly before the world the suspition of filthie proud hypocrisie and deceitfull dissimulation. (p. 109)

These instructions, we saw, drew heavily on two passages from the Bishop's Bible,

Take heede that yee doe not your almes before men, to the intent that ye would be seene of them, or els ye have no reward of your father which is in heaven. Therfore, when thou doest thine almes, doe not blowe a trumpet before thee, as hypocrites doe, in the Synagogues, and in the streetes, that they might be esteemed of men. Verily, I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest almes, let not thy left hand know, what they right doeth: That thine almes may be in secret: And thy father which seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly (Matthew 6:1-4)

and,

So likewise ye, when yee shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: wee have done that which was our duetie to doe. (Luke 17:10)

I have proposed that Kent would have appeared to early audiences as "a kind of Puritan", one who is "the best persuaded of himself; so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies that it is his grounds of faith that all men who look on him love him" (compare Twelfth Night 2.3.141-154); how he must have seemed to audiences a kind of braggart (a common character of the theatre of the day) particularly if the audience has seen Cordelia in the Fool and France in the Knight/Gentleman. His statement to Lear "If Fortune brag of two she lov'd and hated, One of them we behold" (5.3.280,1) can be seen to be bragging on Kent's part. Here in the last scene of Lear, just after the audience has heard how Kent has told, what Edgar calls, "the most piteous tale", who should appear, but Kent - and just as Albany declares the deaths of Regan and Goneril to be a "judgement of the heavens" (5.3.230), the first of several apocalyptic allusions including Kent's question, "Is this the promised end?" From this and his last words in the play, "I have a journey, sir, shortly to go; My master calls me, I must not say no", we see that Kent is looking forward to a reward in heaven. If we ask how Kent could be judged in the light of the above passages, we can see that he could be seen as glorying in his own godliness, as having sought the praises of men, and having received his reward from them, so that he has no reward awaiting him from his Father in heaven.

On the other hand, an audience which had seen Cordelia in the Fool, might have put a different understanding on Kent's words, "If Fortune brag of two she lov'd and hated, One of them we behold." If the audience had thought of the Fool when Cordelia said to Lear, albeit referring to France, "We are not the first Who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst.... Myself could else out-frown false Fortune's frown", they might also have thought of the Fool and Cordelia here, "two" whom Fortune might brag she loved and hated, and yet "one" in the end whose corpse Kent and Lear beheld. This understanding would be supported by Kent's immediately attempting to have Lear see that Kent and Caius were one and the same. Kent then tells Lear that he had followed him in disguise as Caius, from his "first difference and decay", and is interrupted by Lear's brief word of welcome only to conclude his sentence by saying "Nor no man else." While we might take this to be the restatement of "I am the very man", coming from Kent who has been slow to seek acknowledgment, it could also be taken to mean, 'And there was no one else followed you in the days of your misfortunes'[6]. If members of the audience took him to mean this, then his claim completely overlooks the service of the Fool, who ironically was not a man but a woman.

In Troilus and Cressida 2.3.156ff Shakespeare had Agamemnon say, "He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise." One commentator describes Lear's response to Kent as "polite indifference". Philip Edwards writes "Lear is not listening. Kent's long-postponed revelation is a failure."[7] It is just possible that Shakespeare wanted his audience to understand that Kent's deeds have been devoured in the self praise we have heard from Kent.

Albany, who alone reigns in Britain, then determines to resign and let Lear rule until his death. His resignation would have reminded Jacobean audiences of Lear's earlier "fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age". They would have seen a real need for Albany to exercise the authority of his crown, given the state of Lear's mind. Albany's words, "know our intent" would perhaps have been calculated not only to remind the audience of Lear's intention, but also of Cordelia's intentions at the outset: "what I well/will intend, I'll do it before I speak, that you may/make known, It is no viscious blot". It could further have reminded them of Kent's claim to have had good intentions (1.4.2) when he went into disguise.

Albany uses apocalyptic language when he pronounces his judgement on friends and foes, and then draws attention to Lear with "O! see, see!" Kent's talk of Caius and following him through his decay, has caused Lear "to even o'er the time he has lost" (4.7.80). In thinking back he remembers the Fool whom he now identifies with Cordelia. We have not long before heard the Doctor warn of the danger of making Lear mentally retrace his steps, and Kent's pushing for personal acknowledgment here is enough to cause Lear to retrace his steps, consider the Fool, identify the Fool with Cordelia, and then his heart, which like Gloucester's is "too weak the conflict to support! 'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief", is caused to "Burst smilingly" in the same manner as Gloucester's had. Not only might Kent have been indirectly responsible for Cordelia's death, but here we see him partly responsible for Lear's. The Quarto gives the words "Breake heart, I prethe breake" as the final words of Lear supporting the idea of his dying of a broken heart. It is enough in the Folio that Kent says this, even if he is saying that he wants his own heart to break. The parallel with the earlier action in the secondary plot is suggested by the mention of a broken heart.

