King Lear Quotes Flashcards
(154 cards)
1
Q
Gloucester to Kent
Describes how Edmund was conceived. Gloucester is not repentant for having a bastard son; this will come back to haunt him later.
A
“Though this knave came something saucily to the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair, there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowleg’d”
2
Q
Lear to Gloucester/Kent
Out of laziness, Lear splits kingdom in three. Whichever daughter flatters Lear the most will get the most opulent third.
A
“We have divided / In three our kingdom; and ‘tis our fast intent / To shake all cares and business from our age.”
3
Q
Cordelia to audience
Cordelia’s first words connect her to the audience. She refuses to flatter her father.
A
“What shall Cordelia speak? Love, / and be silent.”
4
Q
Cordelia to Lear
She doesn’t want anything from Lear except fatherly love.
A
“Nothing, my lord.”
5
Q
Lear to Cordelia
Mocking her; since she won’t flatter him, he won’t give her anything to get married with.
A
“Let it be so: thy truth then be thy dow’r!”
6
Q
Lear to Kent
Cordelia was his favorite, and he had planned to stay with Cordelia in his old age
A
“I lov’d her most, and thought to set my rest / On her kind nursery.”
7
Q
Kent to Lear
Calling him out on his flattery competition. (duty = Kent, power = Lear)
A
“Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak / When power to flattery bows?”
8
Q
Lear to Kent
Banishing Kent from the kingdom because he spoke out against Lear in front of the Royal Court.
A
“If, on the tenth day following, / Thy banish’d trunk be found in our dominions, / The moment is thy death.”
9
Q
Lear to Burgundy
Stabbing Cordelia in the back; impressing upon Burgundy that Cordelia is undesirable as a bride because he won’t give her anything.
A
“Will you, with those infirmities she owes, / Unfriended, new adopted to our hate, / Dow’r’d with our curse, and stranger’d with our oath, / Take her, or leave her?”
10
Q
Cordelia to Lear
She didn’t commit a crime to lose Lear’s love, she just retained her virtue and integrity, and in so doing, she has lost Lear’s love.
A
“It is no vicious blot, murther, or foulness, / No unchaste action, or dishonored step, / That hath depriv’d me of your grace and favor, / But even for want of that for which I am richer— / A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue / That I am glad I have not, though not to have it / Hath lost me in your liking.”
11
Q
Lear to Cordelia
In response to Cordelia saying that she did nothing wrong. This quote shows just how unhinged Lear is.
A
“Better thou / Hadst not been born than not t’ have pleas’d me better.”
12
Q
King of France to Lear
This guy recognizes the value of Cordelia’s virtue and so he accepts her as his bride without any money from Lear.
A
“She is herself a dowry.”
13
Q
King of France to Burgundy
Mocking Burgundy for not recognizing Cordelia’s true value, which is not in the form of money.
A
“Not all the dukes of wat’rish Burgundy / Can buy this unpriz’d precious maid of me.”
14
Q
Cordelia to Regan and Goneril
Cordelia is very intelligent and realizes that Goneril and Regan are conniving and will want to take over their father’s power. She has the spunk and the verve to say this in front of the entire court.
A
“I know you what you are.”
15
Q
Regan to Goneril
Foreshadowing the upsets in Lear’s kingdom / conspiring to control Lear in his retirement
A
“Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent’s banishment.”
16
Q
Edmund (soliloquy)
Being a child born out of wedlock, he is enraged that a cultural tradition is holding him back from getting his father’s power.
A
“Thou, Nature, art my goddess, to thy law / My services are bound. / Wherefore should I / Stand in the plague of custom, and permit / The curiosity of nations to deprive me, / For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines / Lag of a brother?”
17
Q
Edmund (soliloquy)
Here Edmund is saying that since bastard children are born with fierce passion, they should be celebrated, even above legitimate children, because legitimate children are (literally) born from a sense of duty, rather than the passion that consumes lovers.
A
“Why brand they us / With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? / Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take / More composition, and fierce quality, / Than doth within a dull, stale, tired bed / Go to th’ creating a whole tribe of fops, / Got ‘tween asleep and wake?”
18
Q
Edmund to Gloucester
Edmund presents to Gloucester the letter that he forged in Edgar’s name, with a supposed (ridiculous) plot to murder their father and seize his lands and wealth.
A
“I hope, for my brother’s justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.”
