Lear Lecture 3, Part 1:  "According to my bond"

Cordelia: Nothing
The Theatre South Carolina Production of Shakespeare's King Lear
Cordelia will not say the words Lear wants to hear.
Source of image

Act 1, Scene 1 (p. 6)
CORDELIA    Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
    My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
    According to my bond; nor more nor less.
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Act 1, Scene 2  (p. 17)
GLOUCESTER    These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend
    no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can
    reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
    scourged by the sequent effects: love cools,
    friendship falls off, brothers divide: in
    cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in
    palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son
    and father.
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Act 2, Scene 1 (p. 37)
EDMUND    Persuade me to the murder of your lordship;
    But that I told him, the revenging gods
    'Gainst parricides did all their thunders bend;
    Spoke, with how manifold and strong a bond
    The child was bound to the father.

I.  The paradox of the bond

What does "bond" mean?  What are its inherent complexities (even contradictions)?
Skeletal definition from Wikipedia
Definitions from Webster's Dictionary (1913)
Selected definitions from OED
II. Bond-problems suggested by the play

Competing bonds
"Why have my sisters husband . . ." (I, i, 96, p. 6)

Unreliability of the signs of bonds
"[A]uricular assurance" (I, ii, 85-6, p. 17)

Fused meanings: legal, economic, and affective

III.  Human associations and the concept of bond


Lear Lecture 3, Part 2: Women in King Lear

I.  Women's place in Shakespeare's time


II.  The two evil sisters and the good sister
  • The three sisters and the pattern of elevation and degradation


Cordelia comforts her father
Marcus Stone. Lear and Cordelia.
Stone's painting, engraved by W. Ridgway, was reproduced in 1874 in The Art Journal (36:244).
Source of image

Abbey: Goneril and Regan
Edwin Austin Abbey
Title: GONERIL AND REGAN FROM KING LEAR 1902
Source of image

Goneril, Regan, & Cordelia
Source of image

King Lear, 1953, directed by George Devine, designed by Robert Colquhoun. The photograph shows Cordelia (Yvonne Mitchell), Regan (Rachel Kempson), Goneril (Joan Sanderson), Act 1 Scene 1.


III. Women’s sexuality in family & state

A. Lear's curse on Goneril: women's power of generation
“Into her womb convey sterility” (I, iv, 262, p. 30). 

B. Women’s sexual disorder is often a sign of disorder in the state.
“Down from the waist they’re centaurs” (IV, vi, 123, p. 101).
IV. Cordelia’s death

Interpreting Cordelia’s death requires going beyond both pathos and proverb.

“What is’t thou say’st?  Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman” (V,  iii, 271-2, p. 126).

“What is’t thou say’st?”  Nothing.