Study Notes

King Lear quotes

Short answer

Themes
Relationship between parents and children
What makes a leader?
What does holding power entail?
Consequences of loyalty
Role of fate and fortune in human lives
What is price of absolute honesty?
Can a person operate successfully outside the confines of society?
How do nature and society interact?
Free will in the lives of humans
Ramifications of political turmoil
What constitutes courage?
Dealing with suicidal behaviour
Responding to unfair treatment
Role of suffering in the human condition
What's in a name?
Where do values come from?
What drives a person to madness?
Do clothes really "make the man"?
How do political structures work, and who really runs a country?
How are human rights defined, and does anyone know what they actually
are?
At what point do people become victims of the society they live in, and do
they know when that has happened?
King Lear as a Tragedy
Tempting to see King Lear as a play about good and evil, truth and deception
View represents character as black/white
Good are insulted, banished, imprisoned, tortured, and forced into hiding to
survive
Bad remain rich, secure, and powerful - seem to triumph
View grossly oversimplifies complex, multifaceted, and puzzling play
Play tests what we deem the "normal" way of life, examines how the world
can go awry when there is no longer any stability. (2.5.71-72)
One question raised: what kind of power is in charge of universe. Play
particularly does this but leaves reader with distinct feeling that whatever goes
on in the play is the result of human actions, not divine ones
Most tragedies follow consequences of initial wilful, stupid, selfish act by
protagonist. The other characters in the play become inextricably involved in
those consequences and, for many, that leads directly to their death

In action of tragedies, sense that no one can resist or escape the momentum
once the initial act is committed. Seemingly incomprehensible act by ruler/head
of state turns out to be socially catastrophic
Main event in this play is Lear's decision to atomize his kingdom, dividing it to
his daughters. All other events follow from this significant moment. Lear's
decision changes not only his own life, but lives of all other members of his
family and kingdom.
Once Lear gives away his symbolic crown, essentially gives away himself
because he is without any definable identity (1.4.226) King who is no longer a
king is something undefined
Lear's abandonment of his position forces everyone else to realign, change,
or redefine their individual identities. Without a stable leader, to whom does
society now relate and to whom do they owe their loyalty?
No love lost in this play. Nobody really loves anyone. Lear never expresses
any real affection for Goneril or Regan - even Cordelia for that matter
Lear rambles on about his kindness and generosity and how much he has
given them and how grateful they should feel. This obsesses him and, ultimately,
drives him mad.
Nobody related to Lear feels the least bit grateful and they are not at all
surprised when he acts like an old fool, likely what they thought he was before all
this took place
Once he has abdicated, he is just a threat; what he did to Cordelia is now a
real possibility for all members of the family. To avoid this fate, the daughters
move to weaken their father's position by telling him he must dismiss his one
hundred knights
Gloucester, a parallel character to Lear, is a self-instructed, self-deluded fool,
intellectually blind long before he becomes physically blind. What love there is in
the Gloucester household is equally difficult to detect
The turning point in the play occurs on the heath where all the characters
begin to show their real nature. From this point on, we have the "good" vs. "bad"
characters lined up in a metaphoric game of chess. There is no doubt about who
belongs on the "black" or the "white" side
In Elizabethan tradition, king ensures his society remains cohesive with the
great, mysterious order of nature, he maintains stability because he "sees" the
universal design
This is the world of reason and harmony
Abdication severs the cohesion, reason fails, survival at all costs becomes the
motivator
This is a world of the dispossessed, the mad, the tormented, and the
displaced. Nothing resembling order here.
Even the Fool cannot cope with this world
Only Edmund functions well in this disordered society
Lear's abdication raises some questions:
o
Why would a former king assume that the order of nature should take
some notice of him?
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Is nature totally indifferent to human affairs?
o
Why does Lear go mad? (The world he has created and that now
confronts him is incomprehensible to him)

What does this madness do for him?