19
Q
Gloucester to Edmund
Gloucester fails to see through this sham of Edmund’s, and so he completely believes that Edgar actually wrote this letter to Edmund.
A
“O villain, villain! his very opinion in the letter.”
20
Q
Edmund to audience
Criticizing Gloucester for blaming his fortune on the stars.
Also, here Shakespeare mocks the human desire to lay blame elsewhere besides on oneself.
A
“An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!”
21
Q
Edgar, Edmund
Edmund now feigns innocence in order to gain Edgar’s trust, so that he can betray him later.
A
“Some villain hath done me wrong.”
“That’s my fear.”
Edgar,
22
Q
Edgar to audience
Announcing his plans to dupe Gloucester and Edgar into allowing him to have the power, lands and wealth.
A
“Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit.”
23
Q
Goneril to Oswald
Conspiring to take over Lear’s power. She wants the servants to dress as she says so that she can show Lear who’s boss, even now.
A
“Put on what weary negligence you please, / You and your fellows; I’d have it come to question. / If he distaste it, let him to my sister, / Whose mind and mine I know in that are one, / Not to be overrul’d. Idle old man, / That still would manage those authorities / That he hath given away!”
24
Q
Kent to audience
Working up the courage not to be outspoken, and showing his devotion to Lear; he’ll disguise himself and come back to serve Lear.
A
“Now, banish’d Kent, / If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn’d, / So may it come, thy master, whom thou lov’st, / Shall find thee full of labors.”
25
Fool to Kent
| The Fool is telling Kent that he's foolish to follow Lear, because Lear doesn't deserve it.
"if thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb."
26
Fool to Lear
The Fool has license to criticize anyone, even the king, and so he does here. The "golden one" is Cordelia (she has blonde hair), and the Fool is calling Lear out on letting her go.
"thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav'st thy golden one away."
27
Fool to Lear
| I don't like being a fool very much, but being you would be worse.
"I had rather be any kind o' thing than a Fool, and yet I would not be thee"
28
Fool to Lear
The Fool points out that Regan and Goneril want to take over Lear's power, just like the baby cuckoo bird eventually takes over its host's nest.
"The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, / That it had it head bit off by it young."
29
Lear to Goneril
| Lear thinks he can still count on Goneril to be on his side. (Oh how wrong he is.)
"Yet have I left a daughter."
30
Lear to Goneril/Albany
| Lear is realizing that Goneril and Regan are completely ungrateful and is burned by it.
"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child!"
31
Albany to Goneril
| This is the first sign that Albany wants to be reasonable about taking over Lear's power.
"Striving to better, oft we mar what's well."
32
Fool to Lear
When you're young, you can bounce back from foolishness. The only thing that can protect you in old age is wisdom. (Lear obviously missed this.)
"Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise."
33
Curan to Edmund
This is a consequence of Lear dividing the kingdom: Cornwall and Albany are now fighting for complete control of the whole kingdom.
"Have you heard of no likely wars toward, / 'twixt the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany?"
34
Edmund to Edgar
| Setting Edgar up.
"Pardon me: / In cunning I must draw my sword upon you. / Draw, seem to defend yourself; now quit you well.— / Yield! Come before my father. Light ho, here!— / Fly, brother."
35
Edmund to Gloucester
Edmund's MO (modus operandi, mode of operation) is to gain people's trust, use that trust to his advantage, and then betray them.
"Look, sir, I bleed. . . . [Edgar] Fled this way, sir, when by no means he / could—
Persuade me to the murther of you lordship."
36
Gloucester to Edmund
Sealing the deal: now that Gloucester thinks Edgar was trying to kill Edmund, Gloucester entrusts his lands and wealth to him rather than to Edgar, his legitimate son.
"of my land, / Loyal and natural boy, I'll work the means / To make thee capable."
37
Cornwall to Edmund
IRONY!!! Edmund seems so virtuous because he supposedly foiled a plot to murder Gloucester, so now Cornwall is trusting him with some power.
"For you, Edmund, / Whose virtue and obedience doth this instant / So much commend itself, you shall be ours. / Natures of such deep trust we shall much need; / You we first seize on."
38
Kent to Oswald
Insulting Oswald to put him in his place, because Oswald has been strutting about the castle indulging his own self-interests, while Kent has always been loyal to Lear.
"A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver'd, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave."
