The audience watches with bated breath as the climax of the play unfolds: it is Lear, walking onto the stage through hushed silence. The old, half crazed monarch steps slowly into the center spotlight revealing Cordelia draped over her father’s arms. A gasp of shock; She is dead, but why? Through the perspective of Stanley Cavell’s reading of King Lear, this essay guides this shocked audience back to the beginning of the play as though to investigate a true crime mystery: the death of Cordelia. Tragedy, Cavell claims, is about a particular death: a death that is inflicted[1] These force the question of who is to blame? Thus, one must begin an investigation of a crime to determine who is implicated in her death, who failed to see it coming, and moreover, how might it have been prevented.
To discover the murderer, the investigator must begin by identifying the suspect and analyzing the clues left at the beginning of the play as evidence of its end. This of course is Lear. Lear is mad; he has motif, and it is his word alone we must go on when he presents the deceased Cordelia: “I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee.”[2] Yes, this is an investigation of Lear, and this is a play about Lear. The drama unfolds such that we are watching the spiraling collapse of his empire by perspective of the many characters who act as miniature revelations of Lear himself. The characters thus act according to, around, and in reaction to Lear, and he to them. Cavell focuses on the similarities of Gloucester and Lear. Indeed, the play begins not with Lear, but with Gloucester. Cavell establishes that Gloucester is Lear’s perfect double.[3] This mirroring is evidenced in both character’s introductory interactions with their children. We see the Abdication play out in miniature first through Gloucester and Edmund: Gloucester “blushes to acknowledge” Edmund, claiming he must acknowledge “the whoreson” nonetheless.[4] Cavell examines this exchange noting that understanding the need to acknowledge is not actual acknowledgement. Gloucester may have claimed his son, but “He does not acknowledge him, as a son or person, with his feelings of illegitimacy and being cast out.”[5] Cavell believes that this is where Gloucester’s real shame lies- in his failure to acknowledge Edmund- and in understanding Gloucester’s hesitancy, we understand Lear. Lear too uses the language of acknowledgement in relation to Cordelia calling her, “A wretch whom nature is ashamed almost to acknowledge.”[6] Lear’s guilt is evidenced in both he and Gloucester’s failure to acknowledge their children, revealing the beginning of a reason why: in their blushing and in their shame.
If Lear is motivated by shame, the Investigator must focus on where Lear may have revealed this shame, to give a clue as to why he is ashamed. Firstly, Lear is pleased by Goneril and Regan’s Theatricalization of their love. Yet, we are informed from the beginning that his favourite is Cordelia so why then does her “bond” not suffice?[7] Cavell believes this lies in the Cordelia’s inability to describe her love as her sisters can, because for her, it is love, and because it is love, Cordelia acknowledges Lear. Cavell argues that Cordelia is thus condemned because the probing light of her acknowledgment of her father- evidenced by her silent affection- stripped away his Cartesian mask. Lear the the Skeptic believes the world unrecognizable and his face an impassible wall. As Cavell notes, the Mind’s Retreat from the Face however is an illusion all those around Lear participate in. Except Cordelia.[8] This is the beginning of her undoing, for as Cavell reveals, “There are no lengths to which we may not go in order to avoid being revealed, even to those we love and are loved by.”[9]
In Lear’s outraged reaction we begin to see the plan behind Lear’s Abdication of his kingdom on the merits of his daughter’s confessions. The skeptic Lear tares the mind from the face, presents the face to his daughters and country to be loved but attempts to hide the mind beneath. The mind that his human, mortal, and ashamed. Cavell argues that Lear sees the trade of crown for false love as a bribe to maintain his shame in secret. This to be the Theatricalization of Lear, as Lear demands a pseudo-acknowledgment from his daughters in order to receive love without it demanding anything of his heart in return.[10]
The Investigator pauses to see that he now has a suspect in Lear and evidence in Lear’s shame through the banishment of Cordelia and failure to acknowledge her. But what, one must ask, Did Cordelia see that made her father ashamed? Cavell argues it is Lear’s humanness. Kent notes that it is Lear’s “burning shame” that detains or withholds Cordelia.[11] Again, this shame is depicted through his double, Gloucester. When Gloucester asks “Oh! Let me kiss that Hand” Lear responds, “Let me wipe it first, it smells of mortality.”[12] Lear cannot bear being loved when he has no reason to be loved.[13] Lear recognizes Gloucester’s offer of love and refuses because he is ashamed to be seen without his stately and patriarchal authority; when he is laid bare, and the emperor has no clothes.
