Note 137 — PART XVII
Reading edition
“Lear is the occasion for Cordelia. The daughter’s maternity towards the father; profound subject; maternity venerable among all other maternities, so admirably rendered by the legend of that Roman girl, nurse, in the depths of a prison, of her old father. The young breast near the white beard, there is no spectacle more holy. That filial breast is Cordelia.
“Once this figure was dreamed and found Shakespeare created his drama.... Shakespeare carrying Cordelia in his thoughts, created that tragedy as a god, who having an aurora to place makes a world expressly for it.”