R. A.

242

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FOAKES

THE AVOIDANCE OF LOVE

cent the proportion of our strategic bombers on fifteen

minute alert-increased by 100 per cent the total number of
nuclear weapons in our strategic alert forces ... increased
by 60 per cent the tactical nuclear forces displayed in Western Europe.'1
1961, April Bay of Pigs; invasion of Cuba backed by the CIA
fails disastrously.
1961, August East Berlin closed off from the West by completion of the Berlin Wall.
1962, October Cuban missile crisis.
1963, November Assassination of President Kennedy.
1964, August Tonkin Bay incident; two American destroyers
said to be attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats.
1964, October Kruschev ousted by Leonid Brezhnev.
1965, October China explodes its first atomic bomb.
1965, February First sustained bombing of North Vietnam
by Americans; first marine battalions land in Vietnam;
200,000 combat troops there by December.
1965, August Watts riots in Los Angeles.

and later critics, he also became in the nineteenth century an important symbolic political figure, usually typifying the liberal intellectual paralysed in will and incapable of action. By contrast, King
Lear was depoliticized, even by the radical Hazlitt, perhaps at that
time because of a possible association with the mad old monarch,
George III; and until the 1950s the play was, in the main, seen as a
tragedy of personal relations between father and daughter, or as a
grand metaphysical play about Lear's pilgrimage to discover his
soul. All this changed after 1960, since when King Lear has come
to seem richly significant in political terms, in a world in which old
men have held on to and abused power, often in corrupt or arbitrary ways; in the same period Hamlet has lost much of its political
relevance, as liberal intellectuals have steadily been marginalized in
Britain and the United States.
>1-'1-'1- Each play has had its champions to assert vigorously that either Hamlet or King Lear is the 'greatest' of Shakespeare's plays.
'1->1-'1- Yet in all the vast mass of critical writing on these plays, there
is hardly any consideration of the grounds for such judgements.
Aesthetic questions are generally ignored, or the artistic value of
the plays taken for granted. Indeed, criticism has increasingly been
equated with interpretation, so that the post-structuralist claim
that criticism is a discursive practice no different from other discursive practices such as those we call literature, and the further
claim that 'only the critic executes the work'2 and constructs its
meanings, appears from one point of view as the culmination of a
long tradition in which interpretation has become the central activity of criticism, especially in the academy. The meanings critics find
relate to their own political or social ideology, whether conservative, quietist, liberal or revolutionary.

'I- >1-'1- About 1960 'I- >1-'1- an intriguing double shift took place. On
the one hand, King Lear regained its ascendancy in critical esteem,
and since that time most critics seem to have taken it for granted
(see the quotations above from Emrys Jones, Howard Felperin and
Stephen Booth) that they can refer to it as Shakespeare's greatest
play. On the other hand, King Lear changed its nature almost
overnight: the main tradition of criticism up to the 1950s had interpreted the playas concerned with Lear's pilgrimage to redemption,
as he finds himself and in 'saved' at the end, but in the 1960s the
play became Shakespeare's bleakest and most despairing vision of
suffering, all hints of consolation undermined or denied. >1-'1-'1- There
is no simple explanation for this shift in the 1960s, but it strikingly
coincided with a period of political change, as indicated in the
chronology above, that affected the mood of people in Britain and
in the United States 'I- >1-'1- and which have a bearing on the way
Hamlet and King Lear were interpreted. Criticism, as most now realize, is never an innocent activity; it always has a hidden agenda,
even if the critic remains largely unconscious of it. For criticism always reflects the ideology of the critic and the conditions of the age
in which he writes, however much it may claim to be independent
and concerned only with the text.
'I- 'I- 'I- Although Hamlet was, as a character, abstracted from the
play and privatized as a representative of everyman by Romantic

I. Seyom [Brown], The Faces of Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968),

p. 196.

