probably the original 'power play' - an amazing story full of amazing language and imagery, and, of course, madness ...

and what has been billed as the bleakest pentameter line shakespeare ever wrote...

king lear's daughter cordelia is dead, and he is about to die, too, realising how badly he misjudged her.
now he knows that cordelia will not be coming back ...

'never, never, never, never, never' (act 5, scene 3, 282-3)

it stands out a mile because everything we know about shakespeare tells us of his mastery of language - he introduced words that had never been used before, for example.  but here, one word repeated five times is possibly the most powerful of them all!

i've never seen this play performed live, though i have got a dvd of a movie version which i'm looking forward to watching next week.