39
Kent to Cornwall
Stone-cutters and painters can make something beautiful even if they're not that skilled, but tailors have to be skilled to produce a work of art, and so a tailor fashioned Oswald at his birth, because Oswald is an abhorrence.
"a stone-cutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though they had been but two years o' th' trade."
40
Cornwall to Kent
| Cornwall wants to emphasize that Lear no longer has any power, so he puts his most loyal servant into the stocks.
"Fetch forth the stocks! / You stubborn ancient knave, you reverent braggart, / We'll teach you."
41
Kent to Cornwall
| Kent tells Cornwall that he's too old to be punished, he's just serving the rightful king.
"Sir, I am too old to learn. / Call not your stocks for me, I serve the King, / On whose employment I was sent to you."
42
Edgar to audience
| Edgar's second soliloquy reveals his true biterness about Edmund and Gloucester.
"My face I'll grime with filth, / Blanket my loins, elf all my hairs in knots, / And with presented nakedness outface / The winds and persecutions of the sky. / The country gives me proof and president / Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, / Strike in their numb'd and mortified arms / Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary; / And with this horrible object, from low farms, / Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills, / Sometimes with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, / Enforce their charity."
43
Fool to Lear
| The worst is yet to come. (speaking about Goneril and Regan)
"Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way."
44
Gloucester to Lear
| Playing the peacemaker
"I would have all well betwixt you."
45
Regan to Lear
Putting their conspiracy into action. Goneril has already rejected Lear, so Lear goes to Regan for charity, but Regan rejects him too.
"I cannot think my sister in the least / Would fail her obligation. If, sir, perchance / She have restrain'd the riots of your followers, / 'Tis on such ground and to such wholesome end / As clears her from all blame."
Regan to Lear
Putting their conspiracy into action. Goneril has already rejected Lear, so Lear goes to Regan for charity, but Regan rejects him too.
46
Regan to Lear
| Again, Regan and Goneril are tag-teaming Lear to get his power from him.
"O, sir, you are old, / Nature in you stands on the very verge / Of his confine. You should be rul'd and led / By some discretion that discerns your state / Better than you yourself. Therefore I pray you / That to our sister you do make return. / Say you have wrong'd her."
47
Lear to Regan
| Recognizing that he's vulnerable in his old age.
"Age is unnecessary."
48
Goneril to Lear
"All's not offense that indiscretion finds / And dotage terms so."
49
Lear to Goneril/Regan
| This starts Regan and Goneril's process of stripping Lear of all his knights.
"Return to her? And fifty men dismiss'd? / No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose / To wage against the enmity o' th' air."
50
Lear to Goneril/Regan
| Goneril and Regan are passing Lear back and forth in an attempt to get him to surrender his power.
"Return to her? / Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter / To this detested groom."
51
Lear to Goneril
| Counting on Goneril to be more hospitable than Regan, because she flattered him more.
"Thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty, / And thou art twice her love."
52
Goneril to Lear
| More cutting down the numbers of the knights Lear gets to keep.
"What need you five and twenty? ten? Or five? / To follow in a house where twice so many / Have a command to tend you?"
Goneril to Lear
More cutting down the numbers of the knights Lear gets to keep.
53
Regan to Lear/Goneril
| Why does Lear even need one knight? He'll survive.
"What need one?"
54
Lear to Regan and Goneril
| Cursing them for being ungrateful and turning him out.
"you unnatural hags, / I will have such revenges on you both / That all the world shall—I will do such things— / What they are yet I know not, but they shall be / The terrors of the earth!"
55
Cornwall to Gloucester
| Telling Gloucester to shut Lear out. Gloucester does not say no, for which he will suffer later.
"Shut up our doors, my lord, 'tis a wild night, / My Regan counsels well. Come out o' th' storm."
56
Kent to Gentleman
Letting the audience know that France is invading England. This means that Cordelia wants to overthrow Regan and Goneril to restore the power to its rightful owner, her father Lear.
"But, true it is, from France there comes a power / Into this scatter'd kingdom; who already, / Wise in our negligence, have secret feet / In some of our best ports, and are at point / To show their open banner."
57
Kent to Gentleman
The Gentleman is going to Cordelia. She does not know that Kent came back (disguised as Caius), so giving her this ring would let her know that she has an ally behind enemy lines.