This is precisely what Cordelia sees upon her acknowledgement and true love of her father, and it is this sight and knowledge -or rather acknowledgement- that Lear cannot stand. Lear’s banishment of Cordelia is a reaction of defence, for she forgoes the false display of her sister(s), and simply loves. It is Cordelia who acknowledges Lear, and he is threatened by this. As Cavell notes, Lear wards off love, “Because it presents itself to [him] as a demand.”[14] But indeed, love is a demand. It is a demand to be loved. It is a demand be vulnerable, precisely what Lear ultimately fears. In the final scene with Cordelia, Lear admits he could have saved her,[15] “had he done what every love requires, put himself aside long enough to see through to her, and be seen by her.”[16] He does not want to be seen, but desperately desires love, and his fault is that the two cannot be separated, any more than the mind can be separated from the body. Lear’s tragedy is thus set in motion from the start and therefore Cordelia’s death as well.
Gloucester’s blinding allows for the final piece of evidence we need. It is almost too easy to claim that if Goneril and Regan are to Lear what Edmund is to Gloucester, then Edgar and Cordelia are the same. But no, Cordelia is foiled not to Edgar but rather to Gloucester’s eyes, which are gruesomely torn out by Goneril. Why? Cavell says it is that evil cannot bear to be seen.[17] Much like Lear’s shame cowers away in a corner, lashing out and destroying that which penetrates, so too Goneril’s evil could not bear being seen by Gloucester and for this reason, his sight became a threat to her treachery. The investigator of the murder must see here that Cordelia’s death is inevitable. Because while Gloucester repents for his failure to acknowledge, he still doesn’t acknowledge Edmund.[18]
The investigator raises his final synopses, and we expect him to find Lear guilty of Murder. Lear walking onto the sage with the corpse of his loving daughter was Lear’s final attempt to extract her love without being acknowledged and revealed. Goneril and Reagan’s words of love were as dead as Cordelia now is. Lear has won. No one will reveal his shame. No one will see his mortality. For Lear to survive as he is Cordelia cannot, for her love casts the entire illusion of Lear into the light. She exposes him. And for that reason, she cannot live. But we hold out hope that Lear will change, that her love will have the power to transform him. However, the answer was in the plucking out of Gloucester’s eyes: evil cannot bare to be seen and therefore neither can Lear’s shame. It is Lear’s murder nonetheless because he failed to acknowledge. He avoided her love because it demanded to be seen.
However, the detective Does not blame Lear. Rather, he turns to the baited audience, who marvel at the mystery. And finally, the onlookers of the murder are addressed. Cavell asks us now: Why did you miss these signs? Why did you, dear participant in the literature, fail to see as thoroughly as each character in this play? It is Lear who implicates All who look on- both Cast and Audience: “A plaque upon you, murderous traitors all. I might have saved her. She is Gone Forever.”[19] Lear speaks three equal truths. First, Cordelia is dead and gone forever. Love lost and unacknowledged is lost permanently. Second, Lear indeed was the only one capable of saving her and that is his crime. Lear’s crime is not murder, but it is worse. He fails to acknowledge. Love is a beautiful thing but more certainly, it is not guaranteed, as is evidenced in Regan and Goneril. Lear failed to accept it, even though he desperately wanted to, because he feared to be seen. He could not make himself let go. He could not let himself be ultimately made vulnerable in that love. Finally, we are all Cordelia’s murderer. Cavell notes, “The cause of tragedy is that we would rather murder the world than permit it to expose us to change.”[20] We are criminal as participant in hurt in every time we become Lear and retreat from our face. This is proven in our initial failure to understand that we should not be shocked by Cordelia’s death (“What why is she dead?!”) and instead should have seen it coming from the beginning. Can we not see how in our lives we too retreat and hide our shame, and thus refuse acknowledgement and avoid love?
How then is one to acknowledge? How can one be washed of this guilt that is ours as well? Albany’s final Words command us to an action: “The weight of this sad time we must obey, speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”[21] Only through stopping- by changing- through bypassing our resistance and shame and accept the vulnerability love demands can Cornelia live.
[1] Stanley Cavell, Disowning Knowledge In Seven Plays of Shakespeare (new York, Cambridge University Press 1987), 111. [2] William Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. Stanley Wells (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000) Sc. 24. Line 270. [3] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 52. [4] King Lear, 1. 9, 22-23. [5] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 48. [6] King Lear, 1.201-202. [7] King Lear, 1.84. [8] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 94. [9] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 56. [10] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 95. [11] King Lear, 18.47-48. [12] King Lear, 20.128-129. [13] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 61. [14] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 61 [15] King Lear, 24.266. [16] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 73. [17] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 47. [18] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 47-48. [19] King Lear, 24.235-266. [20] Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 122. [21] King Lear, 24.319.
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