STANLEY CAVELL
The Avoidance of Love:
A Reading of King Leart

From

This is the way I understand that opening scene with the three
daughters. Lear knows it is a bribe he offers, and-part of him anyway-wants exactly what a bribe can buy: (1) false love; and (2) a
public expression of love. That is: he wants something he does not
2. Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text," in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in PostStructuralist Criticism, ed. Josu e V. Harari (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976).
t From Must We Mean What We Say? Second Edition, by Stanley Cavell, pages 289-301.
Reprinted by permission of th e Cambridge University Press.

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THE AVOIDANCE OF LOVE

have to return in kind, something which a division of his property

fully pays for. And he wants to look like a loved man-for the sake of
the subjects, as it were. He is perfectly happy with his little plan, until Cordelia speaks. Happy not because he is blind, but because he is
getting what he wants, his plan is working. Cordelia is alarming precisely because he knows she is offering the real thing, offering something a more opulent third of his kingdom cannot, must not, repay;
putting a claim upon him he cannot face. She threatens to expose
both his plan for returning false love with no love, and expose the
necessity for that plan-his terror of being loved, of needing love.
Reacting to over-sentimental or over-Christian interpretations of
her character, efforts have been made to implicate her in the
tragedy's source, convicting her of a willfulness and hardness kin to
that later shown by her sisters. But her complicity is both less and
more than such an interpretation envisages. That interpretation depends, first of all, upon taking her later speeches in the scene (after
the appearance of France and Burgundy) as simply uncovering
what was in her mind and heart from the beginning. But why? Her
first utterance is the aside:

always to increase the measure of pain others are prepared to inflict; her mind is itself a lynch mob) Cordelia may realize that she
will have to say something. "More ponderous than my tongue" suggests that she is going to move it, not that it is immovable-which
would make it more ponderous than her love. And this produces
her second groping for an exit from the dilemma: to speak, but
making her love seem less than it is, out of love. Her tongue
will move, and obediently, but against her condition-then poor
Cordelia, making light of her love. And yet she knows the truth.
Surely that is enough?
But when the moment comes, she is speechless: "Nothing my
lord." I do not deny that this can be read defiantly, as can the following "You have begot me, bred me, lov'd me" speech. She is outraged, violated, confused, so young; Lear is torturing her, claiming
her devotion, which she wants to give, but forcing her to help him
betray (or not to betray) it, to falsify it publicly. (Lear's ambiguity
here, wanting at once to open and to close her mouth, further
shows the ordinariness of ,the scene, its verisimilitude to common
parental love, swinging between absorption and rejection of its offspring, between encouragement to a rebellion they failed to make,
and punishment for it.) It may be that with Lear's active violation,
she snaps; her resentment provides her with words, and she levels
her abdication of love at her traitorous, shameless father:

What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.

This, presumably, has been understood as indicating her decision to
refuse her father's demand. But it needn't be. She asks herself what
she can say; there is no necessity for taking the question to be
rhetorical. She wants to obey her father's wishes (anyway, there is
no reason to think otherwise at this stage, or at any other); but
how? She sees from Goneril's speech and Lear's acceptance of it
what it is he wants, and she would provide it if she could. But to
pretend publicly to love, where you do not love, is easy; to pretend
to love, where you really do love, is not obviously possible. She hits
on the first solution to her dilemma: Love, and be silent. That is,
love by being silent. That will do what he seems to want, it will
avoid the expression of love, keep it secret. She is his joy; she
knows it and he knows it. Surely that is enough? Then Regan
speaks, and following that Cordelia's second utterance, again aside:
Then poor Cordelia!
And yet not so; since I am sure my love's
More ponderous than my tongue.

