| “Sir I love you more than world can wield the matter, dearer than eyesight, space and liberty” | Goneril Act 1, Scene 1 (The Love Test) |
| “I am made of that self metal as my sister … only she falls too short” | Regan Act 1, Scene 1 (The Love Test) |
| “Nothing, my Lord” “Nothing.” | Cordelia Act 1, Scene 1 (The Love Test) 1 |
| “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty according to my bond, no more nor less.” “You have begot me, bred me, loved me. I return those duties back as are right fit, obey you, love you and most honour you. Why have my sisters husbands, if they say they love you all?” | Cordelia Act 1, Scene 1 (The Love Test) 2 |
| “Unfriended, new adopted to our hate, dow’red with our curse and strangered with our oath, take her or leave her?” | Lear Act 1, Scene 1 (on punishing Cordelia) |
| “The jewels of our father, with washed eyes Cordelia leaves you. I know you what you are, and like a sister am most loath to call your faults as they are named.” | Cordelia Act 1, Scene 1 (as she is leaving) |
| “he hath ever but slenderly known himself” | Regan Act 1, Scene 1 (on Lear’s abandonment of Cordelia) |
| “We must do something, and i’th’heat.” | Goneril Act 1, Scene 1 (very end of the Scene) |
| “Idle old man” | Goneril Act 1, Scene 3 (true feelings about Lear) |
| “How sharper than a serpents tooth it is to have a thankless child!” | Lear Act 1, Scene 4 (on the pain his daughters have caused him) |
| “Unnatural hags” | Lear Act 2, Scene 3 (on Goneril and Regan) |
| “Tigers not daughters” | Albany Act 4, Scene 2 (on Goneril and Regan’s behaviour towards Lear) |
| “Each jealous of the other, as the stung are of the adder” | Edmund Act 5, Scene 1 (on Goneril and Regan’s growing rivalry) |
| “My mourning and important tears hath pitied. No blown ambition doth our arms incite, but love, dear love, and our aged father’s right. Soon may I hear and see him!” | Cordelia A4, Scene 4 (on wishing to see Lear again) |
| “Hang him instantly” “Pluck out his eyes” | Regan and Goneril Act 3, Scene 6 (once learning of Gloucester’s betrayal) |
| “Hard, hard. – O, filthy traitor!” | Regan Act 3, Scene 6 (interrupting Cornwall to get to Gloucester) |
| “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” | Cordelia Act 4, Scene 7 (on trying to make amends for her sisters’ awful behaviour) |
King Lear – Role of Women Quotes
July 4, 2019