King Lear Justice Quotes

GENTLEMAN: O, she’s dead!
ALBANY: Who dead? Speak, man.
GENTLEMAN: Your lady, sir, your lady. And her sister
By her is poisoned. She confesses it.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. There is poetic justice as Goneril and Regan are destroyed by their jealous love for Edmund. Regan is poisoned by her jealous sister Goneril in order to prevent Regan’s marriage to Edmund. Goneril then commits suicide with a dagger. The cruel and scheming sisters are not brought to justice by the law or any figure or authority, but ironically they end up serving justice on themselves.

A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!
I might have saved her. Now she’s gone forever. –
Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little. Ha!
What is ‘t thou sayst? – Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.
I killed the slave that was a-hanging thee.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. When Kent tries to comfort Lear, the distraught and confused King curses everybody, accusing them of being traitors and complicit in Cordelia’s death. He laments the fact that that he might have saved Cordelia but now he realizes that she is lost forever. He expresses fatherly tenderness and imagines that he hears her speaking, "Cordelia, Cordelia! Stay a little. Ha!" In his mind, he is listening to her soothing voice "ever soft, Gentle, and low." With the strong love Lear shows here for Cordelia and recognition of the injustice of her death, he somewhat redeems himself after the selfishness and egotism he displayed earlier in the play. The depth of his heartache is palpable and he has learned the value of true emotion. Cordelia’s death is the more tragic and inexplicable because she represented a symbol of hope. But in one of his last acts the grieving father has the satisfaction of exacting vengeance by killing the soldier who hanged Cordelia. In the midst of his madness and suffering, it can be said that Lear has grown in wisdom. But sadly it has come too late.

All friends shall taste
The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. Albany restores Edgar’s and Kent’s positions of power and titles to them, along with extra rewards that he says they have more than earned – "With boot, and such addition as your honours Have more than merited." It’s the reward for their virtue, he says. On the other hand all enemies will get what they deserve, he adds. From Albany’s words, one would be led to believe that justice has triumped over villainy. But that’s just not the way things turn out in a play, in which the stage is littered with the bodies of the good as well as the wicked. One can accept that the deaths of the treacherous Edmund, the self-serving Oswald, the brutal Cornwall and the evil Regan and Goneril, were fully deserved. But why did the innocent Cordelia deserve to die, and also Gloucester and Lear?

And my poor fool is hanged! No, no, no life!
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!
Pray you, undo this button.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. Speaking over the body of his daughter, Lear seems to suggest that nature is barbaric for allowing dogs and rats to have life and not Cordelia. When Cordelia is hanged in prison, some people see her death as the greatest injustice in the play. But there are a number of interpretations as to who Lear means when he says "poor fool." Some
suggest Lear is referring to Cordelia with the pet name "fool," which was a term of endearment in Shakespeare’s time. Others think Lear may be talking about his Fool, who disappears from the play after Act 3, Scene 6, and is never seen again. During this passage Lear’s mind is completely unhinged, he may be hallucinating, he may be thinking of both – Cordelia and the Fool were the ones who always spoke the truth to him. It is clear that Lear sees no sense or meaning in all of what’s happened and is unable to accept his daughter’s death The terrible despair and bleakness evoked by the repetition of the word "never" has to make it one of the bleakest lines written by Shakespeare. It offers a stark vision of world without meaning in a tragedy that has a strong nihilistic theme.
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