The character of Cordelia and the father-daughter relationship.
There are many hypotheses about the name's etymology. Shakespeare took it from a work by Raphael Holinshed, where, however, it was a mistake of transcribing the name of a legendary figure, Cordeilla, which is in turn taken up from the “Historia Regum Britannia” of Goffredo of Monmouth, the first text in which we find this name. Monmouth made it from the German name Cordula or from the Latin cor. Shakespeare used this name to indicate the goodness of her character. The Greek derivation is the following: kore + delos, (clear heart). Cordelia really loves her father, but her refusal to flatter him leads to the tragedy that is taking place. Cordelia's tears at the news of her father's treatment show her compassion and show that she is, in fact, the opposite of her sisters. Cordelia does not want revenge, and she doesn’t need to make her father suffer for having judged her so bad. Her virtue and Her purity make it easy to understand why she is often described as Christlike or representative of God's goodness. Her response to his father's capture and to her capture evokes the stoicism of kings and reveals that Cordelia is as real as his father.
About the father-daughter relationship, an interesting example is the story of “I Promessi Sposi”. In the novel by A. Manzoni appears in the help of the protagonists Renzo e Lucia, more precisely in the help of Lucia and Agnese (her mother), a second-class character but of great importance for the understanding of the mentality of the noble social class of the time: Gertrude or The Lady or the Nun of Monza. In the story of this character Manzoni dedicates more than one chapter, highlighting its main feature. To dictate the life of this woman as a child to a destiny in the monastery is her father, who is called the "prince father". The prince, as usual, had decided that his entire estate would have gone to his eldest son, while others would have been bound by a fate of cloisters in the convent. Gertrude has a first name, according to the father, “linked to the cloister”; she grows with toys representing nuns, and even if he is never told directly to become a nun, it is understood without much doubts. She also received her education from the age of six to fourteen in the monastery of Monza, where she also spent her adult life. The prince father is one, as one might call it, "noble-minded", because he tied to the value of the family's name. He is convinced that one of his daughters in the monastery would enjoy higher privileges and would surely become an abbess, but she would also behave as a noble one. We note, then, the contrast between a possible Christian education as it should have been that given to Gertrude and the true education which instead provides the noble father. He is very proud and a perfect expression of the noble seventeenth century. Although he is the father of Gertrude, the same blood and the same name, this does not entail an obligation of love between them, or at least excludes the duty to prove it. In fact, the prince father is not a father as it is a loving parent, a parent (formerly) head of the family, but a father-master, not affectionate, but indispensable, never submissive, but pretentious and arrogant. The author does not reproach this behavior that none of us would wish and wish he would wish to his father, but of course he can not approve being completely contrary to what the rights of the child and then the person are today, and that once They were just part of a common morale that disapproved such a mastery of the father (even not far from today's levels). The author does not reproach, disapprove, but compliments his daughter, Gertrude, who was the victim even before the birth of such a supplication dictated by the noble mind. There are some interesting points of contact between Cordelia and Getrude, for even the nun would have liked to show his love to his father, without ever being able to do it because of his hardness. Cordelia, however, being a good man, finds it hard to prove her love in words, because of her integrity and her inability to pretend. The king, on the other hand, asks the daughters to express their affection for words because he is insecure, and has developed his insecurity through the lack of pure love he has previously suffered: therefore, we can create a point of contact between Lear and Gertrude, both eager for an affection they will never have, because both are victims of a tragedy. This tautological connection between the characters of the two works is a striking example of the resemblance between the habits of the noble classes of two different areas of Europe in a century moved as the sixteenth century.
Tragic heroes
Looking at the Shakespearian tragedy from an idealistic point of view, we must consider the viewpoint of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, by which we analyze the tragic heroes from the Sofocle’s Antigone (paradigmatic figure: the tragic hero is his destiny, he has a self-consciousness that through action there will be negative power) to Krasiński's "Non-Divine Comedy", capturing different shades: the tragic heroes are those who arrive too late, but also those who arrive too early and try to hasten the story. So there are the stories of Gloucester and Edgar, who accompanies his father to the rocks of Dover and becomes crazy. So there is the painful scene of the blind who is conducted by the madman towards a non-existent cliff, classical examples of desperate characters, prey to a never-ending decay inevitably directed to deep human misery.
We found in many Greek tragedies the literary topos of the father-son death. One of the most famous works is the “Thyestes”, resumed from Sofocle (like the Antigone) by Eschilo, Euripide and, above all, Seneca. He wrote a fibula cothurnata, that means a latin tragedy with a greek plot. Atreo meditates revenge on his brother Tieste, as he has usurped the throne - and was then forced into exile - and overthrew his wife Erope (never named after her in the tragedy). He calls Tieste at home, pretending to reconcile with him. The brother comes to Argo with the three children, happy to re-embrace his homeland, but fearful of his safety and his loved ones. His son Tantalo tries to reassure him, and Atreo himself reserves a great welcome to his brother. Between them peace seems to be restored, but Atreo's plan is now ready to be implemented. Not long after, a messenger informs the Chorus that the gruesome revenge has been accomplished: Tieste's sons were captured by Atreo's order, who killed them with absurd ferocity, and then architected a more sadistic and macabre plan: Cooked their pieces in pieces and put them in a canteen for the father, who is now eating the dishes without knowing the tragedy that had happened. Atreo proposes to his brother a toast, but Tieste notices that there is no wine in the cups, but blood. Smothered and scared, he asks where his children are. Atreo shows him their heads and their hands cut off, and tells him everything he did. After invoking apocalyptic scenarios, Tieste curses his brother and kills himself. Seneca’s work is such as the “reverse tragedy” compared to Gloucester’s story: in Shakespeare tragedy there’s a lighter pain, caused by a political event, and a fake suicide; there’s a sadness of a father that, despite everything, is comforted by his son, that is still alive and survives also after his death. In the Thyestes, instead, the fierce torment of Atreo’s brother cannot be healed because of the death of his children. But the reminiscences of the classical culture in Shakespeare are clear and frequent, like Hegel sustains.