(I, i, 76-78)
Presumably, in line with the idea of a defiant Cordelia, this is to be
interpreted as a re-affirmation of her decision not to speak. But
again, it needn't be. Mter Lear's acceptance of Regan's characteristic outstripping (she has no ideas of her own, her special vileness is

Happily, when I shall wed,

That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him ....
(I, i, 100-102)
The trouble is, the words are too calm, too cold for the kind of
sharp rage and hatred real love can produce. She is never in possession of her situation, "her voice was ever soft, gentle and low"
(V, iii, 272-273), she is young, and "least" (I, i, 83). (This notation
of her stature and of the quality of her voice is unique in the play.
The idea of a defiant small girl seems grotesque, as an idea of
Cordelia.) All her words are words of love; to love is all she knows
how to do. That is her problem, and at the cause of the tragedy of
King Lear.
I imagine the scene this way: the older daughters' speeches are
public, set; they should not be said to Lear, but to the court, sparing themselves his eyes and him theirs. They are not monsters first,
but ladies. He is content. Then Cordelia says to him, away from the
court, in confused appeal to their accustomed intimacy, "Nothing"-don't force me, I don't know what you want, there is nothing
I can say, to speak what you want I must not speak. But he is

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THE AVOIDANCE OF LOVE

alarmed at the appeal and tries to cover it up, keeping up the front,
and says, speaking to her and to the court, as if the ceremony is still
in full effect: "Nothing wilJ come of nothing; speak again." (Hysterica passio is already stirring.) Again she says to him: "Unhappy that
I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth"-not the heart
which loves him, that always has been present in her voice; but the
heart which is shuddering with confusion, with wanting to do the
impossible, the heart which is now in her throat. But to no avail.
Then the next line would be her first attempt to obey him by speaking publicly: "I love your Majesty according to my bond; no more
no less"-not stinting, not telling him the truth (what is the true
amount of love this loving young girl knows to measure with her
bond?), not refusing him, but stilJ trying to conceal her love, to
lighten its full measure. Then her father's brutally public, and perhaps still publicly considerate, "How, how, Cordelia! Mend your
speech a little, lest you may mar your fortunes." So she tries again
to divide her kingdom (" ... that lord whose hand must take my
plight shall carry half my love with him ... "). Why should she wish
to shame him publicly? He has shamed himself and everyone
knows it. She is trying to conceal him; and to do that she cuts herself in two. (In the end, he faces what she has done here: "Upon
such sacrifices, my Cordelia . . . . " Lear cannot, at that late moment, be thinking of prison as a sacrifice. I imagine him there
partly remembering this first scene, and the first of Cordelia's sacrifices-of love to convention.)
Mter this speech, said in suppression, confusion, abandonment,
she is shattered, by her failure and by Lear's viciousness to her. Her
sisters speak again only when they are left alone, to plan. Cordelia
revives and speaks after France enters and has begun to speak for
her:

speaks his beautiful trust. She does not ask her father to relent but
only to give France some explanation. Not the right explana~ion:
What has "that glib and oily art" got to do with it? That is what her
s~ster n~eded, ~ecause their task was easy: to dissemble. Convention perfectly swts the e ladies. But she lets it go at that-he hates
me beca use I would not flatter him . The truth is, she could not flatter; not because she was too proud or too principled, though these
might have been the reasons, for a different character; but because
nothing she could have done would have been flattery-at best it
would have been dissembled flattery. There is no convention for doing what Cordelia was asked to do. It is not that Goneril and Regan
have taken the words out of her mouth, but that here she cannot
say them, because for her they are true ("Dearer than eye-sight,
space and liberty ... "). She is not disgusted by her sister's flattery
(it's nothing new); but heart-broken at hearing the words she
wishes she were in a position to say. So she is sent, and taken, away.
Or half of her leaves; the other half remains, in Lear's mind, in
Kent's service, and in the Fool's love.
(I spoke just now of "one's" gratitude and relief toward France. I
was remembering my feeling at a production given by students at
Berkeley during 1946 in which France-a small part, singled out by
Granville-Barker as particularly requiring an actor of authority and
distinction-was given his full sensitivity and manliness, a combination notably otherwise absent from the play, as mature womanliness is. The validity of such feelings as touchstones of the accuracy
of a reading of the play, and which feelings one is to trust and
which not, ought to be discussed problems of criticism.)

