"The Eye of Anguish"

Images of Cordelia in the Long Eighteenth Century

Authors

  • Susan Allen Ford Delta State University

Abstract

Nahum Tate's version of King Lear, the version that defined stage productions during the long eighteenth century, transformed Shakespeare's Cordelia from a figure who could contain the definitions of both dutiful daughter and Christ militant into a romantic and sentimental heroine circumscribed by contemporary conventions of ladylike behavior and filial relation. More varied interpretation was provided by representations in other media: paintings as well as prints designed to illustrate editions of Shakespeare's plays. The variety of available artistic modes — conversation piece, portrait, history painting — provided a range of different ways, from the sentimental and domestic to the sublime, of comprehending Cordelia, juxtaposing a passive and grief-stricken feminine piety with an energized, though emotional, feminine agency. These competing versions of Shakespeare's heroine — interacting, influencing, commenting on each other — discover a complex fidelity that the stage version could not.

Author Biography

Susan Allen Ford, Delta State University

Susan Allen Ford is Professor of English and Writing Center Coordinator at Delta State University. She is Editor of Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal and Persuasions On-Line, has published essays on Jane Austen and her contemporaries, detective fiction, the Gothic, and in Shakespearean Gothic (edited by Christy Desmet and Anne Williams) on the Gothic dimensions of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.

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Published

2011-05-01