Speak What We Feel, Not What We

¶ … Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

The beginning of the play "King Lear" depicts a society based upon an intricate network of verbally expressed falsehoods, within the context of the royal family. King Lear asks his three daughters to speak about their love for their father, in exchange for a portion of the kingdom he is dividing up. Goneril and Regan are practiced in deceptive language and praise their love for their father beyond all measure. However, Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia refuses to flatter her father. Rather, she merely speaks that she loves her father as she is bound to, as a daughter should, and no father is all to a daughter -- what of her sister's husbands, she points out?

But rather than see Goneril's and Regan's mendacity, Lear is outraged at this refusal of his favorite daughter to speak as he wishes her to in public, thus he disinherits her. Only after he learns that Regan and Goneril's fine words mean nothing in terms of their actual actions does he realize the true value of Cordelia's honesty. She is the only character who only speaks from her truthful heart over the course of the play, except for Lear's fool. At the beginning of the play, Lear sees language like fancy clothing, something for display, only later does he understand the importance of truth in language.