This nameless servant provides not only a model of hospitality and decency but also an example of a good rebellion against nature and social order, a moral and healthy rebellion against a father figure, very like Cordelia's rebellion against her father, Lear. “I have served you ever since I was a child,” the servant says to Cornwall. “But better service have I never done you / Than now to bid you hold” (3.7.71–73). Cordelia and Kent made much the same appeal in the love test of the opening scene. Here a servant not only holds to it, but dies for it.
That never occurred to me before.