It is evident from the text that no one else in Lear's world came to identify the Fool as having been Cordelia. She received no acknowledgment. Cordelia had said at the love test (1.1.224) that she would do what she intended doing without speaking about it, "that you [Lear] may know" (Quarto), or "that you [Lear] make known" (Folio) that her reply to Lear in the contest didn't come with the connotation that he had placed on it. In the Quarto at the end of the "my poor fool" speech, Lear can only manage "O,o,o,o,o." He makes the connection himself, he "may" know himself, but he does not "make" it known to the people of his world nor the audience - King James I and his court no doubt had made the identification long before and seen the beauty of Cordelia's service and the "Puritanism" of Kent. In the Folio version, the version for the public, if any members of the audience had not seen Cordelia in the Fool, they would hear Lear "make" it known to them at the end when he says "And my poor fool is hanged!....Do you see this? Looke on her? Looke her lips, Looke there, looke there". These five short questions and statements correspond in number with the Quarto's "O,o,o,o,o". This difference between the Quarto and the Folio is not caused by the Quarto's being a "memorial reconstruction" by audience or actors, but a deliberate revision, no doubt by Shakespeare himself.[8]

Having heard so much about judgement, and just heard the reported death of Edmund whose death-bed repentance (5.3.242-6) might have been seen to have been too late (cf. 1.4.255 "Woe, that too late repents"), how would members of the audience have thought Cordelia would be judged? Would not some of them have seen her as having lived by the passages referred to above? She has made known more by her deeds than her words her love of virtue and hatred of vice. She has delighted to be godly and virtuous in deed more than to be thought and called so, expecting more of her praise and reward in heaven than here. She has given her alms secretly, not seeking the esteem of men, and has not been rewarded by men. She would have been seen as going to heaven to receive her reward, the reward from her Heavenly Father. This is in direct contrast with the deaths of her sisters whom Kent reminds us are "desperately ... dead" (5.3.291) or dying out of despair. This is at least true of Goneril (5.3.160) who takes her own life with a knife in the same manner as Cordila does in The Mirror For Magistrates. Both take their lives out of despair of their future prospects in prisons. With Edmund's death, Goneril could only see her life with Albany as a prison sentence (4.6.262f)[9]. Many readers of Lear have thought it wrong that Cordelia should have died, but it is what would have been understood to have happened to her after her death that would have compensated for her death in the minds of the original audience.

Louise Clubb, in Italian Drama in Shakespeare's Time[10], in her chapter "Woman as Wonder: Theatregram of Italian and Shakespearean Comedy", has this to say:

Among the Counter-Reformation commedie gravi are a considerable number in which the tendency toward abstraction is definitive and the major theme is invested in a feminine figure developed from the generic commonplace of the giovane innamorata. Although I think Shakespeare used fashionable developments in both commedia grave and pastoral plays from the beginning of his career, the particular type of commedia grave in which the figure of the woman functions as a vehicle for idea has a unique kinship with the "twin" comedies of his middle period.

The figure is to be distinguished from the merely enterprising innamorata whose energy and charm arouse a wonder belonging to "ordinary" life rather than to any transcendent truth: Julia of Love's Labour's Lost, Rosalind of As You Like It, Viola of Twelfth Night are Shakespearean variations on this theatregram. The more spiritually specialised version of the innamorata, to whom Helena of All's Well and Isabella of Measure for Measure bear a family resemblance, directs the spectator's attention to a wonder beyond the plot or fable. The figure is distinguished by a remarkable intrinsic worth, established by her effect on other characters and by structurally disposed contrasts with them as foils. She functions as an example of virtue for imitation and admiration, and is associated now more, now less, with an extra-fabular reality that is invoked not by an obvious allegory but as an image of a truth physically unseen yet naturally related to the prima facie story. At her full development the figure is known by a hush that falls about her, a sense of her being a thing enskied and sainted.

These last words are certainly appropriate for Cordelia, given that she served as the Fool in the manner I have shown. Her foils are Edgar and Kent, the former having gone into disguise to protect himself and then being called upon to serve his father in leading him to Dover, the latter not needing to stay behind but doing so in disguise to serve Lear but with acknowledgment and the reward of men's praises in mind. Cordelia likewise does not have to stay behind but does so. But she goes into disguise simply to serve her father without thought of recognition and reward. Edgar is prepared to acknowledge the superiority of Kent's service of Lear to his own service of Gloucester. He sees his own service as such as "would have seem'd a period/ To such as love not sorrow" (5.3.203), while he sees Kent's service of Lear as such that would "top extremity" (5.3.206). Edgar's estimation of his and Kent's respective services comes only a few moments before Lear "makes known," for those who haven't seen it, Cordelia's service as his Fool, service which surely tops all.

