He cast her
off; and, after suffering an agony for him, and before she could see him
safe in death, she was brutally murdered. We have to thank the poet for
passing lightly over the circumstances of her death. We do not think of
them. Her image comes before us calm and bright and still.

The memory of Cordelia thus becomes detached in a manner from the action
of the drama. The reader refuses to admit into it any idea of
imperfection, and is outraged when any share in her father's sufferings
is attributed to the part she plays in the opening scene. Because she
was deeply wronged he is ready to insist that she was wholly right. He
refuses, that is, to take the tragic point of view, and, when it is
taken, he imagines that Cordelia is being attacked, or is being declared
to have 'deserved' all that befell her. But Shakespeare's was the tragic
point of view. He exhibits in the opening scene a situation tragic for
Cordelia as well as for Lear. At a moment where terrible issues join,
Fate makes on her the one demand which she is unable to meet. As I have
already remarked in speaking of Desdemona, it was a demand which other
heroines of Shakespeare could have met. Without loss of self-respect,
and refusing even to appear to compete for a reward, they could have
made the unreasonable old King feel that he was fondly loved. Cordelia
cannot, because she is Cordelia. And so she is not merely rejected and
banished, but her father is left to the mercies of her sisters. And the
cause of her failure--a failure a thousand-fold redeemed--is a compound
in which imperfection appears so intimately mingled with the noblest
qualities that--if we are true to Shakespeare--we do not think either of
justifying her or of blaming her: we feel simply the tragic emotions of
fear and pity.

In this failure a large part is played by that obvious characteristic to
which I have already referred. Cordelia is not, indeed, always
tongue-tied, as several passages in the drama, and even in this scene,
clearly show. But tender emotion, and especially a tender love for the
person to whom she has to speak, makes her dumb. Her love, as she says,
is more ponderous than her tongue:[182]

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth.

This expressive word 'heave' is repeated in the passage which describes
her reception of Kent's letter:

Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of 'Father'
Pantingly forth, as if i