Does he realize that his initial selfish and rather silly acts severed the
link between the civilized world and the one above it?
o
Does he ultimately understand anything at all?
Poor Tom is the epitome of humanity its lowest basest form: he presents a
disgusting portrait of "unaccomodated man". To be nothing at all is to be
nonhuman; it is a kind of annihilation. While poor Tom is still technically alive, he
is nothing like his former self, and while his babbling may have some meaning, it
means nothing to the other characters
When Lear sees Poor Tom, a fellow human, in as deplorable a state as he, it
prompts him to offer a prayer to all the truly (3.4.28) of the world - individuals he
had no awareness of before. Perhaps it is this unconscious, unselfish act that
helps Lear to recognize his own humanity
If Lear's abdication poses the question, "What is a king that is no longer a
king?" The Poor Tom's wretchedness raises the question, "What is a person who
has no social context at all?"
One answer lies in the portrait of the beggar (3.4.124-125) The other appears
in the mad king wandering the heath dressed in a crown of flowers and later
declaring that his hand "smells of mortality" (4.6.133)
In contrast to Lear, who blames everybody and everything, Edgar and Albany
look for specific human causes for their troubles
Albany finds out his wife has tricked him, shamed him, and duped him
immeasurable. He had no inkling of the duplicity at the time but, once aware, he
takes action
It takes Edgar much longer to assert his moral stance. It is only after the
fatally wounded Edmund reveals the truth about all the scheming that Edgar
comes forward
Both the Fool and Cordelia are blind victims in a world that has no place for
innocence***
Most everyone in this play, at one time or another, is metaphorically blind.
Gloucester is a victim of his inability to recognize warnings to be cautious.
"Cautious" is a word neither Lear nor Gloucester, nor most others in the play,
seem to pay much attention to
At the end of the play, we are struck by, among other things, the feeling that
what happened in the play is truly absurd. None of it really makes sense; it is a
grotesque experience - a kind of journey through hell. The strange thing is that,
at the beginning of the play, while Lear is technically sane, everything he says
and does is absurd. As the play unfolds, his words make more sense. Perhaps, we
are to take away from the play that Lear's madness is a kind of counter-absurdity
- a state of reality we could all exist in if we just said what we feel
While Edgar, at the end of the play, offers some hope that an enlightened
society may emerge out of the ashes of the old and the hatred may be purged
by love and understanding, it is all somewhat wistful. One compelling question
the play raise is, "Do people really own their own lives, and, if they do, what
should they be doing with them?"
o
o

Rewards and Punishments

Justice, divine justice, people get what they deserve

No discernable pattern in the play that would suggest the "good" are saved
and the "bad" are not
In tragedies, people die - while the meaning of death remains mysterious.
Shakespeare is not in the business of explaining death and what happens
afterwards
The deaths in this play are outrageous but, paradoxically, explicable in
human terms
Gloucester says, "I stumbled when I saw. Full oft 'tis seen/ Our means secure
us, and our mere defects/ Prove our commodities" (4.1.19-21)
The message is that the overconfidence of humans - our inability to see our
defects - is what eventually causes us to fall. This idea suggests that the
characters in this play brought on their own deaths
Gloucester transcends his physical blindness and, after his failed suicide, he
seems to adhere to the notion Edgar expresses: "Men must endure/their going
hence, even as their coming hither;/Ripeness is all" (5.2.9-11)
Humans have no control over life or death. We must simply endure what is
handed to us, and death will occur when the time is right
Edgar explains Gloucester's death as the result of his "flawed heart" (5.3.196)
that was torn asunder by the extremes of joy and grief. There is nothing
comforting in that declaration. The gods are not, in fact, just (as Edgar keeps
maintaining) nor are their actions explainable in human terms
Gloucester's blinding cannot be viewed as a punishment befitting a past
lustful act. In fact, the blinding is not an appropriate consequence of anything
Gloucester has ever done in his past
When attempting to help Lear, he simply becomes an outlet for the wrath of
his enemies. It is purely cruelty at its most unfathomable.
And what is the "dark viciousness" that costs Lear his life?
While his errors may be many, need he suffer as he does?
What did he do to deserve this kind of fate?
Vanity, pride, petulance, selfishness, ego, and outright stupidity certainly
apply to him, but that may well apply to many
Whatever Lear may be as a human, his act of "division" sets the tragedy in
motion. The domino effect is in operation from that point onward - the "great
wheel runs down a hill" (2.4.71). The downward spiral has nothing to do with any
of his human weaknesses. While his assessment - "You must bear with me./Pray
you now, forget and forgive. I am hold and foolish" (4.7.83) - might be Lear's
judgement on himself as a human, it certainly is not any kind of metaphysical
recognition on his part
In tragedies, events happen as they happen - they are all part of the
momentum. Nobody doubts that Lear will die because that is expected in a
tragedy and, in a sense, he has killed himself, as all protagonists in tragedies do
Cordelia's death is another matter. She knows and understands that her life is
linked to her father's as she says, "For thee, oppressed king, I am cast down"
(5.3.5) In her case, the gods are decidedly unjust. Cordelia seems to know she is
Lear's sacrifice. She simply happens to be in the way of the "great wheel" that
"runs down a hill" (2.4.71) It is cruel and unreasonable, and there is nothing
moral about it. To us, it is outrageously senseless, but we have to understand
that such things are part of the design of tragedy

