If There Were No Cordelia

If there were no Cordelia,

would there have been a Lear?

If Goneril and Regan

had been all he’d had to rear,

would Lear’s demise

have been as harrowing?

Would it have been a wider
or more narrow thing?

Would Lear have killed himself?

How much would we care?

Here’s the only

answer we can bear.

If Cordelia had never

appeared in King Lear,

there might as well never

have been a Shakespeare.

.