So we’ll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies | Lear has found inner contentment and has become a more spiritual being in the presence of Cordelia. |
False to thy gods, thy brother and thy father | Edgar confronting Edmund about being deceiving to everyone around him even to the gods. |
A most toad-spotted traitor | Edgar describes Edmund. |
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us | Edgar sees that heavenly justice ensures that those vicious deeds that give us pleasure become instruments of torture to punish us. |
The wheel has come full circle | Edmund has come full circle from being at the bottom to rising to the top and now being at the bottom again. |
The judgement of the heavens, that makes us tremble, touches us not with pity | Albany believes that the deaths of Goneril, Regan and Edmund bring about fear not pity. |
I pant for life. Some good I mean to do despite of mine own nature. | Edmund nears death and wants to do good before he dies, like sparing Lear and Cordelia. |
Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman. | Lear mourns over the death of Cordelia. |
All friends shall taste the wages of their virtue, and all foes the cup of their deservings. | Albany’s optimistic vision of rewarding virtue and punishing those who have done wrong. |
He hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer. | Kent using the metaphor of the rack that Lear has been placed on by the world to show the torture that he has gone through. |
The wonder is he hath endured so long. He but usurped his life. | Lear lived longer than the average man. |
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long. | Edgar sees that in the future those that remain will not suffer as much as those who have gone before but be of lesser stature of their predecessors. |
King Lear – Act 5 Scene 3 Quotes
July 26, 2019