"If you shall see Cordelia,-- / As fear not but you shall,--show her this ring; / And she will tell you who your fellow is."
58
Fool to Lear
The Fool is begging Lear to beg Regan and Goneril to let him back in; the night is cold and terrible. Nature treats everyone the same, whether king or peasant.
"Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters' blessing: / here's a night pities neither wise man nor fool."
59
Kent to Lear
| Again, nature treats all men the same.
"things that love night / Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies / Gallow the very wanderers of the dark, / And make them keep their caves: since I was man, / Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, / Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never / Remember to have heard."
60
Lear to Kent
Ultimate self-pity, which is the worst thing he can do at this point. He's lamenting what others have done to him rather than taking a hit to his pride by taking responsibility for what he himself has done to cause his downfall.
"I am a man / More sinn'd against than sinning
61
Fool to Lear
Prophecy! 2 halves: first describes the present as the future, and the second describes something that the Fool will never come to know.
"When priests are more in word than matter; / When brewers mar their malt with
water; / When nobles are their tailors' tutors; / No heretics burn'd, but wenches'
suitors; / When every case in law is right; / No squire in debt, nor no poor knight; / When slanders do not live in tongues; / Nor cutpurses come not to throngs; / When usurers tell their gold i' the field; / And bawds and whores do churches build; / Then shall the realm of Albion / Come to great confusion: / Then comes the time, who lives to see't, / That going shall be used with feet. / This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time."
62
Gloucester to Edmund
Gloucester trusting Edmund with the knowledge that he is in favor of Lear and not Regan and Goneril. This shows how naive Gloucester is regarding Edmund and his ways.
"When I desire their leave that I might / pity him, they took from me the use of mine own / house; charged me, on pain of their perpetual / displeasure, neither to speak of him, entreat for / him, nor any way sustain him."
63
Gloucester to Edmund
Here Gloucester trusts Edmund further with the location of a letter that would make him a traitor in Goneril and Regan. Big mistake.
"I have received a letter this night; 'tis dangerous to be / spoken; I have locked the letter in my closet: / these injuries the king now bears will be revenged / home; there's part of a power already footed: we / must incline to the king. I will seek him, and / privily relieve him: go you and maintain talk with / the duke, that my charity be not of him perceived: / if he ask for me. I am ill, and gone to bed. / Though I die for it, as no less is threatened me, / the king my old master must be relieved."
64
Edmund to audience
| Following the MO: betraying his father's trust. (twisted!)
"This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke / Instantly know; and of that letter too: /
This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me / That which my father loses; no less than all: / The younger rises when the old doth fall."
65
Lear to Kent
| Again, lamenting his situation, and also revealing that he's going a little insane ("the tempest in my mind").
"The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind / Doth from my senses take all feeling else / Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!"
66
Lear to Edgar
Showing how incredibly wrapped up in himself Lear is. He's asking Edgar if he's in the exact same situation that he is himself, because self-centered people see their own situations as the worst thing that anyone could ever be in.
"Hast thou given all to thy two daughters? / And art thou come to this?"
67
Edgar to Lear
| Edgar meets Lear disguised as Tom o' Bedlam for the first time. He begs for some charity.
"Do poor Tom some / charity, whom the foul fiend vexes"
68
Lear to Edgar
Again, Lear is incredibly wrapped up in himself and shows this by asking if Edgar is in the same situation, which he considers to be the worst possible.
"What, have his daughters brought him to this pass? / Couldst thou save nothing? Didst thou give them all?"
69
Kent to Lear
Once again, Kent is speaking out against Lear. He's metaphorically slapping Lear in the face and saying "Snap out of it Lear! He doesn't have daughters! He's not in your exact situation!"
"He hath no daughters, sir."
70
Lear to Kent
In response to Kent's metaphorical slap in the face, Lear calls his daughters bloodsuckers (baby pelicans were thought to drink their parents' blood).
"Death, traitor! nothing could have subdued nature / To such a lowness but his unkind daughters. / Is it the fashion, that discarded fathers / Should have thus little mercy on their flesh? / Judicious punishment! 'twas this flesh begot / Those pelican daughters."
71
Edgar to Lear
Telling Lear the story of his past, in which he had many vices, such as uncountable women, fighting, laziness, greediness, etc.
"wine loved I deeply, dice dearly: and in woman / out-paramoured the Turk: false of heart, light of / ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, / wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey."