Sure, her offence

Must be of such unnatural degree
That monsters it, or your fore-vouch'd affection
Fall into taint; which to believe of her,
Must be a faith that reason without miracle
Should never plant in me.
(I, i, 218-223)

France's love shows him the truth. Tainted love is the answer love
dyed-not decayed or corrupted exactly; Lear's love is still aliv~, but
expressed as, colored over with, hate. Cordelia finds her voice
again, protected in France's love, and she uses it to change the subject, still protecting Lear from discovery.
A reflection of what Cordelia now must feel is given by one's
rush of gratitude toward France, one's almost wild relief as he

247

It may b felt that J have f rced this scene too far in order to fit
it to my reading, that too many directions hav to be proVided to its
acting in order to keep the motivation smooth. Certainly r have
gone illto more detail of this kind here than Is where, and 1
should perhaps say why. It i , fir t of all, the c n In which the
problem of performance, or the performability, of this play come to
a head, or to it first head . Moreover variou interpretations offer d of this
ne are direct function of attempts to visualize its
progress; as though a critic's conviction about the greatness or
weakness of the scene is a direct function of the success or unsuccess with which he has been able to imagine it concretely. Critics
will invariably dwell on the motivations of Lear and Cordelia in this
scene as a problem, even. while taking their motivation later either
as more or less obvious or for some other reason wanting no special
description; and in particular, the motives or traits of 'haracter attributed to them here will typically be ones which have an immediate visual implication, ones in which, as it were, a psychological

248

TH E AVOIbANCE OF LOVE

STANLEY CAVELL

trait and its physical expression most nearly coalesce: at random,

Lear is described as irascible (Schiiking), arrogant, choleric, overbearing (Schlegel), Cordelia as shy, reluctant (Schiiking), sullen,
prideful (Coleridge), obstinate (Muir). This impul~"! seems to me
correct, and honest: it is one thing to say that Cordelia's behavior in
the opening scene is not inconsistent with her behavior when she
reappears, but another to show its consistency. This is what I have
wanted to test in visualizing her behavior in that scene. But it is
merely a test, it proves nothing about my reading, except its actability; or rather, a performance on these lines would, or would not,
prove that. And that is a further problem of aesthetics-to chart the
relations between a text (or score), an analysis or interpretation of
it, and a performance in terms of that analysis or interpretation.
The problem is not, as it is often put, that no performance is
ideal, because this suggests we have some clear idea of what an
ideal performance would be, perhaps an idea of it as embodying all
true interpretations , every resonance of the text struck under analysis. But this is no more possible, or comprehensible, than an experiment which is to verify every implication of a theory. (Then what
makes a theory convincing?) Performances are actions, and the imitations of actions . As with any action, a performance cannot contain the totality of a human life-though one action can have a
particularly summary or revelatory quality, and another will occur
at a crossroads, and another will spin tangentially to the life and
circumstances which call it out, or rub irrelevantly or mechanically
against another. Some have no meaning for us at all, others have
more resonance than they can express-as a resultant force answers to forces not visible in the one direction it selects. (Then
what makes action bearable, or comprehensible?) I cannot at will
give my past expression, though every gesture expresses it, and each
elation and headache; my character is its epitome, as if the present
were a pantomime of ghostly selections. What is necessary to a performance is what is necessary to action in the present, that it have
its autonomy, and that it be in character, or out, and that it have a
specific context and motive. Even if everything I have said about
Cordelia is true, it needn't be registered explicitly in the way that
first scene is played-there may, for example, be merit in stylizing it
drastically. Only there will be no effort to present us with a sullen
or prideful or defiant girl who reappears, with nothing intervening
to change her, as the purest arch of love.
Nor, of course, has my rendering of the first scene been meant to
bring out all the motivations or forces which cross there. For example, it might be argued that part of Lear's strategy is exactly to put
Cordelia into the position of being denied her dowry, so that he will
not lose her in marriage; if so, it half worked, and required the

