I am obliged to speak of her chiefly because the devotion she inspires almost inevitably obscures her part in the tragedy.  This devotion is composed, so to speak, of two contrary elements, reverence and pity.  The first, because Cordelia’s is a higher nature than that of most even of Shakespeare’s heroines.  With the tenderness of Viola or Desdemona she unites something of the resolution, power, and dignity of Hermione, and reminds us sometimes of Helena, sometimes of Isabella, though she has none of the traits which prevent Isabella from winning our hearts.  Her assertion of truth and right, her allegiance to them, even the touch of severity that accompanies it, instead of compelling mere respect or admiration, become adorable in a nature so loving as Cordelia’s.  She is a thing enskyed and sainted, and yet we feel no incongruity in the love of the King of France for her, as we do in the love of the Duke for Isabella.

But with this reverence or worship is combined in the reader’s mind a passion of championship, of pity, even of protecting pity.  She is so deeply wronged, and she appears, for all her strength, so defenceless.  We think of her as unable to speak for herself.  We think of her as quite young, and as slight and small.[180] ’Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low’; ever so, whether the tone was that of resolution, or rebuke, or love.[181] Of all Shakespeare’s heroines she knew least of joy.  She grew up with Goneril and Regan for sisters.  Even her love for her father must have been mingled with pain and anxiety.  She must early have learned to school and repress emotion.  She never knew the bliss of young love:  there is no trace of such love for the King of France.  She had knowingly to wound most deeply the being dearest to her.  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