If there are any rewards, they are merely hinted at in Albany's final remarks:
"All friends shall taste/The wages of their virtue, and all foes/The cup of their
deservings" (5.3.302-304)
Asides (Soliloquies)
Asides are often neglected in the study of a play
By using asides, characters seek the audience's approval, sympathy, and/or
support. As a result, asides serve to draw the audience into the action. For
example, when Cordelia says, "What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent"
(1.1.63) her question and answers do not play a part in the silly "love test" in
which her pompous old father engages the entire kingdom
Cordelia's first comments, that she will not tell her father she loves him,
come somewhat unexpectedly but they underscore Goneril's flattering response
to the self-indulgent question, "Which of you shall we say doth love us most?"
(1.1.52) Cordelia's second speech, which comes just after Regan's vacuous reply
to Lear, clarifies her thinking. She says, "I am sure my love's/ More ponderous
than my tongue" (1.1.79-80); that is, the love
They are incisive comments and, in Cordelia's case, serve to undercut the
falseness and blatant lying of the two sisters. Without Cordelia's comments, we
would never be able to figure out why she did what she did
The asides also focus the readers on the complexity of the language because
the words have a certain animation and unpredictability of their own
The Role of the Fool
Is Lear referring to Cordelia or the Fool or both?
Why does the Fool disappear, never to be heard of again?
"And my poor fool is hanged" (5.3.305)
Fact: this "fool" is the only Shakespearian fool without a given name - he is
just "Lear's Fool"
There is something fantastic and otherworldly about him in his combination of
cutting wit, innocence, bawdy humour, penetrating observations, and tenacious
devotion to the man he serves
Why is he so loyal to Lear?
Why does Lear put up with his acerbic comments?
Why was Cordelia fond of him?
Do poor Tom and Kent relate to him in some strange way?
Why did Shakespeare feel this play needed a fool?
o
One answer:

While Lear tries to avert madness by crying out against it, and
Edgar shares his sufferings, the Fool barrages the king with a litany of
his follies to point out Lear's part in his own downfall. This observation
is as much for the sake of the audience, one would suspect, as for the
king himself. What the Fool says makes sense in a convoluted way
because he knows that passion causes destruction; wrath leads to no
good. What he says runs a fine line between jest and earnest. Perhaps
his message is that patience is the lesson to learn because anger and
madness are close companions. He may also be conveying the idea
that words can be treacherous.