72
Cornwall to Edmund
Whether or not the letter is true (which is evidence that Gloucester is a traitor), it took Gloucester's power away from him and gave it to you. Go get Gloucester so that we can punish him for his traitorous behavior.
"True or false, it hath made thee earl of / Gloucester. Seek out where thy father is, that he / may be ready for our apprehension."
73
Lear to Fool
Self-pitying outlook; again, Lear is placing blame everywhere else besides on himself. (His pride wouldn't be able to endure such a hit as taking responsibility for what he himself did wrong.)
"It shall be done; I will arraign them straight."
74
Gloucester to Kent
Gloucester tells Kent (disguised as Caius) to take Lear to Dover, where he can be safe while waiting for the power to come back to him.
"Good friend, I prithee, take him in thy arms; / I have o'erheard a plot of death upon him: / There is a litter ready; lay him in 't, / And drive towards Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet / Both welcome and protection."
75
Cornwall to Edmund
Irony!! Cornwall thinks that because Edmund supposedly saved his father's life, he should react to Gloucester's punishment, when in reality it was Edmund who set Gloucester up in the first place and has now betrayed him.
"Leave him to my displeasure. Edmund, keep you our / sister company: the revenges we are bound to take / upon your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding."
76
Gloucester to Cornwall/Regan/Goneril
| Reminding them that they're still in his house and he doesn't want any harm done to him.
"What mean your graces? Good my friends, consider / You are my guests: do me no foul play, friends."
77
First Servant to Cornwall
The servant, with his dying breath, tells Cornwall to stop torturing Gloucester. This servant and the other two at the end of this scene illustrate a very radical idea implemented by Shakespeare: the servants were more noble than the nobles.
"Hold your hand, my lord: / I have served you ever since I was a child; / But better service have I never done you / Than now to bid you hold."
78
"Hold your hand, my lord: / I have served you ever since I was a child; / But better service have I never done you / Than now to bid you hold."
"Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly! / Where is thy lustre now?"
79
Cornwall to Regan
He's dying, which is good for her; now she can get with Edmund, the ultimate evil conspirator, with whom she's been having an affair for a while.
"I have received a hurt: follow me, lady. / Turn out that eyeless villain; throw this slave / Upon the dunghill. Regan, I bleed apace: / Untimely comes this hurt: give me your arm."
80
Gloucester to Old Man
| Acknowledging how wrong he was in believing Edmund and rejecting Edgar; now he knows of Edmund's treachery.
"I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; / I stumbled when I saw."
81
Gloucester to Old Man
We are the gods' playthings; they do with us as they please. This echoes Lear's earlier act of placing blame on someone else for his woes.
"As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, / They kill us for their sport."
82
Gloucester to Old Man
| Talking about Edgar; saying boy, the times must be bad if we have blind men being led around by crazy people.
"'Tis the time's plague, when madmen lead the blind."
83
Gloucester to Edgar
| Gloucester wants to commit suicide, so he tells Edgar to take him to a cliff where he can jump off.
"There is a cliff, whose high and bending head / Looks fearfully in the confined deep. / Bring me but to the very brim of it, / And I'll repair the misery thou dost bear / With something rich about me. From that place / I shall no leading need.
84
Oswald to Goneril
| Talking about Albany turning around and being seemingly on the side of Lear.
"I told him of the army that was landed; / He smil'd at it. I told him you were coming; / His answer was, "The worse." Of Gloucester's treachery, / And of the loyal service of his son, / When I inform'd him, then he call'd me sot, / And told me I had turn'd the wrong side out. / What most he should dislike seems pleasant to him; / What like, offensive."
Oswald to Goneril
Talking about Albany turning around and being seemingly on the side of Lear
85
Goneril to Edmund
| Since my husband is acting so weird, it's up to me to be the man in the house and ensure that I can keep my power.
"I must change names at home, and give the distaff / Into my husband's hands."
86
Albany to Goneril
| Finally realizing just how evil Goneril is, and calling her out on it.
"O Goneril, / You are not worth the dust which the rude wind / Blows in your face."
87
Albany to Goneril
| Goneril, you have gone too far in your quest to gain ultimate power.
"Wisdom and goodness to the vild seem vild!"
88
Goneril to Albany
| Mocking Albany for being Christian and turning the other cheek (figuratively). (Divorce court's not too far off.)
