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 it press’d her heart: 

two or three broken ejaculations escape her lips, and she ‘starts’ away ‘to deal with grief alone.’  The same trait reappears with an ineffable beauty in the stifled repetitions with which she attempts to answer her father in the moment of his restoration: 

Lear. Do not laugh at me;
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.

Cor. And so I am, I am.

Lear. Be your tears wet? yes, faith.  I pray, weep not;
If you have poison for me, I will drink it. 
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong: 
You have some cause, they have not.

Cor. No cause, no cause.

We see this trait for the last time, marked by Shakespeare with a decision clearly intentional, in her inability to answer one syllable to the last words we hear her father speak to her: 

No, no, no, no!  Come, let’s away to prison: 
We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage: 
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness:  so we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies....

She stands and weeps, and goes out with him silent.  And we see her alive no more.

But (I am forced to dwell on the point, because I am sure to slur it over is to be false to Shakespeare) this dumbness of love was not the sole source of misunderstanding.  If this had been all, even Lear could have seen the love in Cordelia’s eyes when, to his question ’What can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters?’ she answered ‘Nothing.’  But it did not shine there.  She is not merely silent, nor does she merely answer ‘Nothing.’  She tells him that she loves him ‘according to her bond, nor more nor less’; and his answer,