Edmund’s quest for justice (Act I) | Edmund the base shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper; now gods, stand up for bastards |
Lear’s apostrophe to nature (Act III) | I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness / I never gave you kingdom, called you children / You owe me no subscription |
Lear on societal justice | Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel / That thou mayst shake the superflux to them / And show the heavens more just |
Gloucester’s views on divine justice | As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods / They kill us for their sport |
Gloucester on societal justice | So distribution should undo excess, and each man have enough |
Lear’s anagnorisis | They told me I was everything / ’tis a lie, I am not ague-proof |
Edgar’s views on divine justice | The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices / Make instruments to plague us. / The dark and vicious place where thee he got / Cost him his eyes |
Edmund reflects on his fate | The wheel is come full circle: I am here |
Albany on justice | All friends shall taste the wages of their virtue and all foes the cup of their deservings |
Cordelia reflects on her and her father’s fate | We are not the first, who with best meaning, have incurred the worst |
Lear reflects on the injustice of Cordelia’s death (Act V) | Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life; and thou no breath at all? |
Final line of the play | We that are young / shall never see so much, nor live so long |
Oedipus’s quest for justice | I will expose the killer, I will reveal him / To the light |
Tiresias conveys Apollo’s orders | Apollo commands us: cleanse the city of Thebes |
Innocence before guilt | I will not blame Oedipus / whatever anyone says / until words are real as things |
Creon responds to accusations | Now let me reply. / Weigh my words against your charges, then judge for yourself |
Creon the interrogator | But now, Oedipus, it’s my right, it’s my turn to question you |
Creon reflects on the omnipresence of justice | Time is one incorruptible judge |
Shepard | You were marked for suffering from the day you were born |
Creon reflects on Oedipus’ loss of power | Don’t give me orders! Those days are over. Your orders have brought you to this |
Kent’s defiance leading to his punishment | I have seen better faces in my time than stands on any shoulder that I see here before me at this instant |
Regan’s doubles Kent’s punishment | Till noon? Till night my lord, and all night too |
Goneril punishes Gloucester | Pluck out his eyes! |
Kent offers a nihilistic proclamation at the end of the play | All’s cheerless, dark and deadly |
Edmund reveals Goneril and Regan’s deaths | The one the other poisoned for my sake, and after slew herself |
Edmund reflects on the injustice of his repression | Wherefore base? When my dimensions are are well compact, my mind as generous, and my shape as true, as madam’s honest issue |
Susan Bruce on Edmund | ‘We sympathise with Edmund’s sense of injustice’ |
Lear highlights societal corruption | Handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? |
The Fool (the ideal) | When every case in law is right |
The Fool (the reality) | When priests are more in word than matter |
Gloucester calls on justice to see to Goneril and Regan | I shall see the winged vengeance overtake such children |
King Lear and Oedipus Rex: Justice
July 22, 2019