Cordelia (King Lear) is depicted as Queen Cordelia. In Shakespeare's "King Lear", Cordelia is briefly on stage during Act 1, scene 1. Her father Lear exiles her as a response to her honesty when he asks for professions of love from his three daughters to determine how to divide the lands of his kingdom between them. Cordelia's sisters, Goneril and Regan, give deceitfully-lavish speeches professing their love, flattering his vanity. Cordelia, seeing right through her sisters' feigned professions of love, refuses to do the same. Lear deems her answer ("Love, and be silent" 1.1.62) as too simple. Lear asks her, "What can you
King Lear in "King Lear". Other possible sources are the anonymous play "King Leir" (published in 1605); "The Mirror for Magistrates" (1574), by John Higgins; "The Malcontent" (1604), by John Marston; "The London Prodigal" (1605); Montaigne's "Essays", which were translated into English by John Florio in 1603; "An Historical Description of Iland of Britaine" (1577), by William Harrison; "Remaines Concerning Britaine" (1606), by William Camden; "Albion's England" (1589), by William Warner; and "A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures" (1603), by Samuel Harsnett, which provided some of the language used by Edgar while he feigns madness. "King Lear" is also a literary variant