"Milk-liver'd man, / That bear'st a cheek for blows."
89
Albany to Goneril
| It's bad enough when men turn evil, but women are even worse.
"Proper deformity shows not in the fiend / So horrid as in woman."
90
Messenger to Albany
| Announcing the death of Cornwall, as well as Gloucester's torture.
"O my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall's dead, / Slain by his servant, going to put out / The other eye of Gloucester."
91
Goneril to audience
| Regretting that Regan gets to be with Edmund ("my Gloucester").
"One way I like this well, / But being widow, and my Gloucester with her, / May all the building in my fancy pluck / Upon my hateful life."
92
Albany to Messenger/himself
| This is a true sign that Albany really has turned around and become (somewhat) virtuous.
"Gloucester, I live / To thank thee for the love thou show'dst the King, / And to revenge thine eyes."
93
Kent to Gentleman
The King of France needed to get back to France so that the audience would still hold him in the highest regard and see him as honorable. This quote is Kent asking a gentleman why the king has done so.
"Why the King of France is so suddenly gone back, know you no reason?"
94
Gentleman to Kent
This is in response to Kent asking why the King of France left England. The King needed to return to France so that we would still see him as honorable.
"Something he left imperfect in the state, which since his coming forth is thought of, which imports to the kingdom so much fear and danger that his personal return was most requir'd and necessary."
95
Gentleman to Kent
| About Cordelia; her grief is tragic, but beautiful, because it's so authentic.
"You have seen / Sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears / Were like a better way."
96
Gentleman to Kent
| If everyone expressed sorrow like Cordelia did, people would love it.
"Sorrow would be a rarity most beloved, / If all could so become it."
97
Cordelia to Doctor
| She will give anything to anyone willing to help her and Lear.
"He that helps him take all my outward worth."
98
Cordelia to herself (Messenger)
| Christ-like; father, I'm doing what you want me to.
"O dear father, / It is thy business that I go about."
99
Cordelia to Messenger
We will stop Goneril and Regan so that Lear can return to power. We're not trying to start a war, we're just trying to set things right.
"No blown ambition doth our arms incite, But love, dear love, and our ag'd father's right."
100
Regan to Oswald
Realizing that Gloucester is now an emblem of their villainy, so it was a huge mistake to let him live and walk around to tell other people how evil we are.
"It was great ignorance, Gloucester's eyes being out, / To let him live; where he arrives he moves / All hearts against us."
101
Regan to Oswald
| Cornwall is now dead, so she's staking a claim to Edmund.
"My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talk'd, / And more convenient is he for my hand / Than for your lady's."
102
Regan to Oswald
| Kill Gloucester!
"If you do chance to hear of that blind traitor, / Preferment falls on him that cuts him off."
103
Oswald to Regan
Eager to do what he needs to indulge his self-interests. This shows cowardice from Oswald; it would take guts to fight a regular man, but since Gloucester's blind (not to mention old), it's not really courageous for him to fight him.
"Would I could meet him, madam! I should show / What party I do follow."
104
Edgar to Gloucester
| Edgar pretends that he has taken Gloucester to the cliff that he talked about. (In reality, he faked it.)
"You are now within a foot / Of th' extreme verge."
105
Gloucester to Edgar
| Saying goodbye before (attempting to) committing suicide.
"This world I do renounce, and in your sights / Shake patiently my great affliction off."
106
Edgar to Gloucester
| Pretending that Gloucester fell and miraculously survived.
"Ten masts at each make not the altitude / Which thou hast perpendicularly fell. / Thy life's a miracle."
107
Lear to Gloucester/Edgar
| Lear is going a little bit insane.
"Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester's bastard son / Was kinder to his father than my daughters / Got 'tween the lawful sheets. / To't, luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers."
108
Edgar to audience
| It breaks Edmund's heart to see this reuniting of Gloucester and Lear.
"I would not take this from report; it is, / And my heart breaks at it."
109
Lear to Gloucester
| The crying of a baby at birth is not taking a first breath but a lament for this "stage of fools" (the world).
"When we are born, we cry that we are come / To this great stage of fools."
110
Gloucester to Edgar
| Recanting his self-pity from before.
"You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me, / Let not my worser spirit tempt me again / To die before you please!"
Gloucester to Edgar
Recanting his self-pity from before.
