William Shakespeare Quotes

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. After the distraught Lear, bearing the body of the executed Cordelia in his arms, dissolves into an animalistic howling because he didn’t save her, there are shocked reactions from Kent, Edgar and Albany. Kent asks if this is now the end of the world and the Last Judgment. Edgar believes that it is a foretaste of this. Albany see the world collapsing into ruin. After all the chaos and tragedy and death that has occurred, their comments reflect a certain nihilism that runs through the play. Patrick T. Reardon, Chicago essayist and poet, had this to say, writing on his website: "When Lear dies and they look back on all the chaos that has occurred, leaving bodies strewn and a kingdom wrought, eyes plucked out and the hangings of a fool and a queen, Albany, Kent and Edgar express what each theatergoer is probably already thinking. Is the end of chaos not redemption but more chaos? Is the end of the chaos of our individual lives nothing but more chaos? Do we live life only to ‘fall, and cease’? Live life, endure the chaos – and then we die?"