Cordelia

Question 1

S.L Goldberg

Answer 1

“How much does it matter…that Cordelia has a touch of hard steel in her?”

Question 2

Jeffrey Kahan

Answer 2

“Yes, Cordelia has to die, but even within the bounds of his other tragedies, Shakespeare had a variety of more palatable options.”

Question 3

Olivia Vinnel (played Cordelia 2014)

Answer 3

Cordelia is not the most memorable a character amongst Shakespeare’s women. She is politically minded- ‘nothing’ is a political statement against what the state has become.

Question 4

S.L Goldberg

Answer 4

“For some people, Cordelia is wholly in the right; for others she is not; for most, however, she is more in the right than Lear.”

Question 5

A.C. Bradley

Answer 5

“It was scarcely possible that a nature so strong as Cordelia’s and with so keen a sense of dignity should feel here nothing whatever of pride and resentment.”

Question 6

N. Brooke

Answer 6

“Cordelia’s obstinacy here [scene 1] as a crime for which she too must ultimately die.”