Lear's Motivations for the Love Test

I’ve been reading a discussion thread on the Shaksper Listserv, where scholars, theatre practitioners, and other Shakespeare fanatics trade thoughts about the Bard. This discussion concerns the culpability of characters in the opening scene. In a non-Academic nutshell: When things go wrong, is Lear to blame, or is Cordelia?

Some contributors blame Cordelia, either for failing to “honour her father” enough (an Old Testament interpretation) or for lacking enough tact to flatter him the way she obviously is expected to. Lear, of course, has lots to answer for as well. One contributor, Edmund Taft, blamed Lear, and went on to speculate about the King’s reasons for creating the love test to begin with. To quote him:

“...if, as Lear expects, she announces that all her love belongs to Daddy, then he can quote her own words back at her, stop her from marrying, and have her all to himself. That's what he thought would happen, as he himself says in a quasi-aside.”

Taft thinks Lear wants to trap Cordelia into not marrying. I’m not sure what line the “quasi-aside” refers to, although it might be this line: “I loved her most, and thought to set my rest / On her kind nursery” (1.1.123-124). What I find interesting about this explanation, besides its heavy Freudian tone, is that it is almost exactly the opposite of the reason I found in King Leir, the source of Lear. In that play, Lear explicitly says he will use the love to test to make her marry. “If you really love me as much as you say you do, you’ll choose the suitor I pick for you.”

I guess either one works. The approach Taft suggests has a nice echo in Lear’s later speech, when he and Cordelia are prisoners of war, and he imagines the two of them singing alone, “like birds i’th’ cage.”

But the second approach works with Cordelia’s immediate response to Lear (especially in the Folio version): “Sure I shall never marry like my sisters.” That would be Lear’s chance (if we believe Taft) to respond with “Fine! Don’t get married then! See if I care!” But perhaps they hadn’t invented reverse psychology in Lear’s time.