Cordelia's Senseless End

As I neared the end of King Lear, I couldn’t help but notice that this play has been without a doubt the most dramatic, bleak and horribly gruesome of Shakespeare’s works that I have read thus far. Beginning with the scene in which Gloucester’s eyes are plucked out and stomped on by Regan and Cornwall and ending with the death of nearly every major character, King Lear is a play that ends on quite a depressing note. Though we are given a small amount of retribution with Albany and Edgar living past the end and reassuming their titles, part of me feels as though a few of the events at the end were a bit unnecessarily harsh, particular Cordelia’s death.

At the end of Act Four, when Cordelia returns to the forefront with her easy forgiveness of her father’s banishment, I honestly thought she might survive to the end despite my knowledge of many of Shakespeare’s tragedies. I couldn’t think of a reason why she would need to die, or how her death would somehow rebalance the outcome; and this being my first exposure to Lear, I thought my prediction was decently sound. Shakespeare even makes an effort to reaffirm Cordelia’s legitimacy by contrasting her treatment of her delirious father with how Regan and Goneril had previously addressed him: “Will’t please your highness to walk?” With just a simple phrase, she shows her father the respect her siblings have been denying him all along, and she does this regardless of how her father completely disregarded her. As a character, she is entirely grounded, and despite her ordeal, her priorities remain intact.

Even the way in which Cordelia is killed seems senseless to me. Following the scene in Act Three, one would think that Shakespeare would have little issue in staging another death, instead, Cordelia’s death occurs completely off-screen, as Edmund had ordered her hanged and his messenger was unable to stop the execution in time. By killing off such an inherently innocent character, I would think Shakespeare would want her death to be dramatic and obvious. Thankfully, we are at least given the moment where Lear walks on stage with his daughter in his arms, completely heartbroken and desperate for a glass to see if she breathes. I think the moment that was by far the most frustrating to me occurs right before Lear’s not-so-shocking death, in which he thinks that his daughter might still be alive: “Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, look there, look there!” For a moment, I thought she would breathe and survive, but she doesn’t, and I’m left feeling that her death was completely in vain.