111
Oswald to Edgar
Announcing his death, and telling Edgar to give a letter to Edmund. Edgar reads the letter and finds out that Edmund is the real traitor.
"Slave, thou hast slain me. Villain, take my purse: / If ever thou wilt thrive, bury my body, / And give the letters which thou find'st about me / To Edmund Earl of Gloucester; seek him out / Upon the English party. O untimely death!"
112
Goneril, in her letter to Edmund
| This letter is Goneril contacting Edmund about murdering Albany so that she can be with him. (ick.)
"if he return the conqueror; then am I the prisoner, and his bed my jail; from the loath'd warmth whereof deliver me, and supply the place for your labor."
113
Gloucester to Edgar
| Gloucester realizes that he should not be pitying himself.
"Better I were distract, / So should my thoughts be sever'd from my griefs, / And woes by wrong imaginations lose / The knowledge of themselves."
114
Cordelia to herself
| Celebrating Kent's enduring loyalty to her father.
"O thou good Kent, how shall I live and work / To match thy goodness?"
115
Cordelia to Lear (who at this point is sleeping)
| Lamenting that he was thrown out and had to deal with the wilderness.
"Mine enemy's dog, / Though he had bit me, should have stood that night / Against my fire, and wast thou fain, poor father, / To hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn / In short and musty straw?"
116
Lear to Cordelia
| Expressing his shame in making the wrong decision.
"You do me wrong to take me out o' th' grave: / Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound / Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears / Do scald like molten lead."
117
Lear to Cordelia
A distraught Lear tells Cordelia that she has every right to be mad at him (or to do him wrong) because he turned her away.
"You have some cause, they have not."
118
Cordelia to Lear
Cordelia's complete forgiveness of Lear. Not only is she saying that he's forgiven, she's saying that from the very moment that he did her wrong, she had forgiven him. (again, Christ-like.)
"No cause, no cause."
119
Gentleman to Kent
| The reckoning of the opposing forces will probably involve bloodshed.
"The arbiterment is like to be bloody."
120
Regan to Edmund
| Regan knows that Edmund has... ahem, had relations with Goneril, but now she's calling him out on it.
"But have you never found my brother's way / To the forfended place?"
121
Goneril to audience
| Goneril would rather lose the battle with France than have her sister come between her and Edmund.
"I had rather lose the battle than that sister / Should loosen him and me."
122
Edgar to Albany
| Edgar tells Albany that he can produce evidence of Edmund's treachery.
"Wretched though I seem, / I can produce a champion that will prove / What is avouched there."
123
Edmund to audience
| Edmund has set one sister against the other; both are insecure and want to ensure their claim on him.
"To both these sisters have I sworn my love; / Each jealous of the other, as the stung / Are of the adder."
124
Edmund to audience
| This quote shows just how callous Edmund is in his quest to pursue his own self-interests.
"Which of them shall I take? / Both? one? or neither? Neither can be enjoy'd / If both remain alive."
125
Edmund to audience
| Showing his Macchiavellian side; he will have Lear and Cordelia killed so he can reign.
"As for the mercy / Which he intends to Lear and to Cordelia, / The battle done, and they within our power, / Shall never see his pardon; for my state / Stands on me to defend, not to debate."
126
Edgar to Gloucester
| The defeat of France has to take place so that the plot can move forward. Lear and Cordelia were taken as prisoners.
"King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta'en."
127
Edgar to Gloucester
| This quote echoes Hamlet: "Readiness is all." We must be ready.
"Men must endure / Their going hence even as their coming hither, / Ripeness is all."
128
Cordelia to Lear
| Stating a truth: the good do not always prevail.
"We are not the first / Who with best meaning have incurr'd the worst."
129
Lear to Cordelia
| Lear's delusion of him and Cordelia going to live in a cave, away from everything, in bliss.
"I'll kneel down / And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live, / And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh / At gilded butterflies."
130
Edmund to Captain
| More Macchiavellian cruelty. Edmund is sending the Captain to go murder Cordelia and Lear.
"Know thou this, that men / Are as the time is: to be tender-minded / Does not become a sword."
131
Albany to Edmund
Putting Edmund in his place: Albany is the king, and Edmund is not.
(This echoes Henry IV and Hodspur.)
"You have the captives / Who were the opposites of this day's strife; / I do require them of you, so to use them / As we shall find their merits and our safety / May equally determine."
