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And You Thought Your Family was Dysfunctional?

In his great tragedy King Lear, William Shakespeare presents two families: a family consisting of a father and his three daughters, and a family consisting of a father and his two sons, one of which is a bastard son. While he has the sons basically come out and admit that one of them is good and the other evil, the Bard chooses to have the feelings of the daughters appear more subtlely. At no point in King Lear does Shakespeare come out and blatantly tell his audience that Cordelia is the most caring and loving daughter, while her two sisters are uncaring and greedy, and love their father only when they stand to gain from it. However, via the three daughters’ speeches throughout King Lear, he does give subtle hints as to the daughter’s personalities, and it is through these implications that the audience discovers the extent of each of the daughter’s character. As would be expected, most of these revelations and implications about the daughter’s personalities arise during the first act.

One of the best attributes about King Lear is that the main action of the play begins almost immediately. There is little of that introductory stuff that there usually is in plays, the stuff that usually amounts to nothing. Instead, in the first scene of King Lear, the audience immediately sees what will be the main story of the play. Of course, it is also in this opening scene of the play that the audience gets their first taste of the three daughters. It is a defining taste. After Lear announces he will divide up his land between the three, he announces he wishes to hear each of the daughter’s profess their love for him, to see who loves him most. The very fact that a father would need to demand such a statement from his own daughter is disgusting. It displays complete selfishness on the father’s part, that he would demand his own daughters to tell him how much they love him. To compound matters, he makes a little game out of it. Whoever loves him the most gets the most land. This does not make Lear look like a very good father. Nevertheless, his daughters, or at least two of them, seemingly have no qualms about telling their father of their love. The first daughter to profess her love to her dear old dad is Goneril, and she lays it on so thick it is almost sickening:

(Act I, scene i, lines 49-55)

In this soliloquy, the audience gets its first glimpse of the character of Goneril. The full spectrum of her greed and selfishness will not be revealed until later, but this is certainly a good sample of her personality. Her profession of love is so large that it seems almost artificial, and it also seems motivated by the fact that possession of land is involved. Still, Lear seems immensely pleased by her statement, and requests a similar profession of love from his other daughter, Regan. She obliges, and in her declaration she tells her father that she loves him even more than Goneril does. Regan emerges from her soliloquy of love looking no better to the audience (if not to her father) than Goneril does. In fact, Regan comes out worse, as she seems to initiate a childish ‘who-loves-him-best’ kind of fight.

However, just as with Goneril, Regan’s profession of love pleases Lear, and he requests his youngest daughter, Cordelia, to also give him a declaration of her love. It is here that the audience sees Cordelia’s benevolent character, and realizes that she is probably the most caring of the three daughters. For Cordelia will not steep to such low depths as her sisters. She loves her father greatly, but she cannot indulge in the greedy professions of love like her sisters have. In fact, her love for her father is so deep it actually precludes it:

Unfortunately, Lear does not grasp the meaning of Cordelia’s statement. He is happy with his other daughter’s superficial statements of love, yet he is hurt by Cordelia’s genuine one, because he does not understand it. As a result, he grows very angry with Cordelia and does not give her the land he was planning to. Moreover, he also seeks to marry her off and banish her from his kingdom. It is in this next page and a half of dialogue that it is revealed that Cordelia has always been the finest of the three daughters. In his chiding of her, Lear reveals that he indeed has loved Cordelia most of all. Actually, the fact that Lear would invoke such a wrath upon Cordelia reveals the degree of fondness he has for her. It is also in this page and a half that Kent comes to Cordelia’s defense, and actually chides Goneril and Regan upon his dismissal by Lear [" ‘And your large speeches may your deeds approve. That good effects may spring from words of love.’" (Act I, scene i, lines 181-182)]. That he does this tells the audience that Cordelia obviously has done something to put her in Kent’s good graces. This gives the audience a good idea that Cordelia has long been the nicest of the three daughters. In fact, her discernment continues even as she is being ousted by her father. She bids her sisters a fond farewell, only to be chided deeply by them. With this, Cordelia disappears from King Lear, not to be seen until the end of the play.

Though Cordelia may have vanished from the play, Goneril and Regan have not, and they continue to let the audience know that they are selfish and uncaring daughters. While they do not come out and say this, through various things the daughters do and say, the thought is implied. A great example of this comes in the third scene of the first act. After Lear banished Cordelia, he lost his mind, and Goneril and Regan quickly picked up on this. One would think that the two, grateful for the land their befuddled father has given them, would be eager to help him in his dire condition. However, this is not so, and Goneril displays her eminently selfish attitude regarding her father in this statement to her servant:

This speech by Goneril pretty much epitomizes what she is, and that is a very selfish and uncaring person. Instead of caring for her father, she seemingly detests him. This is interesting because, only two scenes earlier, she professed her extreme love for him, and now she wants her servant to lie for her so that she will not have to see him. In fact, later in the act, Goneril and Lear have an argument, in which she criticizes his age. As the play progresses, her sister, Regan, seems a little better than Goneril, but she still is selfish. She wants to help her father with the rift he is having with Goneril, but she also does not want to deal with his constant complaining. Again, selfishness prevails. It is the utter selfishness of the two daughters that is one of the most tragic things about King Lear. Lear gave his daughters his land, and they are still not happy.

Of course, there was one daughter in the play who was happy without Lear’s land. Unfortunately, at the time, Lear was too filled with rage to realize it, so he banished Cordelia. Towards the end of the play, Lear, crazy and near death, realizes the error of his ways, and he spends his final moments with Cordelia, begging her forgiveness without realizing she has already forgiven him, because that is the kind of person she is. In King Lear, the audience never does learn why Cordelia is so much nicer and more caring than her sisters. Ultimately, though, it does not really matter. What does matter is the lesson Shakespeare teaches the audience. The truest form of love does not need to be spoken, and it is Cordelia who possesses this truest form of love. The audience sees this. In fact, the audience picks up on this fact immediately in Act One, and that is why that act was dealt with most in this essay. Lear himself recognizes this, but, unfortunately, it is a little too late.

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WORK CITED

Shakespeare, William. King Lear in The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6^th edition, Volume I, New York: Norton, 1993