Lear's Cordelia and Princess Mary's lips

Shakespeare scholars often note the changes from the First Quarto of King Lear (1607), to the Folio version (1623), especially the dying Lear, holding the corpse of Cordelia in his arms, hoping for a sign that she is still breathing, and in the Folio, attention to her lips:

“Do you see this? Looke on her? Looke her lips,
Looke there, looke there.”

Many in the last four centuries (including Benson, 2009 [1], and de Grazia, 2021 [2], both of whom cite many others) have pondered whether this hints at a resurrection theme, or delusion.

Perhaps there was a topical-historical-political reason for adding the comment about Cordelia’s lips: Had any daughter of King James died around this time?

In fact, three of James’ four daughters had died before 1610:
Princess Margaret Stuart (24 December 1598 - March 1600) had died before the play was written;
Princess Mary Stuart (8 April 1605 - 16 September 1607) died at about the age of two and a half years.
Sophia Stuart (22 June 1606 – 23 June 1606) lived only a day.

A sermon preached on the occasion of the 1607 funeral of Mary Stuart mentions her lips, and also uses repetition similar to Shakespeare’s:

"such was the manner of her death, as bred a kind of admiration [...]. …for [...] twelve or fourteen hours [...], there was no sound of any word heard breaking from her lips; yet when it sensibly appeared that she would soon make a peaceful end of a troublesome life, she sighed out these words, 'I go, I go!' [...] again she repeated 'Away, I go!' And yet, a third time, almost immediately before she offered up herself, a sweet virgin sacrifice, unto Him that made her, faintly cried 'I go, I go!'" [3]

Reference to “sweet virgin sacrifice” seems thematically related to what is often described as the reverse-gender Pieta of Lear holding Cordelia’s corpse, instead of Mary holding that of Jesus.

So does the Folio ending of the play invite audiences (and body politic) to conform to the King's grief

Perhaps other scholars in the last 400 years have also noticed this? [4]

NOTES: References to King Lear 5.3 are to the University of Victoria’s Internet Shakespeare Folio version: https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/Texts/Lr/F1/scene/5.3.html

[1] Benson, Sean, Ch. 3, “Cordelia’s Quasi-Resurrection and Shakespearean Revision,” Shakespearean Resurrection: The Art of Almost Raising the Dead, 2009, Penn State University Press, 2009, pages 98-121. DOI: 10.5325/j.ctv1xx9mw5

[2] de Grazia, Margreta, ch. 4, “Secularity before Revelation," Four Shakespearean Period Pieces, 2021, University of Chicago Press. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo90478410.html

[3] See Mary Anne Everett Green’s 1857 multi-volume series on the princesses of England, which references the funeral sermon. Everett Green, Mary Anne (1857). Lives of the princesses of England, vol VI. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longman, & Roberts. See pages 94-95. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044005605050&view=1up&seq=118

[4] King Lear is not yet a play I’ve specialized in, so investigating whether others in the last 400 years have mentioned the 2007 funeral sermon in relation to Lear’s reference to “lips” would be a new project…

IMAGES:
Right: James Barry (1741–1806). King Lear Weeping over the Dead Body of Cordelia. Circa 1786. Tate Britain. Public domain via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Barry_-_King_Lear_Weeping_over_the_Dead_Body_of_Cordelia_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Left: Princess Mary of England and Scotland (1605-1607), daughter of James VI and I.
Image cropped from another:
Charles Turner (1774–1857) 
After Willem van de Passe (–1637) 
James I and his royal progeny, by Willem van de Passe (died 1642), published 1814.
National Portrait Gallery, London. Public domain via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_I_and_his_royal_progeny_by_Willem_van_de_Passe.jpg

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