249

magnanimity of France to turn it aside. Again, nothing has been

said of the theme of politics which begins here and pervades the
action. Not just the familiar Shakespearean theme which opens the
interplay between the public and private lives of the public creature, but the particularity of the theme in this play, which is about
the interpenetration and confusion of politics with love; something
which, in modern societies, is equally the fate of private creatures-whether in the form of divided loyalties, or of one's relation
to the State, or, more pervasively, in the new forms love and patriotism themselves take: love wielding itself in gestures of power, power
extendin 1 it self \ ith claims of love. P1Iedre i p rhap the greatest
play oncentrated to this th me of th body politic, and of the body,
torn by th e privacy of lov . as it i c10s st to I ing LaM in its knowlcdg of ha m as the exp riencc
unaccepta ble love. nd MachiaveJl i' kn owledg
the world i pre nt ; not just in his attitudes of
realism and cynicism, but in his experience of the condition to
which these attitudes are appropriate-in which the inner and
outer worlds have become totally disconnected, and man's life is all
public, among strangers, seen only from outside. Luther saw the
same thing at the same time, but from inside. For some, like Edmund, this is liberating knowledge, lending capacity for action. It is
what Lear wants to abdicate from. For what Lear is doing in that
first scene is trading power for love (pure power for mixed love);
this is what his opening speech explicitly says. He imagines that
this wil l prey nL future. h'ife now; but he is being counselled b hi
impote nce which is not the resu lt of his bad d i ion , but produce it: he fee ls power less to appoint his u e a r, r cognized as
the uhimat test of authority. The on eque nc is that politi s becomes private, and so vanishes, with power left to serve hatred.

or

or

The final scene opens with Lear and Cordelia repeating or completing their actions in their opening scene; again Lear abdicates,
and again Cordelia loves and is silent. Its readers have for centuries
wanted to find consolation in this end: heavy opinion sanctioned
Tate's Hollywood ending throughout the eighteenth century, which
resurrects Cordelia; and in our time, scorning such vulgarity, the
same impulse fastidiously digs itself deeper and produces redemption for Lear in Cordelia's figuring of transcendent love. But
Dr. Johnson is surely right, more honest and more responsive:
Cordelia's death is so shocking that we would avoid it if we couldif we have responded to it. And so the question, since her death is
restored to us, is forced upon us: Why does she die? And this is not
answered by asking. What does her death mean? (cp: Christ died to
save sinners) ; but by answering, What killed her? (cp: Christ was
killed by us, because his news was unendurable).

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STANLEY CAVELL

Lear's opening speech of this final scene is not the correction but
the repetition of his strategy in the first scene, or a new tactic designed to win the old game; and it is equally disastrous.
CORD. Shall we not see these
LEAR. No, no, no, no! ...

If so , it cannot be, as is often suggested, that when he says

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The Cods themselves throw incense.

(V, iii, 20-21)

daughters and these sisters?

(V, iii, 7-8)

He cannot finally face the thing he has done; and this means what
it always does, that he cannot bear being seen. He is anxious to go
off to prison, with Cordelia; his love now is in the open-that much
circumstance has done for him ; but it remains imperative that it be
confined, out of sight. (Neither Lear nor Cordelia, presumably,
knows that the soldier in command is Gloucester's son; they feel
unknown.) H e is still ashamed, and the fantasy expressed in this
speech ("We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage") is the same
fantasy he brings on the stage with him in the first scene, the
thwarting of which causes his maddened destructiveness. There
Cordelia had offered him the marriage pledge ("Obey you, love you,
and most honor you"), and she has shared his fantasy fully enough
to wish to heal political strife with a kiss (or perhaps it is just the
commonest fantasy of women):
CORD .