Is the Fool an oracle speaking in some inspired idiom or is he simply

manipulative, or is he indeed a loyal subject intent on helping a master who has
gone desperately astray? Do we take him at face value or is there something
sinister about him?
o
It is important that we know what the Fool's words mean and how we
should interpret them because his dramatic function clearly is not just to
amuse us but to tell Lear the truth. He performs this task through a jumble
of riddles and parables and what often seems like pure nonsense.
The Fool and Cordelia: Often, the Fool's incomprehensible jokes add to the
nightmare reality of the play because he comments on Lear's inevitable downfall
in a somewhat detached manner. There is a terrible feeling of suffocation in this
play that the Fool tends to reinforce. It reappears in Lear's line, "Pray you undo
this button" (5.3.309), just before he dies. The Fool's mysterious disappearance
suggests that he, too, succumbed to it. Whatever happened to him, Lear seems
to associate his daughter Cordelia and the Fool with innocence - as victims of
circumstances he never fully understands.
Imagery
Imagery through Nature:
o
Elizabethans believed that the natural world reflected a hierarchy that
mirrored good government and stable monarchy
o
Natural vs. Unnatural behaviours
o
King Lear deals with how children and parents treat each other,
whether human society is the product of nature or something we create so
as to live better than animals do, and whether human nature is
fundamentally selfish or generous
Examples of Nature:
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57 different animals are mentioned
o
Lear tells Cordelia that neither human nature nor royal dignity can
tolerate the way she has insulted him
o
Lear tells the King of France that "nature is ashamed" to have
produced a child like Cordelia, whose lack of love is so contrary to nature
o
The King of France suggests that Cordelia has "tardiness in nature",
i.e., that sometime's its natural to be inarticulate. France sees nature as the
source of human frailties, rather than as a vice
o
Edmund begins, "Thou, Nature, art my goddess." Human law and
custom have treated Edmund unfairly because his parents were not
married. Edmund intends to look out for himself, like an animal. Edmund
sees nature as the opposite of human virtue.
o
Gloucester, deceived by Edmund, considers Edgar's supposed plot to
murder him to be contrary to nature ("Unnatural", "Brutish")
o
Gloucester believes in astrology. Gloucester thinks that the eclipses,
which result from natural causes, still have unnatural effects, causing the
breakdown of human society. Edmund doesn't believe in astrology. He says
he was born rough and self-centred, and that the stars had nothing to do
with it. Later, Kent believes the stars must account for the inexplicable
differences in people's attitudes. Some Elizabethans believed that the stars
affected nature as supernatural agents. Others believed that they were
powerful natural forces.

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Edmund remarks that Edgar's nature is gentle and naive, and (at the
end) that he will do one last good deed "In spite of mine own nature." This
reminds us of the ongoing scientific and political controversies over how
much of an individual's behaviour is genetically programmed, how much is
learned and conditioned, and how much one is responsible
King Lear, thinking of Cordelia's "most small fault", laments the way it
scrambled his mind ("wrenched my frame of nature from its fixed place")
King Lear also calls on "nature" as a goddess, to punish Goneril with
infertility, or else give her a baby that grows up to hate her ("a thwart
disnatured torment")
Lear says as he leaves Goneril's home, "I will forget my nature",
perhaps meaning he will begin crying again
Gloucester jokes that Edmund is "loyal and natural". The latter means
both "illegitimate", and that he cares for his own flesh-and-blood as a son
should. Regan's husband speaks of Edmund's "nature of such deep trust",
i.e., his trustworthy character is inborn
When Regan pretends to be sick, King Lear remarks that you're not
yourself when natural sickness affects you. "We are not ourselves when
nature, begin oppressed commands the mind to suffer with the body."
(foreshadowing)
Regan tells King Lear that "nature in you stand son the very verge of
her confine." In other words, you're getting too old to make your own
decisions, and Regan's behaviour is only that of a good, natural daughter
"Allow not nature more than nature needs..." King Lear says that is
superfluous luxuries that raise us above the natural level of animals
Kent and the other basically good characters see the treatment of Lear
and Gloucester as unnatural. Albany says to Goneril, "That nature which
condemns itself in origin cannot bordered certain in itself" - i.e., if you
mistreat your own parent, what kind of person must you be?
King Lear calls on the storm to "crack nature's moulds" and end the
human race.
Kent urges King Lear to seek shelter, since "man's nature cannot carry
the affliction nor the force" and "the tyranny of the open night's too rough
for nature to endure."
King Lear, crazy, asks whether Regan's hard-heartedness is the result
of natural disease or chemistry or something perhaps cultural or perhaps
supernatural, "Is there any cause in nature that makes this hardness?"
When Lear falls asleep in the last storm scene, Kent sees his madness
as "oppressed nature" sleeping
Cordelia is said to "redeem nature from the general curse" brought by
the other two daughters
The physician calls sleep "our foster-nurse of nature." Remember in
Macbeth, who after committing the "unnatural" crime of killing a king,
became an insomniac
King Lear, with the insight of madness, decorates himself with wild
flowers
The world of Lear is without village or town; instead, it is a world of
flowers, weeds, heath, wild winds, storm, wild beasts, and farm animals set
against ancient gods, legends, and customs, and puzzling riddles

