King Lear Pride Quotes

Our son of Cornwall,
And you, our no less loving son of Albany,
We have this hour a constant will to publish
Our daughters’ several dowers, that future strife
May be prevented now.
The two great princes, France and Burgundy,
Great rivals in our youngest daughter’s love,
Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,
And here are to be answered. Tell me, my daughters –
Since now we will divest us both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state –
Which of you shall we say doth love us most,
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge. Goneril,
Our eldest born, speak first.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1. The proud and egotistical old King Lear devises a "love test" to decide how to divide his kingdom between his daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. He demands that they flatter him with a declaration of total love, and their share of the kingdom will be based on whoever professes to love him most. Lear’s plan is to prevent "future strife" that might result from him dying without an heir – he has no sons and three daughters, with Regan married to the Duke of Cornwall, Goneril to the Duke of Albany, and the King of France and Duke of Burgundy love rivals for youngest daughter Cordelia’s hand. There is a terrible irony in this because Lear’s foolish action results in tragic consequences and the very strife he wishes to avoid. Lear’s fatal flaw is his pride and that and its fellow traveler folly bring about his downfall, which is foreshadowed in this passage.

LEAR: Speak.
CORDELIA: Nothing, my lord.
LEAR: Nothing?
CORDELIA: Nothing.
LEAR: Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1. Lear asks Cordelia to articulate the depth of her love for him, so that in the division of the kingdom she can "draw a third more opulent than your sisters." But his favorite daughter has nothing to say, her pride and stubbornness won’t allow her play her father’s game like her sisters have done. The repetition of the word "nothing" in this passage and throughout the play reflects themes of disorder, chaos and disintegration in the tragedy of King Lear. English Shakespearean actor Corin Redgrave said in an article in The Guardian newspaper: "Cordelia’s little word ‘nothing’, from which, according to classical philosophy, there could be no consequences, sets in motion a chain of action and reaction that, like the butterfly’s wings in the chaos theory, leads to Armageddon." Lear does indeed warn Cordelia that she will gain no favors from him if she does not make flattering speeches of her love for him. Lear’s use of the language of nihilism, "nothing will come of nothing" is significant. It prepares us for a drama that opens with the absurdity of Lear’s rash and senseless actions and ends with hopelessness, despair and lack of redemption for some of its characters. Ironically Lear is one of these characters, who ends up with nothing in the end, foreshadowed here by his own words.

I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty
According to my bond, no more nor less.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1. The stubborn Lear encounters an equally stubborn Cordelia, as her integrity and pride stop her from taking part in the narcissistic Lear’s love test in which his daughters must flatter him to gain his wealth. Using a metaphor she says that she cannot "heave" her heart into her mouth – put her feelings into words. She tells him that she loves him as a daughter should love a father and her king, no more and no less. The "bond" she refers to is the relationship within a family, and also the one between kings and their subjects.

With my two daughters’ dowers digest the third.
Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.
I do invest you jointly with my power,
Preeminence, and all the large effects
That troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly course,
With reservation of an hundred knights
By you to be sustained, shall our abode
Make with you by due turns. Only we still retain
The name, and all the additions to a king.
The sway, revenue, execution of the rest,
Belovèd sons, be yours, which to confirm,
This coronet part betwixt you.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1. In this opening scene King Lear bestows his entire kingdom upon Regan and Goneril and their husbands, the Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Albany. There is a tragic irony in Lear’s blind trust and love for these two daughters whom he abdicates his kingly role to. For they prove not to love him at all and they end up betraying him completely. Lear does wish to hold onto some power for himself, however, and will retain one hundred knights. As far as Cordelia is concerned, he says she can marry her "pride." This is also ironic as it is Lear’s pride that stops him from seeing the virtue of Cordelia’s plain honesty.

LEAR: Kent, on thy life, no more.
KENT: My life I never held but as a pawn
To wage against thy enemies; nor fear to lose it,
Thy safety being the motive.
LEAR: Out of my sight!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1. Kent says that he has never valued his own life except as a pawn (metaphor) Lear could use against his enemies. He pledges that he would protect Lear with his life. But Kent’s protest at Lear’s disowning of Cordelia falls on deaf ears due to Lear’s obstinate pride and failure to see reality. Lear tells the honest and devoted Kent to shut up and get out of his sight. In yet another act of blind folly Lear banishes his most loyal servant and selfless advisor.

Five days we do allot thee for provision
To shield thee from disasters of the world,
And on the sixth to turn thy hated back
Upon our kingdom. If on the tenth day following
Thy banished trunk be found in our dominions,
The moment is thy death.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1. Lear shows great disloyalty to his devoted and loyal courtier Kent by banishing him from the kingdom under pain of death. The King is so blinded by his own pride that he cannot see Kent’s true qualities. Kent pays dearly for his outspoken protest, as Lear gives him five days to gather provisions to shield him from the "disasters of the world." But as he shuts the gates on Kent, Lear fails to see own homelessness coming, even though his words to Kent foreshadow it.

