William Shakespeare Quotes

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. Albany restores Edgar’s and Kent’s positions of power and titles to them, along with extra rewards that he says they have more than earned – "With boot, and such addition as your honours Have more than merited." It’s the reward for their virtue, he says. On the other hand all enemies will get what they deserve, he adds. From Albany’s words, one would be led to believe that justice has triumped over villainy. But that’s just not the way things turn out in a play, in which the stage is littered with the bodies of the good as well as the wicked. One can accept that the deaths of the treacherous Edmund, the self-serving Oswald, the brutal Cornwall and the evil Regan and Goneril, were fully deserved. But why did the innocent Cordelia deserve to die, and also Gloucester and Lear?