...disintegration after it. His last speech still reflects the starkest question in human experience: Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? (V. iii. 306-7) By the time Lear dies, he has stretched every moral fibre to the uttermost. His very...

...'this great decay' (V. 3 .2 7 1 ); for Lear, Cordelia's death makes no sense in the scheme of things ('Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, / And thou no breath at all' (V.3. 280-1)); Lear's own death as he struggles to revive her merely ratchets up the suffering for...

...animal. Lear speaks the last words on this topic to the dead Cordelia, seconds before his own death: Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life And thou no breath at all? (5.3.305-6) This is not closure, not a clean exit, much less consolation. The seemingly random list...

...strikingly in a death speech written almost twenty years after Cosroe's: And my poor fool is hang'd! 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....

...pictures, 'with downcast eyes beneath th' almighty dove'" (1893, p. 251). 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....

...virtue, and all foes The cup of their deservings. O see, see! 280 Lear And my poor fool158 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.159 Thank you,...

...Cordelia, his extremity of emotion is suggested by the savage and systematic wrenching of the meter: Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou' It come no more, Never, never, never, never, never. Every foot is reversed in this line of "never's,"...

...other words to every parent who has lost a child. "I might have saved her; now she's gone for ever.... Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, /And thou no breath at all?" Tragic ordeal transformed to poetry: this is the model for any faithful life. As you begin this book,...

...then she lives' (5 .3.260-2). Cordelia's death is represented as the absence of such bodily signs: 'Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, / And thou no breath at all?' (5.3.305-6). Lear's list of animals, as a shorthand for unaccomodated physicality, recalls Lear's earlier...

...Lear's appalling lament at the death of Cordelia in Shakespeare's most determinedly pre-Christian play: "Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, / And thou no breath at all?"19 However, "in the beginning" recalls the opening of St John's gospel and consequently the start...