King Lear Cordelia Quotes

Faith, once or twice she heaved the name of "father"
Pantingly forth, as if it pressed her heart;
Cried "Sisters, sisters, shame of ladies, sisters!
Kent, father, sisters! What, i’ th’ storm, i’ th’ night?
Let pity not be believed!"

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 3. The Gentleman tells Kent of Cordelia’s deep upset over her father’s suffering and her distress at her sisters’ cruelty towards him. Cordelia reacts with disbelief at them letting Lear out in the night in the storm and brands them shameful. Cordelia clearly still loves Lear despite his cruel treatment of her.

There she shook
The holy water from her heavenly eyes.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 3. The Gentleman in the French camp near Dover reports to Kent on the Queen receiving Kent’s letters. He gives a moving account of Cordelia’s sorrow on reading of her father’s mistreatment at the hands of her two evil sisters. The Gentleman regards Cordelia as so good and virtuous that he calls her tears "holy water" (metaphor) and her eyes "heavenly." This is one of a number of passages in the play that describe Cordelia’s saint-like qualities.

A sovereign shame so elbows him – his own unkindness,
That stripped her from his benediction, turned her
To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights
To his dog-hearted daughters – these things sting
His mind so venomously that burning shame
Detains him from Cordelia.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 3. Kent speaks of Lear’s guilt and shame over his unkindness to Cordelia, disowning her and giving her rightful inheritance to her two cruel sisters Regan and Goneril. Kent uses an apt animal metaphor – "dog-hearted" – to describe the inhumanity of the two sisters. Lear is burning with so much shame that he refuses to see Cordelia in Dover, Kent says.

Alack, ’tis he: Why, he was met even now
As mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud,
Crown’d with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
With bur-docks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 4. In her first appearance since Act 1, Scene 1, Cordelia comments on the condition of her father. She has seen Lear hiding in fields of tall crops and and gives a description of him dressed in a crown made up of flowers and poisonous and stinging weeds from nature. He is singing out loud and as mad as the angry sea (simile from nature). Cordelia asks that a search party of soldiers be sent to search the fields for him and bringing him to her.

All blest secrets,
All you unpublished virtues of the earth,
Spring with my tears. Be aidant and remediate
In the good man’s distress. Seek, seek for him,
Lest his ungoverned rage dissolve the life
That wants the means to lead it.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 4. Cordelia calls on the power of nature with its healing herbs and plants to help heal Lear’s madness. She has come a long way from her last appearance in the first act, when she was disinherited and banished by her father. She is now Queen of France with a great army behind her. But as Lear’s one truly loyal and loving daughter, what she is most concerned about is her father’s health and restoring his sanity.

O dear father,
It is thy business that I go about.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 4. Following her banishment by King Lear, Cordelia returns to England at the head of an invading French army. But her words make it clear that she is not coming back to seek revenge or to conquer Britain, but rather to rescue Lear, whom she still loves and is loyal to despite his cruelty towards her. Cordelia’s saint-like qualities are also suggested by this passage, which echoes the words of Christ in Luke 2:49 – "I must go about my Father’s business."

CORDELIA: [kissing Lear] O, my dear father, restoration hang
Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss
Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made.
KENT: Kind and dear princess.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7. Cordelia again shows her selflessness and love when she bends over to kiss Lear. She hopes that her healing love will restore her father’s soundness of mind and repair the harm done to him by her two sisters. Even after banishment by her father, she is full of forgiveness. Lear calls her a kind princess.

Was this a face
To be opposed against the jarring winds?
To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder,
In the most terrible and nimble stroke
Of quick cross-lightning? To watch, poor perdu,
With this thin helm?

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7. Cordelia shows true and deep affection as she speaks these words of compassion over her sleeping father. She is shocked at the cruel treatment the elderly monarch had to endure at the hands of her two unkind sisters who left him outside in the violent storm. Goneril and Regan had ordered that their doors be shut and locked. Cordelia accuses them of leaving Lear to stand guard all night against the fierce winds, dreadful thunder and terrible lightning with only his thinning hair for a helmet.

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.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7. Waking up in his daughter Cordelia’s tent, Lear thinks that he is dead, he is in hell and she is a soul in heaven. He is speaking both metaphorically and symbolically here. The daughter he rejected he now sees as a heavenly angel, while for his punishment he is tied to a wheel of fire and being burned by his own tears. Remorseful for his past tyrannical behavior towards Cordelia, he believes hell with its torment of the damned is the rightful place for him.

LEAR: Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray, weep not.
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me, for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.
You have some cause; they have not.
CORDELIA: No cause, no cause.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7. Lear does not hold back his new sense of shame over the injustice he has done to his daughter Cordelia. In one of the play’s greatest tender moments, he takes responsibility for the hurt he has caused Cordelia and says he would willingly drink poison if she gave it to him. He believes that he justly deserves death for the wrongs he has done to her. But Cordelia shows her great capacity for love, compassion and forgiveness, by simply saying: "No cause, no cause." Lear has come a long way on his painful journey to self-knowledge. Abandoning his destructive pride, he is now a more humble person.

Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;
And take upon ‘s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out,
In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. Lear while in prison with Cordelia paints a fantasy vision of a blissful life far removed from political pressures. They will talk together about court gossip, who’s losing and winning, who’s in and out. They will ponder the mysteries of the universe as if they were God’s spies. In their prison they will outlive the great rulers and politicians whose power ebbs and flows like the tide, Lear says. The sad irony is that neither of them have very long to live. In the circumstances who would begrudge Lear his little flight from reality.

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee?
He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,
And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes;
The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell,
Ere they shall make us weep: we’ll see ’em starve first.
Come.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. From their prison cell after being captured by Edmund, Lear sees the goodness of Cordelia and recognizes his love for her even in the midst of the evil around them. In a bid to cheer Cordelia up, Lear makes an ironic promise to her. Lear says that anyone who wants to separate them will have to use fire to smoke them out like foxes. Since a fox hunt usually ends with the fox being killed by the hunter, this foreshadows the death of Cordelia, who will soon be hung in prison, and also of Lear who essentially dies of a broken heart.

I pant for life: some good I mean to do
Despite of mine own nature. Quickly send –
Be brief in it, to th’ castle; for my writ
Is on the life of Lear and on Cordelia.
Nay, send in time!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. As Edmund takes his last breaths he makes an effort to redeem himself by showing his desire to do good despite his evil nature. He admits that he has ordered the executions of Lear and Cordelia and urges that a messenger be quickly sent to the castle to intervene to save them. Even though Edmund is one of the villains in the play, he shows in the face of imminent death that he may still possess some small shred of humanity.

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. A tortured Lear comes from prison onto the stage carrying in his arms the body of Cordelia, his most beloved daughter, and howls like a wounded animal in terrible pain. He questions the justice of the gods – "That heaven’s vault should crack" – as he sinks into madness again at the unnecessary loss of his favorite daughter. There is an almost unbearable sadness in the words of a broken-hearted father, who knows the end has come and the daughter he lovingly reunited with in prison is "dead as earth." His last link with family is gone.

This feather stirs. She lives. If it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. Lear holds a feather to his daughter Cordelia’s lips and imagines that it is moving. Holding out the hope that she is alive, he says that it would make up for the suffering he has gone through. In his deranged state, Lear is unwilling to accept his daughter’s death. He yearns for a chance to atone for all the wrongs that he has done her, but it is too late.
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