Everything seems to be resolving. Edmund is dying; Goneril and Regan are dead; Edmund, at last, reveals his secret order to hang Cordelia, and a runner is sent to stop it. Albany prays: “The gods defend her!”
Enter Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms.
“Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones!” He knows she is dead — “She’s dead as earth” — and yet he cannot stop hoping. He asks for a looking-glass to see if her breath will mist it; he holds a feather to her lips: “This feather stirs; she lives!” He tells them he killed the slave that was hanging her. He barely recognizes Kent.
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: thank you, sir. Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there!
He dies — perhaps believing she breathes.
Why it matters. There is no reason for Cordelia’s death. The plot could have saved her by a minute; Shakespeare’s source let her live; Nahum Tate’s rewrite (1681–1838) gave her a happy ending. Shakespeare chose otherwise. Kent asks, “Is this the promised end?” — meaning the Last Judgement. It is a scene that has been read as the deepest Christian tragedy and the deepest denial of providence, sometimes by the same reader on different days. Set beside Ivan Karamazov’s refusal of a harmony bought with innocent suffering (Rebellion — Returning the Ticket) and the “never” of every bereavement.
The line “Never, never, never, never, never” — five trochees, the reverse of the iambic heartbeat of English verse — may be the most famous metrical effect in Shakespeare.
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related by shared connectionsThe Dover Cliff
Edgar leads his blind father to a “cliff” that isn’t there, lets him leap, and convinces him he has survived by a miracle — curing his despair with a theatrical trick.
Cordelia
Lear’s youngest daughter, who will not flatter, is disinherited, returns to rescue him, forgives him with “No cause, no cause” — and is hanged.
King Lear
The proud old king who divides his kingdom by a love test, banishes the daughter who loves him, and is stripped of everything until he learns, too late, what love and suffering are.
The Blinding of Gloucester
Betrayed by Edmund, Gloucester is tied to a chair and blinded by Cornwall while Regan watches — and learns in the same instant that Edgar was innocent.
Lear Wakes: "No Cause, No Cause"
Lear wakes from madness to find Cordelia beside him, thinks he is in hell, begs her forgiveness — and she answers with two words that undo the whole tragedy.
Meursault and the Chaplain
On the eve of execution, Meursault explodes at the prison chaplain’s certainty — and finds peace in the “gentle indifference of the world”.