Jennens[11] suggested that the play would best end before Kent's "I have a journey, sir, shortly to go: My master calls me, I must not say no." That is because he has not seen the obvious foil that Kent is to Cordelia. How the last two speeches of the play must have grated on the nerves of the members of the audience who had seen the contrast! We said earlier that audiences of Leir would have taken exception to Gonorill's description of Cordella as a puritan. It was Perillus who could have been so labelled. So at the end of Lear Shakespeare gives us a speech by the puritanical Kent that must have been offensive to the hush that had fallen around the memory of Cordelia the Fool. Jennens thought that the last two lines of Edgar's speech were "silly and false" and only inserted "that anyone may alter them for the better if they can. Hanmer", he says, "has not made them a jot better."[12] This is, however, how Edgar feels. He has earlier been enamoured by Kent's service to Lear and he has not seen what Cordelia did. He therefore pays tribute to Kent and Lear with, "The oldest hath borne most. We that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long." If those who had seen Cordelia's service as the Fool were to speak what they felt, not what they ought to say, they would have said that Kent was a kind of a puritan and probably wouldn't have been able to find the words to describe Cordelia's love which proved to be "More ponderous than" her "tongue" (1.1.77) and theirs.

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[1]. Bradley, p. 258. In The Fool His Social and Literary History Enid Welsford is quite emphatic - "From the realistic point of view it is no doubt a dramatic flaw that Shakespeare does not account more clearly for the fate of the real man in motley".

[2]. Commenting on Kent's boon, in Act 4.7, not to be known until time and he think meet, G.K. Hunter writes, "It is a regular characteristic of Shakespeare's dramatic art that he delays the penetration of disguise till the final denouement." G.K. Hunter (ed) King Lear p. 296.

[3]. This would also justify Cordelia's obvious determination not to reveal her-self to Lear while she is disguised as his Fool.

[4]. Furness, H. H., (ed) King Lear (Philadelphia, 1880) p. 408

[5]. That the action of the whole play takes not much more than a fortnight, is evident from a consideration of the following. It was on the day that the King divided his kingdom and went to Goneril's (1.1.284) that Gloucester was deceived by Edmund (1.2.24), and that Edgar was outlawed and forced to go into hiding and subsequently his disguise to protect himself from the those sent after him. All ports were to be barred and his picture was to be sent far and wide (2.2.79-81). When Edgar has led the blind Gloucester to Dover he meets the challenge of Oswald telling him, "An 'chud ha' bin zwaggered out of my life, twould not ha' bin zo long as 'tis, by a vortnight" (If I could have been swaggered out of my life it would not have been as long as it is by a fortnight). This is an obvious reference back to the night he fled for his life from his father's castle.

[7]. King Lear, ed. P. Edwards (London, 1975) p. 258.

[8]. As we saw earlier, James I had, not long before seeing Lear, claimed to have been the one who discovered the nature of Guy Fawkes plot in the anonymous letter delivered to one of his lords just prior to the scheduled opening of parliament in which he was to be blown up. We might look on the Quarto as being addressed primarily to James, and understand that as he identified with Lear and understood the words of the Quarto, he would have known that Cordelia was the Fool. At the end of the play, James would have been expected to assert that Cordelia was the Fool. We might look at the Folio edition as being addressed to a public familiar with James' claim to have deciphered the letter and made known the nature of the plot. The Folio accordingly is about a king who "makes known" at least to the audience, that Cordelia was the Fool in the same way as James made known the nature of the plot against the parliament. The Quarto is a presentation of a riddle that Lear faced to James who should have been able to solve it. The Folio is more overt. It is the presentation of a king faced with a riddle which he solves, in much the same way as James had been presented with a riddle which he had solved. James was, however, better in his timing.

[9]. Shakespeare takes the suicidal despair which is so much a part of Cordila's experience in The Mirror, which results in her damnation there, and transfers it firstly to Gloucester who, with Edgar's nursery, overcomes it (5.3.190), and then to Goneril for whom there is no hope (5.3.160). Goneril dies of despair in Shakespeare's version. The juxtaposition of the despair of Gloucester and Goneril with the death of Cordelia is Shakespeare's way of highlighting the fact that Cordelia doesn't die out of despair. Edmund has to arrange for it to appear that she took her own life out of despair (5.3.253). There is no despair in the closing moments of Cordelia's life. Her tears are tears of joy for her father and tears of sorrow at the death of her husband in the unsuccessful battle to rescue her father.

[10]. L. G. Clubb Italian Drama in Shakespeare's Time (New Haven, 1989) pp. 67,8.