251

THE AVOIDANCE OF LOVE

Restoration hang

Thy medicine on my lips ....

(Iv' vii, 26-27)
(But after such abdication, what restoration? The next time we
hear the words "hang" and "medicine," they announce death.) This
gesture is as fabulous as anything in the opening scene. Now, at the
end, Lear returns her pledge with his lover's song, his invitation to
voyage (" ... so we'll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and
laugh ... "). The fantasy of this speech is as full of detail as a day
dream, and it is clearly a happy dream for Lear. He has found at the
end a way to have what he has wanted from the beginning. His
tone is not: we will love even though we are in prison; but: because
we are hidden together we can love. He has come to accept his
love, not by making room in the world for it, but by denying its relevance to the world. He does not renounce the world in going to
prison, but flees from it, to earthly pleasure. The astonishing image
of "God's spies" (V, iii, 17) stays beyond me, but in part it contains
the final emphasis upon looking without being seen; and it cites
an intimacy which requires no reciprocity with real men. Like
Gloucester toward Dover, Lear anticipates God's call. He is not experiencing reconciliation with a daughter, but partnership in a mystic marriage .

he is thinking simply of going to prison with Cordelia as a sacrifice.

It seems rather that, the lines coming immediately after his love

song, it is their love itself which has the meaning of sacrifice. As

though the ideas of love and of death ar interlo ked in his minda nd in particula r of death a a payment or placation for th gra nling of love. Hi own dea th, becaus acknowl dging love till
present it elf to him a. an annihilation of himself. And her death ,
becau e nOw that h admits her love, he mu l admit, what he knew
from the beginning, tha t he is impotent to sustain it. This is the
other of Cordelia's sacrifices-of love to secrecy.
Edmund's death reinforces the juncture of these ideas, for it is
death which releases his capacity for love. It is this release which
permits his final act:
.. . some good I mean to do
Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send . ..

(V, iii, 243-244)

What has released him? Partly, of course, the presence of his own
death' but that in itself need not have worked this way. Primarily it
is the 'fact that all who have loved him, or claimed love for him, are
dead. He has eagerly prompted Edgar to tell the tale of their father's death; his reaction upon hearing of Coneril's and Regan's
deaths is as to a solution to impossible, or illegitimate, love: "All
three now marry in an instant"; and his immediate reaction upon
seeing their dead bodies is: "Yet Edmund was belov'd." That is what
he wanted to know, and he can acknowledge it now, when it cannot
be returned, now that its claim is dead. In his following speech he
means well for the first time.
It can be said that what Lear is ashamed of is not his need for
love and his inability to return it, but of the nature of his love for
Cordelia. It is too far from plain love of father for daughter. Even if
we resist seeing in it the love of lovers, it is at leas t incompatible
with the idea of her having any (other) lover. There is a moment,
beyond the words when this comes to the surEa e of the a cti~n. It
is the mome nt Lear is waiting from hi madness, no long r mcapable of seeing th world but still not trong enough t~ prot ct hi;,
thought : "Methjnks T should know you and know thiS man . ..
(N, vi.i" 64). I take it "this man" is generall y felt to refer to l ent
(disguised as Cru u ), for there is learly no reason to suppose Lear

252

253

STANLEY CAVELL

THE AVOIDANCE OF LOVE

knows the Doctor the on ly olher m.ll 1'1' ent.

