Characteristics of Women Part 30

There is in the beauty of Cordelia's character an effect too sacred for words, and almost too deep for tears; within her heart is a fathomless well of purest affection, but its waters sleep in silence and obscurity,--never failing in their depth and never overflowing in their fulness. Every thing in her seems to lie beyond our view, and affects us in a manner which we feel rather than perceive. The character appears to have no surface, no salient points upon which the fancy can readily seize: there is little external development of intellect, less of pa.s.sion, and still less of imagination. It is completely made out in the course of a few scenes, and we are surprised to find that in those few scenes there is matter for a life of reflection, and materials enough for twenty heroines. If Lear be the grandest of Shakspeare's tragedies, Cordelia in herself, as a human being, governed by the purest and holiest impulses and motives, the most refined from all dross of selfishness and pa.s.sion, approaches near to perfection; and in her adaptation, as a dramatic personage, to a determinate plan of action, may be p.r.o.nounced altogether perfect. The character, to speak of it critically as a poetical conception, is not, however, to be comprehended at once, or easily; and in the same manner Cordelia, as a woman, is one whom we must have loved before we could have known her, and known her long before we could have known her truly.

Most people, I believe, have heard the story of the young German artist Muller, who, while employed in copying and engraving Raffaelle's Madonna del Sisto, was so penetrated by its celestial beauty, so distrusted his own power to do justice to it, that between admiration and despair he fell into a sadness; thence through the usual gradations, into a melancholy, thence into madness; and died just as he had put the finis.h.i.+ng stroke to his own matchless work, which had occupied him for eight years. With some slight tinge of this concentrated kind of enthusiasm I have learned to contemplate the character of Cordelia; I have looked into it till the revelation of its hidden beauty, and an intense feeling of the wonderful genius which created it, have filled me at once with delight and despair. Like poor Muller, but with more reason, I _do_ despair of ever conveying, through a different and inferior medium, the impression made on my own mind to the mind of another.

Schlegel, the most eloquent of critics, concludes his remarks on King Lear with these words: "Of the heavenly beauty of soul of Cordelia, I will not venture to speak." Now if I attempt what Schlegel and others have left undone, it is because I feel that this general acknowledgment of her excellence can neither satisfy those who have studied the character, nor convey a just conception of it to the mere reader. Amid the awful, the overpowering interest of the story, amid the terrible convulsions of pa.s.sion and suffering, and pictures of moral and physical wretchedness which harrow up the soul, the tender influence of Cordelia, like that of a celestial visitant, is felt and acknowledged without being quite understood. Like a soft star that s.h.i.+nes for a moment from behind a stormy cloud and the next is swallowed up in tempest and darkness, the impression it leaves is beautiful and deep,--but vague.

Speak of Cordelia to a critic or to a general reader, all agree in the beauty of the portrait, for all must feel it; but when we come to details, I have heard more various and opposite opinions relative to her than any other of Shakspeare's characters--a proof of what I have advanced in the first instance, that from the simplicity with which the character is dramatically treated, and the small s.p.a.ce it occupies, few are aware of its internal power, or its wonderful depth of purpose.

It appears to me that the whole character rests upon the two sublimest principles of human action, the love of truth and the sense of duty; but these, when they stand alone, (as in the Antigone,) are apt to strike us as severe and cold. Shakspeare has, therefore, wreathed them round with the dearest attributes of our feminine nature, the power of feeling and inspiring affection. The first part of the play shows us how Cordelia is loved, the second part how she can love. To her father she is the object of a secret preference, his agony at her supposed unkindness draws from him the confession, that he had loved her most, and "thought to set his rest on her kind nursery." Till then she had been "his best object, the argument of his praise, balm of his age, most best, most dearest!" The faithful and worthy Kent is ready to brave death and exile in her defence: and afterwards a farther impression of her benign sweetness is conveyed in a simple and beautiful manner, when we are told that "since the lady Cordelia went to France, her father's poor fool had much pined away." We have her sensibility "when patience and sorrow strove which should express her goodliest:" and all her filial tenderness when she commits her poor father to the care of the physician, when she hangs over him as he is sleeping, and kisses him as she contemplates the wreck of grief and majesty.

O my dear father! restoration hang Its medicine on my lips: and let this kiss Repair those violent harms that my two sisters Have in thy reverence made!

Had you not been their father, these white flakes Had challenged pity of them! Was this a face To be exposed against the warring winds, To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder In the most terrible and nimble stroke Of quick cross lightning? to watch, (poor perdu!) With thin helm? mine enemy's dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire.

Her mild magnanimity s.h.i.+nes out in her farewell to her sisters, of whose real character she is perfectly aware:--

Ye jewels of our father! with washed eyes Cordelia leaves you! I know ye what ye are, And like a sister, am most loath to call Your faults as they are nam'd. Use well our father, To your professed bosoms I commit him.

