CORDELIA
I love your Majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less.
KING LEAR
How, how, Cordelia? Mend your speech a little,
Lest it may mar your fortunes.
CORDELIA
Good my lord,
You have begot me, bred me, loved me.
I return those duties back as are right fit:
Obey you, love you, and most honor you.
Why have my sisters husbands if they say
They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall
carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty.
Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters,
To love my father all. (1.1.105-115)
Cordelia, as we know, refuses to play King Lear's game of "who loves daddy the most." Here, she says that she loves her father "according to [her] bond," which means that she loves him just as much a daughter should love her father, "no more nor less."
It turns out that Cordelia is about to be married and insists that she reserves half her love for her future husband and half for her father. She also points out that her sisters, Goneril and Regan, dishonor their husbands when they claim to love their father more than their spouses. Is this the reason Lear flips out and banishes Cordelia, depriving her of a dowry? Is Lear jealous of Cordelia's future husband?
Quote 2
CORDELIA, aside
What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent. (1.1.68)
Cordelia doesn't know how to respond to Lear's love test, especially since her sisters are full of empty flattery. Here, she decides she won't even try to give voice to her love for her father.
CORDELIA, aside
And yet not so, since I am sure my love's
More ponderous than my tongue. (1.1.86-87)
After Goneril and Regan bicker about who loves Lear the "most," Cordelia decides that her "love's more ponderous than [her] tongue." In other words, while Goneril and Regan talk as though their love is something quantifiable, Cordelia determines that her love for Lear cannot be measured with words.
CORDELIA
Good my lord,
You have begot me, bred me, loved me.
I return those duties back as are right fit:
Obey you, love you, and most honor you.
Why have my sisters husbands if they say
They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall
carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty.
Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters,
To love my father all. (1.1.105-115)
We discuss this passage in "Family" but it's worth talking about here as well. When Lear demands his daughters profess their love to him, Goneril and Regan lay it on pretty thick—professing they love Lear "the most." Here, Cordelia points out that Goneril and Regan are being disloyal to their husbands because, as married women, Goneril and Regan owe much of their love and "duties" to their spouses.
Cordelia says she will "obey," "love" and "honour" her father (hmmm… sounds a bit like a wedding ceremony, don't you think?), but she's going to reserve "half" of her "love" and "duty" for her future husband. Cordelia's honesty sends Lear into a rage and he disowns her. (He also takes away the dowry he promised.) Why?
CORDELIA, to Lear
We are not the first
Who with best meaning have incurred the worst. (5.3.4-5)
Cordelia seems to recognize that she is one in a long line of people who gets shafted while trying to do the right thing. The kicker is that she doesn't yet know "the worst" consists of her death.
CORDELIA, kissing Lear
O, my dear father, restoration hang
Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made.
KENT
Kind and dear princess. (4.7.31-35)
As she bends over her ailing father to revive him with a kiss, Cordelia reveals that she has one of the kindest, loving hearts in English literature. Even after her father unfairly banished her, love and forgiveness come naturally. Aww.