From the very beginning, Lear and his daughters had already staked out sides, were a battle to ever occur. This play is not the construction of those choices. This is the conclusion. And from the beginning, Cordelia’s nature is just as determined as Regan’s and Goneril’s. Cordelia’s angelicity (?) manifests by a reaction and aversion to her sisters’ animalness. From the beginning, therefore, man’s angelic potential is simply another type of taste. The angel has always been just a special type of animal.

Respect for others, reverence for the truth, and lack of self-centeredness characterize those with “angelic” natures. Cordelia, Kent, and France show this toward Lear, and expect the same from him. While Goneril and Regan make their foray into the text with a power struggle, Cordelia begins with a dilemma: isn’t her father playing a rather stupid game? “What shall Cordelia do? Love, and be silent” (I.1/line 54); “My love’s more ponderous than my tongue” (lines 70-71). When the time comes for her to play along and give false praise, she responds with nothing.

Cordelia has the capacity to overcome self-serving instincts and understand what’s really going on and how damaging it is. And she is not worried about gaming this rat race; Kent and France see this quality in her.

Kent: Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least

Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound

reverbs no hollowness.

 

Thus, Cordelia, representing humanity’s angelicity, unbound by material selfishness, is free to think and speak with truthfulness and respect toward all those around her. Being truthful shows respect and optimism towards the best and the highest in her her father.

True to angelic form, once Cordelia has said her piece, she is taken out of the play for its majority. Free to think, she is subsequently proscribed from any action. Her absence, however has a definite effect on the rest of the play. Without even being present, she nevertheless hovers invisibly over everything else.

This invisible hovering, even in her absence, suggests the importance of her angelesque nature. It hinges on virtues, which are important even when she is gone. Her presence takes the form of a loss that must always be recuperated. Thus Cordelia and her angelicity achieve a transcendent quality; virtues can last forever, even surviving despite and perhaps because of the disappearance of a “real” flesh-and-bone avatar.

The memory of her stands in relief against the predatory actions of her sisters, as they callously spurn their father. This reminds Lear the Thickheaded not only of the benefits of having a daughter who respects him, but also what those benefits are really worth: everything.

When Cordelia comes out of retirement, all the way in IV.4, she cites her affinity for “unpublished virtues of the earth,” perhaps innocently alluding to the fact that she is one of those virtues.

Despite its insistence on careful thought, informed judgement, and knowing the truth, man’s angelic side is either unwilling or unable to comprehend the animal side. Cordelia illustrates this fault with her parting words to her sisters: “Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides; who covers faults, at last shame them derides.”

Idealistically, Cordelia exhorts the angelic side of other natures, even when there is none. It misconstrues the animals as angels, and treats them so. As if outlining their vices will reduce them to quivering husks of shame, sorry for all the trouble they’ve caused and eager to repent. It just doesn’t work that way. Animals do not feel shame. Like the Terminator, they do not feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and they absolutely wil not stop, until you are dead.

Though animals and angels are invariably always at war, they each see the conflict differently. The angel seeks to reconcile with the other side. The animals hold more of a take-no-prisoners state of mind.

Because of this, the animal side experiences a converse type of liberty. Free from thinking, the beast is free to act. Goneril and Regan, the predators of this tale, are all appetite. They understand intuitively that one must often act without thinking, lest thinking not only delay action but call it into question and thus prevent it altogether. This is illustrated, somewhat, in the text, in that there is no lapse between Lear’s injunction to praise him and Goneril’s panegyric. She did not have to think about what she was doing it, why she was doing it, and how to go about it. She knew it instinctively.

Goneril and Regan are like lionesses stalking prey. Among a pride of lions, the females of the species carry out the lion’s share, so to speak, of the hunting. They are good at it. They are clever. They team up. They hide in tall grass, creep downwind of their prey so their scents won’t be detected. And when everyone’s in place, a lioness strikes! Panicked, the herd runs away from her. South, toward the river. They’re getting away – no, wait – is that another lioness? It was all a clever ruse, and now everyone’s trapped. From here the huntresses have an easy time picking off their prey.

