is what matters, so now the question becomes why would Cordelia want to live in Lears world? The play is about protesting a world gone mad.The situation is further intensified by the Tate emendation that playgoers witnessed for over a century. Arguing from the perspective of post-restoration and neo-classical taste that literature must teach virtue, Tate dropped the Fool, gave Cordelia and Edgar a love interest, thus sparing her life along with her father:Edgar: My dear Cordelia! Lucky was the Minute Of our approach, the Gods have weighed our Sufferings,Ware past the Fire, and now must shine to AgesAlbany notes,Take off their chains thou Injurd Majesty,The Wheel of Fortune now has made a circleWhat comfort may be brought to cheer your age?And heal your savage Wrongs, shall be applydFor to your Majesty we do resignYour kingdomLears last words according to Tate are:Though, thou hast some business yet for life;Thou, Kent, and I, retird to some cool cellWill gently pass our short Reserves of time In calm reflections on our fortunes past,Cheerd with relation of the prosperous reign Of this celestial pair; thus our remainsShall in an even course of thoughts be past? Enjoy the present hour, not fear the lastQuite a difference from Edmunds inexplicable delay in revoking his doom, leading inevitably to the death of Lear and Cordelia.Perhaps today our taste have changed since our metaphysics have, and if the mimetic theory of Aristotle still holds, then Foakes has charted the change when he notes that Hamlet has been replaced by Lear as the play most representative of our century. In the 1960s, the central question about the tragedy of King Lear, took on new form. And as Herbert Blau put it, In our time it became possible to ask again about the death of Cordelia not why she should die, but why she want to live? To escape the implied horror this question poses regarding this century, demands perhaps an existential interpretation of the univer...
