King Lear’s letter

My dear Cordelia,

There is nothing that can undo the wrong I have done to you, I know. I can only hope that your heart appreciates that love for your father that you once displayed so honestly, that still remains intact. Your forgiveness, now that I’m angry, is all I ask. Perhaps the gods will pay for my own pride and ignorance for which I am crazy, because you well know that I was terribly wrong and I suffer a lot for my mistake.

Oh, but now I can see that I am just a human being, like you, like your sisters, like the beggar. The worms and the earth don’t care who we are in life once we’re fooled once more. Storms hit me like any other – “this storm will not give me permission to reflect on things that would hurt me more.” Rather, dear, lowering myself to the common level. I see now – all their lives, entrenched in the background, never to rise. I can see their hopelessness and sorrow and despair and defeat, and I feel so sorry for them that I have remained unaware of it. “Man of no means is but a poor animal, naked, forked,” and I have become Him. Oh, but Cordelia, you must rule France with respect to all. Help the poor, I beg you!

Of course, I had forgotten. Your forces are arriving, in great numbers. But “I’m afraid I’m not in my perfect mind”, I’m afraid I’ve lost it somewhere along the way. I am without my knights, without my servants. Your sisters, cruel and cold, withdraw me, I who made them! What ho! You say they are wrong, so that is so, but they are not so limitless that they will believe only their own, testaments to their will but not to their morality and judgment. True, I thought you loved me less, and your sisters more, but they gave me the lowest compliments, and I, deceived, the great fool, lost his daughter, his crown, her life. I said, “I loved you very much and thought I’d put my rest in your kind nursery,” and I’m so ashamed that I can’t see your honest truth and flattery contrived by your sisters. They never loved me.

For the truth and the truthful words and lines, your voice I seek. But that I may draw the last breath of life before that day to come, be content to govern France, and do what you will to help England from afar. I’m afraid I won’t survive these next few days. But that the days are numbered, but that I don’t know who will claim me, but that I will find that one. Find yourself, Cordelia, don’t bow down to your sisters, don’t bow down to their little weaknesses. No matter your situation, you must remain Cordelia, always and forever the most servant of my daughters. I’m sorry it took me so long to see this simple truth, but the deeds are done. Of course I am sorry, but that in itself will not bring me peace. First I must pay for what I have done, for my ignorance and my pride. And behold! the “tempest in my mind drives out of my senses all other feeling except what strikes there”; the external storm fans the fire of my internal storms, but it cannot reach beyond the flame of a candle. I am finished, Cordelia, finished, dead in all but body. I am cast out, and the worms will soon catch me. But you will endure. Yes, you must! For a father to survive his child, even for a second, is a terrible fate, and one that should never befall us. You have a long and full life ahead of you, certainly greater than mine, if not the one you expected, yes, because of my painful idiocy. But I see that it may not be so, but I can’t do anything but wait. Cordelia, forgive my pride!

With love in deepest consideration,

Your father, King Lear