Goneril and Regan did this when sucking up to Lear to get a share of the kingdom. Sure, they used flattery and words instead of teeth and claws, but the same predatory principle was in place.

Oops! They did it again, in II.4 when sending King Lear back and forth over the issue of disbanding his 100 knights. In I.4, he accused her of serpentlike behavior – in King Lear, Shakespeare’s characters associate the serpent with backstabbing and double-crossing:

Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend

More hideous when thou show’s thee in a child

Than the sea-monster.

Also:

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

To have a thankless child.

 

Oh snap! Thus feeling weepy and betrayed, Lear flees from Goneril: “Degenerate bastard! I’ll not trouble thee; yet I have left a daughter\.” He seeks out Regan, who he believes will “flay” Goneril’s “wolfish visage.” But the sisters are secretly in collusion, and Lear is unknowingly stepping into another lioness’ den. Trapped, Lear is coerced into completely disbanding his army of merry men.

Goneril: What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five, to follow…?

Regan: What need one?

 

They take their father’s well-being lightly. Later, when they hear that Gloucester has acted to save Lear from their “boarish fangs” (III.7/57), they punish him in such a merciless manner, it is as though they cannot take suffering seriously. The tone of the Great Gloucester Gouging (III.7) feels sort of like Seize him. Gouge him. Okay, we’re done; send him out and let him walk it off. And while he’s out maybe he could pick up my drycleaning. After they are finished, Regan says “Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell” (line 92). There is no hint of conscience or reflection. To them, Gloucester was just prey.

Without even thinking, the predators know what to make of everyone else. Goneril and Regan don’t need to understand anyone, as long as they know how to handle everyone – which is the same way they handle anything at all: kill it and eat it. No one is safe. It should come as no surprise that, in V.3, these bloodthirsty sociopaths end up killing each other. Goneril even instigates it with the same amused malice she takes to everything.

Regan: Sick, O, sick!

Goneril: If not, I’ll ne’er trust medicine.

 

Their deaths create what is always my favorite moment of any work of fiction: the moment that is best described as all hell breaking loose (Edgar: “What means that bloody knife?”).

In IV.2, Lord Albany limns the sisters thusly:

Tigers, not daughters, what thou have performed

Humanity must perforce prey on itself

Like monsters of the deep.

 

Nobody seems to know what to make of these predators in time to stop them. They are like a storm, an arbitrary hostile force rising up seemingly out of nowhere and swallowing everything in its path. From such a perspective, humanity has control and no choice but to just ride it out. This is how Lear seems to handle Goneril and Regan’s treachery – not from the perspective that I should handle this with justice and wisdom but rather, as though bearing an illness, here something unfortunate has occured. Thus Lear reacts to the sisters just like an animal would respond to a storm, going from foxhole to foxhole seeking shelter.

The appearance of a real storm in Act III holds a mirror to Lear’s conduct towards his daughters. The real storm is overt and aggressive. It does not waste time on guile or false flattery. The real storm comes out swinging. Lear, likewise, is able to vent his defiance. “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow! (III.2)” Although animals instinctively seek shelter in foxholes, for a human being, standing outside in the middle of a thunderstorm makes one feel scraggly, resourceful, and determined.

Without an angel, the predators cease to be “evil,” becoming simply players in a zero-sum game full of like-minded competitors. In such a game, traditional ethics don’t apply. Man’s animal side performs its best and highest function in the presence of other predators.

The highest value of the angel is also forged against the backdrop of other predators. Man’s choice to be an angel derives its greatness from being in mortal danger. The predators eventually kill each other. One dies and is forgotten. Shouting at the top of her ethereal lungs, the angel asserts her individuality louder than the blood-curdled yapping of the predatory beasts around her. So loud, in fact, that her voice lives on to be heard even when the angel is long dead. This is how the angel earns her wings and becomes immortal.