rt a inly lhis is
piau ihle' but in fact I ' ar never does acknowleclg I e n!., as he does
his child ord Ii ~L I And after this recog11ition he go on to ask
Ii
In I in France?" Thi. question irr istibly (to me) sugge t thal
lhe man h thinks he hould I now is th man he ;.,:pe ts lO be with
his daughter, her husband. Thi would be unmistal abl if he di rects his "this man" to the Doctor, taking him for, but not able to
make him out as, France. He finds out it is not, and the next time
we see him he is pressing off to pri on with hi child, and there is
no further thought of her husband . It is a standing complaint that
Shakespeare's explanation of France's absenc i. perfunctory. It is
more puzzling that Lear him elf never refers to him not even when
he is depriving him of her forever. Either France has ceased to exist
for Lear, or it is importantly from him that he wishes to reach the
shelter of prison.
I do not wish to suggest that "avoidance of love" and "avoidance
of a particular kind of love" are alternative hypotheses about this
play. On the contrary, they seem to me to interpret one another.
Avoidance of love is always, or always begins as, an avoidance of a
particu lar kind of love: men do not just naturally not love, they
learn not. lO. nel our lives begin by having to accept under the
name of love whatever loseness is offered, and by then having to
forgo its object. And lh avoidance of a particular love, or the acceptance of it, will spread to every other; every love, in acceptance

or rejection, is mirrored in every other. It is part of the miracle of

the vision in King Lear to bring this before us, so that we do not
care whether the kind of love felt between these two is forbidden
according to man's lights. We care whether love is or is not altogether forbidden to man, whether we may not altogether be incapable of it, of admitting it into our world. We wonder whether we
may always go mad between the equal efforts and terrors at once of
rejecting and of accepting love. The soul torn between them, the
body feels torn (producing a set of images accepted since Caroline
Spurgeon's Shakespeare's Imagery as central to King Lear), and the
solution to this insoluble condition is to wish for the tearing apart
of the world.
Lear wishes to escape into prison for another old reason-because he is unwilling to be seen to weep.

I. l'rofcssor Nllns Onrish- to whOIll I On) !",!cblcd for mh~r uggcslion5 nllOlIl Ihb essn '
AS. wel l us I" present one-- hns pointed out to mc Ihnl in my ~ngcrncss 10 soh, nil Ihe
K"'8 u !llr l>foblellls I havc ncgteclI:d trying nn OCCOU.ill or! em's plnn in delayi ng mAking
himselfkn()wn ("Yet to bc kno" ", shortens my rnudc inlcnl " ( I\~ vi i, 9. n,i o mission i.
,"fl leu!nrl), i~IIJ orlOl1t. becn tl~e Kent's is the " ne tlell! Ih llt (!n llSe~ ntl harm 10 olher ,
, 'nlre II ()ro\~C cs on II1tcrIlnl IllcnSlire or Ih ose h,,~rns . I do nol undcrslnnd hi "dcar
calIs ," (IV, i i i, 52), hUI I think Ihe specin ln 's of K~ nt's deloy hus to d with Ih!!.<c r-act"
( I) It n vcr pl'c"cnl ~ his perfeci fnith fulness 10 hi. dUlies or Sen,i c: Lh"se do nol r~
cltlire-- K -nl d Q~s nol permil them to rcquire-peJ;S()Jlll l recognilioJl in order 10 be fieI"
fl) rm c~1. n,i sense
Ihe finitud e or the demonds plAced upon Kent, hence of Ihe hnrm
;md " I Ihe good he ca n perform, is n Funclion of his c"'''plel nbsorption inln his . ocio l
I,ffice, in 111m n rtlnclion of his being thc onl I'l'incij>a1chnr;:tctcr in Ihe play (01'. 1'1 From
Ih c '~ol) who floes nOI apl' ~.. r jlS the member of" ,,,,,,iI),. (2) He docs nol delay revenl.
ing hllns If 10 Cordclili. only (preSllm" bly) 10 ' ar. A reflson fo r Ihnt would b thaI si"ce
the King h{\$ hfl nished him il i up 10 Ihe King 10 reinSlale him: hc will nOt I,!"csum . on
hi old ro n ~. ( ) If his plnn gOI! heye",d finding !JIll \Yny, Or jllsi wll ili" g, for Lenr to
rccogn",c hu" hr~ t (not ULII of pride bUI oul of righl ) Ihen pcrhllps it is made irrelc\~lIlt
bl' find ing Lcnr ngni " onl in hi Icrm lnol 'lll IC, tJr perh"ps il tJ lwnys ~ I)nsisted onl in
doing wli"L h Irie. 10 do there, fond SI n oppor1 unlly 10 lell LCIlf nbolll n iu~ lind ask for
purdon , It Ill ">, he wonelered Ihal we do nOl Ftwl Lenr'~ rraglllenl l1 !"), recognit ions of Kent
It> ICllve som ~lhin l; ulldone, 1I0 r J(CJ\I '~ hol'cics. Rll eJlllllS to hold e~ !"' aUenlion 10 I,e
crude IntrUSIon., hUI !'lIlh 'r 10 n l1ll'lif ' " ~ad" cs~ olrend amplified Im.t sensing. 111is
may be, "CCO llnted for I'Hrti bl' I<cnt's I'ut'C "'1" 'S$io" of the sl,~cla l ptlign,mcc of th e
, ervn nl offi ce, rC<llurli1g n II~ ' 'lIlered ill ""{)llll' r Ii~, c.~ hu u sl eJ in 10)" ILy "nd in
sitem WilllcSsinll (D lI('t1CC Kent hrok und Lea r mll~1 ",,,nd): I)Otll), by Ihe f"~1 Ihnl
Cordelia hos full "ccogll ized him : "To b 'lIckl1owlcdg'd, ,\ l:ldnlll , i~ o'cr' pnid" (IV, "ii, ~ );
,onl), by Ihe foc l tI,n l when his most er Lcor!. dcttd, ilis hi "" I<I 'r who CAli ' him, and
lis lasl words nrc thuse of ob 'clience.

