Cordelia speaks fewer than a hundred lines in the whole play, and almost every one matters. Asked to declare her love in exchange for a third of the kingdom, she says “Nothing” — not because she does not love her father, but because her love is too real to be auctioned: “I love your majesty / According to my bond, no more nor less.” Her sisters’ extravagant words are lies; hers are true, and she pays for them with her inheritance.
Critics have debated whether she is a saint or partly at fault. Coleridge noted “a little faulty admixture of pride and sullenness” in her first-scene refusal. But her return transforms everything. When her mad father, waking, fears she hates him — “I know you do not love me… you have some cause” — she answers with two words that undo the whole first scene: “No cause, no cause.”
Her death — hanged in prison on Edmund’s order, minutes before the countermand arrives — is the most shocking thing in Shakespeare. There is no reason for it. A. C. Bradley saw her as a Christ-like figure whose death redeems; others see in her death the play’s refusal of any consoling justice.
See King Lear, Lear Wakes: "No Cause, No Cause", The Death of Cordelia.
Questions to Argue About
debate club →- Was Cordelia right to answer ‘Nothing’? Could she have loved her father better by saying more?
Explore Next
related by shared connectionsLear Wakes: "No Cause, No Cause"
Lear wakes from madness to find Cordelia beside him, thinks he is in hell, begs her forgiveness — and she answers with two words that undo the whole tragedy.
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Edgar leads his blind father to a “cliff” that isn’t there, lets him leap, and convinces him he has survived by a miracle — curing his despair with a theatrical trick.
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547 stories of the Buddha’s previous lives — as a hare, a monkey king, a merchant, a prince — told to illustrate the virtues that lead to awakening. India’s great treasury of folk tales, carved on stūpas and painted in caves.
The Blinding of Gloucester
Betrayed by Edmund, Gloucester is tied to a chair and blinded by Cornwall while Regan watches — and learns in the same instant that Edgar was innocent.