To abjure language in such cases is not a refusal of speech, like Iago's final words, but rather an acknowledgment of the limitations of language, and the place of the ineffable or the unutterable. The modest and silent claim of a love according to her bond will distinguish Cordelia's language, and her silence, throughout the play. Like Hamlet in the court of Claudius, dismayed by the falseness of ceremony and the role-playing all around him, Cordelia refuses to play the game, refuses to involve herself in playacting and willful deception.