"r

The good years shall devour them, flesh and fell,

Ere they shall make us weep: we'll see 'em starved first.
(V, iii, 24-25)
See them shalt thou never. And in the end he still avoids Cordelia.
He sees that she is weeping after his love song ("Wipe thine eyes").
But why is she in tears? Why does Lear think she is? Lear imagines
that she is crying for the reasons that he is on the verge of tearsthe old reasons, the sense of impotence, shame, loss . But her reasons for tears do not occur to him, that she sees him as he is, as he
was that he is unable to take his last chance; that he, at the farthe~t edge of life, must again sacrifice her, again abdicate his responsibilities; and that he cannot know what he asks. And yet,
seeing that, it is for him that she is cast down. Upon such knowledge the Gods themselves throw incense.
It is as though her response here is her knowledge of the end of
the play; she alone has the capacity of compassion Lear will need
when we next see him, with Cordelia dead in his arms: "Howl,
howl howl! Ot you ar men of ton ." ( p. th line a nd a half
Dante gives to Ugolino, facino hi do med sons, a fragment shor d
by
nold: "1 did not w p. I 0 LUrncd to ston within. Th y
wept .... ") gain he b gins to speak by turning n thos al hand :
"A plagu upon )'ou, murd rer ,traitor alll " But then the tremen dous knowledge i relea d: I I might have saved h er. . .. " rom th
beginning, and through each moment until they are led to prison,
h might have saved her, had he done what every lov r quir , pul
himself aside long enough to see through to h r, and be se n
through. I do not mean lha! it is clear that he (luld , al th end
have done what Edmund Fear d (" ... pluck the common bo om on
his side, And turn our impress'd lances in our eyes ... "); but it is
not clear that he could not. And even if he had not succeeded, her

254

STANLEY CAVELL

death would not be on his hands . In his last speech, "No, no, no,
no" becomes "No, no, no life!" His need, or his interpretation of his
need, becomes her sentence. This is what is unbearable. Or bearable only out of the capacity of Cordelia. If we are to weep her fortunes we must take her eyes.

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