King Lear is one odd character. As a ruler, although he seems to be attempting to make a fair decision about what to do with his kingdom after his "retirement," since he doesn't have a son, by splitting it up between his three daughters, I don't really agree with the way he went about determining who got which size plot of land. Frankly I don't think a test to see who-can-come-up-the-best-flattering-description-of-your-love-for-me was the best way for Lear to truly determine which daughter “doth love [him] most” and thus which of them he should give the largest plot of his land to. As they often say, it’s one thing to say you do something, but quite another to actually do it- in short, their words are simply empty, hollow words of no value if didn’t actually have those feelings and expressed them through their actions.
I think if he really wanted to determine who loved him the most, he should have just observed their everyday actions, both when they were in his presence and alone (I’m sure he could hire a few undercover spies right? afterall who knows when they might suddenly start ranting one of those animated soliloquies- as Edmund loves to- that might reveal their true feelings about him?)- or otherwise he could have devised some sort of challenge or given them a task, like they often do in fables, that would allow him to determine how they would truly act towards him if he was just their father and wasn’t king and didn’t have all the riches and land he possessed to give to them. At the very least, I’m pretty sure that Cordelia thought Lear would be reasonable enough to make his decision about her love for him based on her actions towards him (which, from the dialogue from other characters seems to show that Cordelia was very caring towards her father and he actually favored her the most and was hoping she would take care of him in his elderly years). As she says when she is worrying about what to say to her father after her sisters’ lavish words, “Then poor Cordelia! And yet not so, since I am sure my love’s More ponderous than my tongue.” (1.1.81)- showing that she feels her actions speak for themselves better than any words has to describe them can. But I guess Cordelia and her father aren’t quite on the same wavelength- while Cordelia sees her response of “Nothing” as a sign of her honesty and respect for her father and the fact that she does not need lavish empty words to show the extent of her love for him, Lear completely flips and sees her as being too arrogant to express her love for him.
I don’t know much about their past relationship but there’s some major miscommunication going on here... I mean it even carries up to the extent that Lear disowns her by saying that in the future, for all he cares she’ll be the same as cannibalistic barbarian to him… not an extreme reaction in the least. I just hope all of them can calm down, stop making impulsive assumptions about each other and rash actions (maybe even Kent could have been more successful in defending Cordelia’s if he had talked to Lear in private later when he was calmer), and truly try to understand one another.
No comments:
Post a Comment