132
Edmund to Albany
Edmund wants Lear and Cordelia out of the way, and he knows that that won't happen if they're in Albany's custody, so he stalls so that the slave has the chance to kill Lear and Cordelia.
"At this time / We sweat and bleed: the friend hath lost his friend, / And the best quarrels, in the heat, are curs'd / By those that feel their sharpness. / The question of Cordelia and her father / Requires a fitter place."
133
Regan to Goneril
| Challenging her sister to fight.
"Jesters do oft prove prophets."
134
Regan to Edmund
| Claiming Edmund for herself.
"I create thee here / My lord and master."
135
Albany to Edmund
| Albany has seen Goneril's letter and now knows what a traitor Edmund is.
"Edmund, I arrest thee / On capital treason, and in thy attaint / This gilded serpent."
136
Albany to Edmund
| If no one else does, Albany will kill Edmund.
"If none appear to prove upon thy person / Thy heinous, manifest, and many treasons, / There is my pledge. I'll make it on thy heart."
137
Regan, Goneril
| Regan announcing her death; Goneril's comment lets us know that she poisoned her own sister.
"Sick, O, sick!"
| "If not, I'll ne'er trust medicine."
138
Edgar to Edmund
| Calling Edmund out on his betrayal. Edmund still doesn't know that this is Edgar.
"Thou art a traitor; / False to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father, / Conspirant 'gainst this high illustrious prince, / And from th' extremest upward of thy head / To the descent and dust below thy foot, / A most toad-spotted traitor."
139
Edmund to Edgar
| Edmund's response to Edgar calling him out on being a lying traitor.
"Back do I toss these treasons to thy head."
140
Goneril to Edmund
Goneril is complaining because she thinks Edmund didn't have a fair fight. (it doesn't change the fact that Edmund will eventually bleed out.)
"This is practice, Gloucester. / By th' law of war thou wast not bound to answer / An unknown opposite. Thou art not vanquish'd, / But cozen'd and beguil'd."
141
Albany to Goneril
| Finally standing up to Goneril in front of others.
"Shut your mouth, dame, / Or with this paper shall I stopple it."
142
Albany to Goneril
| This is the definition of tyranny. I make the rules, so who are you to tell me what to do?
"Say if I do, the laws are mine, not thine; / Who can arraign me for't?"
143
Edmund to all
| Mocking Lear and Cordelia. He knows his evil plan will be carried out to completion, so he's not worried.
"What you have charg'd me with, that have I done, / And more, much more, the time will bring it out."
144
Edgar to all
| Announcing that Gloucester died of a broken heart.
"His flaw'd heart / (Alack, too weak the conflict to support!) / 'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, / Burst smilingly."
145
Edmund to all
| Commenting on the fact that now he, Goneril and Regan are all dying or dead.
"I was contracted to them both; all three / Now marry in an instant."
146
Albany to Gentleman
| We don't pity Edmund, since he was a traitor.
"This judgment of the heavens, that makes us tremble, / Touches us not with pity."
147
Edmund to Albany (all)
| There is nobody left to betray, so Edmund betrays himself.
"I pant for life. Some good I mean to do, / Despite of mine own nature."
148
Lear to all
| Lear laments the death of his favorite daughter, and also announces that he killed the slave who hanged Cordelia.
"Her voice was ever soft, / Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman. / I kill'd the slave that was a-hanging thee."
149
Albany to all
| Relinquishing power over the kingdom to Lear (for about 45 seconds).
"We will resign, / During the life of this old majesty, / To him our absolute power."
150
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Lear to (the dead) Cordelia
Mourning the loss of his favorite daughter.
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"Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, / And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, / Never, never, never, never, never."
151
Kent to all
| Kent is saying just let Lear die, he's had a hard enough life.
"Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass, he hates him / That would upon the rack of this tough world / Stretch him out longer."
152
Albany to Edgar and Kent
| Albany doesn't want the responsibility of the kingdom, so he gives it to Edgar and Kent.
"Friends of my soul, you twain / Rule in this realm, and the gor'd state sustain."
153
"Friends of my soul, you twain / Rule in this realm, and the gor'd state sustain."
"I have a journey, sir, shortly to go: / My master calls me, I must not say no."
154
Edgar to all
| Edgar is saying that the people who didn't die that day would never suffer so much as those who did die.
"The oldest hath borne most; we that are young / Shall never see so much, nor live so long."