Thou, Nature, art my goddess. To thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? why "bastard"? Wherefore "base,"
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous and my shape as true
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With "base," with "baseness," "bastardy," "base," "base,"
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth within a dull, stale, tired bed
Go to th’ creating a whole tribe of fops
Got ‘tween asleep and wake? Well then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to th’ legitimate. Fine word, "legitimate."
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top th’ legitimate. I grow, I prosper.
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2. In this soliloquy Edmund says that the only laws he shows loyalty to are the laws of nature, exposing him as a moral nihilist and one of the play’s evil villains. The proud and resentful Edmund laments his "base" status as the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester. He questions the injustice of customs that deprive bastards like him of the birthright given to legitimate sons like his half-brother Edgar. Edmund, who does not feel bound by legal rules, shows his determination to set things right regarding this. Scheming for power, he plots to take Edgar’s legitimate inheritance of "land" – the Gloucester property and position. The letter referred to in his "bastard" speech is one Edmund forged implicating Edgar in a plot against Gloucester and which Edmund is about to present to father to trick him.

Why "bastard?" Wherefore "base?"
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam’s issue?

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2. Edmund asks why society calls him bastard and why is he therefore worthless? He is as sound in mind and body as any legitimate child, he insists. Edmund believes that he is treated unfairly, made feel inferior and wrongly deprived of his inheritance because of his bastard status. His pride is also injured.

Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops
Got ‘tween asleep and wake?

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2. Edmund sells us the good side of being the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester. He takes pride in the fact that bastards like him are conceived in a moment of passionate and natural lust. He sees bastards as superior in composition and quality than the whole tribe of "fops" (silly kids) legitimately conceived by half asleep parents in a tedious, stale bed.

A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir to a mongrel bitch.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 2. Shakespeare was master without parallel of the stinging insult and poisonous put down. Here Kent picks a fight with Goneril’s steward Oswald and uses colorful language to insult him in a variety of ways. In one of the bard’s best insulting passages, Kent does a demolition job on Osward, branding him a knave and rogue, proud and lily-livered, a "pander" (pimp) and son of a bitch! The Earl’s scalding-hot torrent of invective is also full of references to Oswald’s low social status and social climbing – his servant’s three suits, his filthy worsted stockings and playing the "bawd" (woman in charge of a brothel) to please his masters.

The man that makes his toe
What he his heart should make,
Shall of a corn cry woe,
And turn his sleep to wake.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2. The Fool dishes up more of rhyming wisdom to the tormented Lear. He advises him that the man who values the least important parts of himself as if they were the best, will bring himself pain and sleepless nights. The Fool is mocking Lear for preferring Goneril and Regan to Cordelia. He is uggesting that Lear’s foolishness and pride has brought this pain upon himself. He must reconnect with his heart and the daughter who truly loved him – Cordelia.

I am a man
More sinned against than sinning.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2. Lear would say that, wouldn’t he? Acknowledging that he’s not a saint, Lear feels that he is more the victim of sin than a sinner. While he has begun to acquire some self-knowledge, he has a long way to go. He is blind to the fact that it was entirely his foolish pride made him banish his most loving daughter and reward her two evil, self-serving sisters with the keys to his kingdom. He has been unjusted treated, he protests, but he has been very cruel and unjust to his youngest daughter. The author of his own downfall, he hasn’t yet owned this.

A servingman, proud in heart and mind, that curled my hair, wore gloves in my cap, served the lust of my mistress’ heart and did the act of darkness with her, swore as many oaths as I spake words and broke them in the sweet face of heaven; one that slept in the contriving of lust and waked to do it. Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly, and in woman out-paramoured the Turk. False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders’ books, and defy the foul fiend. Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind; says suum, mun, nonny. Dolphin my boy, boy, sessa! Let him trot by.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. Disguised as mad beggar Poor Tom, this is Edgar’s response to Lear’s question, "What hast thou been?" In a wildly fictitious account of his past life, Edgar speaks of committing catalogue of sins from pride to lust, greed, drinking excessively, oath-breaking, being false-hearted and untrustworthy. He also tells us that the "fiend" is after him, a reference to his scheming villain of a brother Edmund. Edgar’s mad speech is ironic, because in his real past life he was the exact opposite to how he portrays himself here – noble, honest and innocent (as described by brother Edmund in Act 1, Scene 2).

LEAR: Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray, weep not.
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me, for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.
You have some cause; they have not.
CORDELIA: No cause, no cause.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 7. Lear does not hold back his new sense of shame over the injustice he has done to his daughter Cordelia. In one of the play’s greatest tender moments, he takes responsibility for the hurt he has caused Cordelia and says he would willingly drink poison if she gave it to him. He believes that he justly deserves death for the wrongs he has done to her. But Cordelia shows her great capacity for love, compassion and forgiveness, by simply saying: "No cause, no cause." Lear has come a long way on his painful journey to self-knowledge. Abandoning his destructive pride, he is now a more humble person.
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