King Lear I.1.225-238
No more but this?
[FRANCE Sure her offense Must be of such unnatural degree That monsters it, or your forevouched affection Fall into taint, which to believe of her Must be a faith that reason without miracle Should never plant in me.] CORDELIA I yet beseech your majesty, If for I want that glib and oily art To speak and purpose not, since what I well intend I’ll do’t before I speak, that you make known It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness, No unchaste action or dishonored step That hath deprived me of your grace and favor, But even for want of that for which I am richer, A still soliciting eye and such a tongue That I am glad I have not, though not to have it Hath lost me in your liking. LEAR Better thou Hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better. FRANCE Is it no more but this?
Remember that Cordelia knows both Burgundy and France by now — they long in Lear’s court have made their amorous sojourn. We’re just learning about them, so it matters that Cordelia (like her father) prefers France. Her appeal here also responds to Lear’s unfair failure to explain the situation to Burgundy. Not that she cares about him, since (we all see) what Lear and Burgundy care about is the economics of the marriage they’d been negotiating; Burgundy’s concern is with the dowry that comes with her. Less repellent than Lear he is far more mercenary; Lear gives up whatever value he conceives would come to him or to his kingdom or to his heirs from marrying Cordelia to either of her suitors. Of course we never thought he would pick her husband on the basis of the wealth he represented. He is not acquisitive: what he cares about is Cordelia’s love, and Burgundy’s refusal brings that out by contrast.
And it’s about to bring out the fact that France is marrying for love. Cordelia understands them well enough — or is made into the window character who lets us understand them well enough — to see that France will get what’s going on (even as we do). Beseeching Lear to say what happened will get him to do just that: he is angry at the truth, so to justify his anger he’ll tell the truth (unlike the lies the cold and calculating Edmund will tell), and that truth (she knows or we know) will endear her to France.
As window, Cordelia also reiterates the initial perspective she’s given us on Regan and Goneril (and which Kent has already confirmed): that they are flatterers. This is no surprise to us, but here Cordelia is being more openly aggressive than before: remember that her sisters can hear the contrast she’s drawing between herself and them.1 Unlike them she does actually care about his grace and favor — materially (since she loses the dowry that contributes to her desirability as a spouse) but, we know, filially, as a daughter rather than an heir. We know that she cares about her moral possessions more than the dowry she can offer France because she describes herself as richer than she would be if she had practiced the glib and oily art of flattery. Lear does not recognize that this makes her richer. France does.
Lear’s great chiasmatic2 response confirms what she’s asked him to confirm (as France immediately understands). The combination of exorbitant dignity and narcissistic injury he displays shows how much he counted on Cordelia — and shows why he counted on her. He thought she was a transcendent figure. If we think she’s being a little petty in her summation of her sisters (even if they deserve it), the rhetorical energy of Lear’s repudiation lends so much force to our simultaneous sense of her idealism (and to France’s sense of her idealism) that the pettiness quickly fades into the background.
And then France echoes3 the no mores that we have already heard and will hear in the play, echoes especially Cordelia’s answer that: “I love your majesty / According to my bond, no more nor less” (i.i.92-93). The counter-hyperbolic language they share heare shows that they are suited to each other — that France deserves her.
Caroline, Jane Smiley’s version of Cordelia in A Thousand Acres, is openly unpleasant and a character we don’t like. I think Shakespeare adds to his extremely difficult task of making us change our minds about Lear the more minor task of making us like Cordelia despite the fact that she has to be used as a rebuke to her sisters. The moral complexity in her personality — her questionable self-righteousness (which got her into this) — these features also begin priming us for similar features in Edgar.
Yes, I know, not technically. But the way better frames his grand summation is what makes it grand.
I am following Q here.
It is hard for me not to hear Hamlet here in these no mores — it’s a resonant phrase:
LAERTES For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favor, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute, No more. OPHELIA No more but so? LAERTES Think it no more. (I.iii.6-10)
a tiny, literally meaningless point but somehow I just saw - and registered - and the word "king" in Cordelia's final word above: "liking." No one would stop and say"ah, king" but everyone would hear the phoneme. And within the word liking, when so much turns on whether or how one "likes" the king (too bad FB has debased the "like"). And then the whole problem in a bunch of the plays of what a king is like.