"Crows and choughs, beetles, the murmuring surge, the vex'd sea,
furrow weeds, burdocs, hemlock, nettles, cuckooflowers"
o
"Fen-sucked fogs, the enmity o' the air, the word and owl, the worm,
the sheep, the cate,"
o
"The poor, bare, forked animal" (3.4.105) that is Edgar as Poor Tom
o
Edmund calls Goneril and Regan, "Most savage and unnatural" (3.3.7)
o
Lear asks, "Is there any cause in nature that makes/these hard hearts?"
(3.6.76-77)
o
Lear talks about Goneril as a "detested kite" (a large bird of prey) and
says she and Regan have become "she foxes" (vicious), and he sees
humanity as victims of "monsters of the deep"
o
Goneril and Regan are "tigers, not daughters" and they are "doghearted", full of "sharp-toothed unkindness"
o
His daughters are "pelican daughters" (the pelican was thought to feed
its young with its own blood)
Nature
o
The storm itself can be seen as a nature's moral context for human
events. Through its association with Jupiter, whom the Romans believed
ruled the heavens, thunder echoes the displeasure of the gods. While on the
heath, Lear senses this displeasure, believing that "the great gods... Keep
this dreadful pudder o'er our heads" (3.2.49-50) as a sign of impending
justice
o
The external tempest is paralleled by the storm in Lear's mind,
suggesting that madness is the equivalent of the disorder in nature and a
descent into an equally unfathomable chaos
Blindness
o
Both Gloucester and Lear suffer from an inability to see the truth of
their situations. It is not until Gloucester actually loses his eyes and Lear
loses his mind that they begin to truly "see". The words "eye", "sight", and
"see" are used repeatedly through the play. It is only fitting that they meet
near Dover toward the end of the play and commiserate about how their
blindness has cost them dearly. "If thou would weep my fortunes, take my
eyes", says Lear
The Storms
o
The storm works as a symbol on several levels. It is a physical
expression of the state of Lear's world - the country is in complete political
disarray and society is out of order - and occurs at the precise moment Lear
loses all of his authority. It foreshadows his madness and is a reflection of
Lear's internal confusion. Finally, the violent storm demonstrates the
awesome power of nature, which seems to cry out against the events of the
play. Its turbulence forces the powerless king to recognize his own mortality
and human frailty and to at last develop a sense of humility
Madness
o
Madness in the play is associated with both disorder and hidden
wisdom. The Fool's mad babble and nonsense rhymes attempt to drive
home the idea that Lear has made a terrible mistake when he split up his
kingdom and disinherited Cordelia. Later, when Lear himself goes mad, the
turmoil in his mind mirrors the chaos that has descended upon his kingdom.
At the same time, his madness leads to wisdom and strips him to his bare
o

humanity. During Lear's encounter with the blind Gloucester, Edgar notes
the king's "reason in madness." Edgar uses a feigned insanity so that he will
not be recognized by Lear, Kent, the Fool, and especially, his father. His
madness, however, contains bits of insight for Lear, and the king dubs him
his "philosopher". Edgar's time as a madman cures him of his innocence. It
hardens him and prepares him to defeat Edmund at the close of the play.
Nothing
o
In no other Shakespearean play is more made of nothing. "Nothing"
binds a daughter to her father, and "nothing" is a note that severs a father's
love and in turn makes a son "nothing". Always one to make something
from nothing, Shakespeare offers an intriguing look at the deconstruction of
two men. Lear, in his whimsical desire to hear how he is esteemed, makes
the error of trusting the substance of spoken words. He is not concerned
with the truth and thus mistakes Cordelia's response for an insult, a nonanswer. She will not give him the words he desires because they do not hold
the substance of what she knows to be truth. Until the final scene, Lear asks
who and what he is, and he is told (most bluntly by the Fool) that he is
nothing. He no longer has importance to the other characters. However,
Kent, the Fool, and Cordelia make him more than nothing by serving
faithfully, speaking bluntly, and loving unconditionally (respectively)
o
Ironically, if Gloucester had trusted in words as did Lear, then his ruin
would not have occurred. When Edmund says the letter (the forgery) he
holds is nothing, he is truthful. Yet, Gloucester would not trust the truth of
the words. He must see the fact of the matter and must read the letter to
determine if it is nothing. The metaphor of sight and of recognition is closely
tied to the theme played out in this sub-plot. Since Gloucester will only trust
in words he sees, he will continue to be deceived until he loses his sight. He
is forced into a world where he must rely on only the sound and general
meaning of a word when he is blinded by Cornwall. Through this
deprivation, he regains his sight or his understanding of truth and is able to
recognize Lear a voice that is the king. For even in his madness, Lear is
more kingly at the end than at the beginning of the play.