and Cordelia are prisoners. Lear, though he is now no longer insane, still utters the same sort of senseless, inappropriate words, as, for instance, that in prison with Cordelia,

We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage, When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness.

(This kneeling down comes three times over.) He also says that when they are in prison they will wear out poor rogues and “sects of great ones that ebb and flow by the moon,” that he and she are sacrifices upon which “the gods throw incense,” that “he that parts them shall bring a brand from heaven, and fire us hence like foxes” and that

The good years shall devour them, flesh and fell, Ere they shall make us weep,

and so forth.

Edmund orders Lear and his daughter to be led away to prison, and having ordered a captain to do them some hurt, asks him whether he will fulfil it. The captain replies “I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats; but if it be man’s work I will do it.” The Duke of Albany, Goneril, and Regan enter. The Duke wishes to take Lear’s part, but Edmund opposes this. The sisters intervene and begin to abuse each other, being jealous of Edmund. Here everything becomes so confused that it is difficult to follow the action. The Duke of Albany wants to arrest Edmund, and tells Regan that Edmund had long ago entered into guilty relations with his wife and that therefore Regan must give up her claim on Edmund, and if she wishes to marry should marry him, the Duke of Albany.

Having said this, the Duke challenges Edmund and orders the trumpet to be sounded, and if no one appears intends himself to fight him.

At this point Regan, whom Goneril has evidently poisoned, writhes with pain. Trumpets are sounded and Edgar enters with a visor which conceals his face, and without giving his name challenges Edmund. Edgar abuses Edmund; Edmund casts back all the abuse on Edgar’s head. They fight and Edmund falls. Goneril is in despair.

The Duke of Albany shows Goneril her letter. Goneril goes off.

Edmund while dying recognises that his opponent is his brother. Edgar raises his visor and moralises to the effect that for having an illegitimate son, Edmund, his father has paid with the loss of his sight. After this Edgar tells the Duke of Albany of his adventures and that he has only now, just before coming to this combat, disclosed himself to his father, and his father could not bear it and died of excitement. Edmund, who is not yet dead, asks what else happened.

Then Edgar relates that while he was sitting by his father’s body a man came, embraced him closely, cried out as if he would burst heaven, threw himself on his father’s corpse, and told a most piteous tale about Lear and himself, and having told it “the strings of life began to crack,” but just then the trumpet sounded twice and he, Edgar, left him “tranced.” And this was Kent. Before Edgar had finished telling this story a gentleman runs in with a bloody knife, shouting, “Help!” To the question “Who has been killed?” the gentleman says that Goneril is dead, who had poisoned her sister. She had confessed this. Kent enters, and at this moment the bodies of Regan and Goneril are brought in. Edmund thereupon says that evidently the sisters loved him greatly, as the one had poisoned the other and then killed herself for his sake. At the same time he confesses that he had given orders to kill Lear and hang Cordelia in prison, under the pretence that she had committed suicide; but that he now wishes to prevent this, and having said so, he dies and is carried out.

After this Lear enters with Cordelia’s dead body in his arms (though he is over eighty years of age and ill). And again there begin his terrible ravings which make one feel as ashamed as one does when listening to unsuccessful jokes. Lear demands that they should all howl, and alternately believes that Cordelia is dead and that she is alive. He says:

Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so That heaven’s vault should crack.

Then he recounts how he has killed the slave who hanged Cordelia. Next he says that his eyes see badly, and thereupon recognises Kent whom all along he had not recognised.

The Duke of Albany says that he resigns his power as long as Lear lives, and that he will reward Edgar and Kent and all who have been true to him. At that moment news is brought that Edmund has died; and Lear, continuing his ravings, begs that they will undo one of his buttons, the same request he made when he was roaming about the heath. He expresses his thanks for this, tells them all to look somewhere, and with these words he dies.

In conclusion the Duke of Albany, who remains alive, says:

The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

All go off to the sound of a dead march. This ends Act V of the play.