Lear and Cordelia are brought in as prisoners. Cordelia asks if they will see her sisters. Lear says no, and speaks one of the play's most quietly beautiful passages. They will go to prison and sing like birds in a cage; they will ask each other's blessing; they will tell old tales and laugh at court politics and "take upon's the mystery of things, as if we were God's spies." He means it. Prison with Cordelia is enough. Edmund meanwhile sends a secret officer with written orders for Cordelia's execution.
Albany arrests Edmund for treason, and Goneril alongside him: "this gilded serpent." The trial by combat is called. Edgar appears, unnamed, and accuses Edmund of being "false to thy gods, thy brother, and thy father." They fight. Edmund falls.
Goneril is silenced when Albany produces her letter to Edmund: the instruction to murder her husband. She leaves. A messenger reports she has poisoned Regan and killed herself. Edmund, dying, observes: "Yet Edmund was belov'd. The one the other poison'd for my sake, and after slew herself."
Edgar reveals himself. Gloucester, he tells them, died when he finally knew his son: "'twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, burst smilingly." Edmund says: "The wheel is come full circle; I am here." Moved by Edgar's account, he confesses the order on Cordelia's life: she is to be hanged in prison and her death made to look like suicide. "Send in time."
They are too late.
Lear enters carrying Cordelia. "Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stone." He holds a looking glass to her lips hoping for breath. He thinks a feather moves. "It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt." It does not move.
He recognises Kent: the man who followed him through everything. "Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman." Then: "Never, never, never, never, never. Pray you undo this button." He dies looking at her face.
Kent says he will follow. "My master calls me, I must not say no."
Edgar speaks last: "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."
They leave to a dead march.
