Cordelia: The Good Daughter and What Goodness Costs

Cordelia says 'nothing' when asked to declare her love in public, and the play is built on the wreckage of that refusal. She is not cold. She loves her father. She simply will not perform. 'I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less' is not a failure of feeling. It is the only honest answer in a scene full of flattery.

She disappears for most of the play and returns in Act 4 at the head of a French army, trying to restore her father's throne. She asks nothing of him except that he accept her care. Their reunion scene (him on his knees, her refusing to let him kneel) is the emotional centre of the last two acts.

Samuel Johnson, one of the eighteenth century's greatest literary critics, wrote that he could not reread the ending of King Lear after the first time. Cordelia's death by hanging (innocent, sudden, pointless) disturbed him so much that he avoided the play for years. Shakespeare's source material gave Lear and Cordelia a happy ending. Shakespeare chose not to use it.