SOURCE: "Fathers and Daughters in Shakespeare's Romances," in Shakespeare's Romances Reconsidered, edited by Carol McGinnis Kay and Henry E. Jacobs, The University of Nebraska Press, 1978, pp. 77-90.

In the following essay, Hoy argues that it was the psychological climate of the late romances which allowed Shakespeare to create an ideal feminine figure in the form of a daughter.

Behind all the fathers and daughters in Shakespeare's romances are the most affecting father and daughter he ever drew, Lear and Cordelia. Shakespeare's tragedies are the necessary prelude to the romances; the romances are inconceivable without the tragedies; and among the tragedies, King Lear stands out for a number of reasons, not the least of which concerns its protagonist's relation to women. Lear is a father with daughters, not a son with a mother (as in Hamlet or Coriolanus), or a husband with a wife (as in Othello or Macbeth...