The view of Cordelia in I.i as wholly either a model of rectitude and sound moral principles or hard, unyielding, and excessively proud of her superior virtue cannot be sustained, for her behavior and language indicate that she both has moral principles and is unyielding. To the degree she does not explain herself fully once the public demands for and declarations of love have begun, Cordelia seems unyielding. Her terse "Nothing" when she is asked what she can say to top her sisters and her refusal to be drawn in to their overearnest language call for explanation. If it is the case that in his foolish vanity and susceptibility to flattery Lear refuses to give any weight to the truth or explanation of such statements of love that Cordelia makes ("I . . . obey you, love you, and most honour you"), then it is also true that Cordelia does not press to make herself more fully or clearly understood. What she does instead of referring to different kinds or qualities of love that may be infinitely partitioned is indicate that love can be partitioned according to quantity.
The possibility that love itself provides its own increase does not occur to anyone, least of all Lear, who appears to measure his sense of worth by the quantity only, and who attaches his sense of entitlement to the fact of his royal status. Cordelia seems troubled by the manner of her sisters' declarations, but it does not occur to her that the premise of measuring love by quantity alone is itself a problem. Contrast this with (for example) Juliet's insight when she briefly wishes she could take back her declaration of love for Romeo, only so that she might redeclare that love. Then she thinks better of doing so: "And yet I wish but for the thing I have: / My bounty is as boundless as the sea, / My love as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are infinite" (II.ii.131-135). If there is a quantitative difference between liking and loving, Juliet's st...