But yet, alas! stood I within his grace, I would commend him to a better place; So farewell to you both.

GONERIL.

Prescribe not us our duties!

The modest pride with which she replies to the Duke of Burgundy is admirable; this whole pa.s.sage is too ill.u.s.trative of the peculiar character of Cordelia, as well as too exquisite, to be mutilated

I yet beseech your majesty, (If, for I want that glib and oily heart, To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend I'll do't before I speak,) that you make known, It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness, No unchaste action, or dishonored step That hath deprived me of your grace and favor; But even for want of that, for which I am richer; A still soliciting eye, and such a tongue I am glad I have not, tho' not to have it Hath lost me in your liking.

LEAR.

Better thou Hadst not been born, than not to have pleased me better.

FRANCE.

Is it but this? a tardiness of nature, That often leaves the history unspoke Which it intends to do?--My lord of Burgundy, What say you to the lady? love is not love When it is mingled with respects that stand Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her?

She is herself a dowry.

BURGUNDY.

Royal Lear, Give but that portion which yourself proposed, And here I take Cordelia by the hand d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy.

LEAR.

Nothing: I have sworn; I am firm.

BURGUNDY.

I am sorry, then, you have lost a father That you must lose a husband.

CORDELIA.

Peace be with Burgundy!

Since that respects of fortune are his love, I shall not be his wife.

FRANCE.

Fairest Cordelia! thou art more rich, being poor, Most choice, forsaken, and most lov'd, despised!

Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.

She takes up arms, "not for ambition, but a dear father's right." In her speech after her defeat, we have a calm fort.i.tude and elevation of soul, arising from the consciousness of duty, and lifting her above all consideration of self. She observes,--

We are not the first Who with best meaning have incurred the worst!

She thinks and fears only for her father.

For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down; Myself would else out-frown false fortune's frown.

To complete the picture, her very voice is characteristic, "ever soft, gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman."

But it will be said, that the qualities here exemplified--as sensibility, gentleness, magnanimity, fort.i.tude, generous affection--are qualities which belong, in their perfection, to others of Shakspeare's characters--to Imogen, for instance, who unites them all; and yet Imogen and Cordelia are wholly unlike each other. Even though we should reverse their situations, and give to Imogen the filial devotion of Cordelia, and to Cordelia the conjugal virtues of Imogen, still they would remain perfectly distinct as women. What is it, then, which lends to Cordelia that peculiar and individual truth of character, which distinguishes her from every other human being?

It is a natural reserve, a tardiness of disposition, "which often leaves the history unspoke which it intends to do;" a subdued quietness of deportment and expression, a veiled shyness thrown over all her emotions, her language and her manner; making the outward demonstration invariably fall short of what we know to be the feeling within. Not only is the portrait singularly beautiful and interesting in itself, but the conduct of Cordelia, and the part which she bears in the beginning of the story, is rendered consistent and natural by the wonderful truth and delicacy with which this peculiar disposition is sustained throughout the play.

In early youth, and more particularly if we are gifted with a lively imagination, such a character as that of Cordelia is calculated above every other to impress and captivate us. Any thing like mystery, any thing withheld or withdrawn from our notice, seizes on our fancy by awakening our curiosity. Then we are won more by what we half perceive and half create, than by what is openly expressed and freely bestowed.

But this feeling is a part of our young life: when time and years have chilled us, when we can no longer afford to send our souls abroad, nor from our own superfluity of life and sensibility spare the materials out of which we build a shrine for our idol--then do we seek, we ask, we thirst for that warmth of frank, confiding tenderness, which revives in us the withered affections and feelings, buried but not dead. Then the excess of love is welcomed, not repelled: it is gracious to us as the sun and dew to the seared and riven trunk, with its few green leaves.

Lear is old--"fourscore and upward"--but we see what he has been in former days: the ardent pa.s.sions of youth have turned to rashness and wilfulness: he is long pa.s.sed that age when we are more blessed in what we bestow than in what we receive. When he says to his daughters, "I gave ye all!" we feel that he requires all in return, with a jealous, restless, exacting affection which defeats its own wishes. How many such are there in the world! How many to sympathize with the fiery, fond old man, when he shrinks as if petrified from Cordelia's quiet calm reply!

LEAR.

Now our joy, Although the last not least-- What can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters'? Speak!

CORDELIA.

Nothing, my lord.

LEAR.

Nothing!

CORDELIA.

Nothing.

LEAR.

Nothing can come of nothing: speak again!

CORDELIA.

Unhappy that I am! I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond; nor more, nor less.

Now this is perfectly natural. Cordelia has penetrated the vile characters of her sisters. Is it not obvious, that, in proportion as her own mind is pure and guileless, she must be disgusted with their gross hypocrisy and exaggeration, their empty protestations, their "plaited cunning;" and would retire from all compet.i.tion with what she so disdains and abhors,--even into the opposite extreme? In such a case, as she says herself--