KING LEAR PLOT ELEMENTS

ACT I
I.1* -Gloucester/Kent on bastard Edmund vs Edgar: ques of ligitimacy introduced
-Lear divides Kingdom: silence vs speech, images of hell, dragon, sight introduced; France’s non- materialistic language as he
leaves with Cordelia (250ff); Goneril and Regan already plot
I.2* -Letter scene: Edmund tricks father, Gloucester, into thinking Edgar is disloyal (issue of sight, 30ff); Gloucester of “late eclipses of
the sun and moon” manifest in world (101 ff): Edmund tells Edgard that Gloucester plots vs him
I.3 G-oneril and Oswald plot
I.4 -Kent, disguised, offers assistance to Lear; Fool tells Lear “All thy other titles thou hast given away; that [being a fool] thou wast
born with.”
-Goneril upraids Lear—Lear questions own identity, curses Goneril (264 ff) to be sterile, images of eyesight (290 ff); Goneril
sends letter via Oswald to Regan to block Lear
I.5 Lear sends Kent off with letters to Regan to prepare way
ACT II
II.1 -Edmund, in darkness, plots, tells Gloucester when he arives that Edgar tried to persuade him to kill Gloucester—images of
darkness appropriate to plotting; Regan & Cornwall on Lear’s riotous Knights
II.2 -Kent taunts Oswald at regan’s and is put in stocks, sleeps; Gloucester maddened this treatment
II.3 -Edgard hears self denounnced and disguises self as beggar, poor Tom
II.4* -Lear (”we are not ourselves” 102) arrives during storm and is rejected by Regan; Goneril arrives and supports Regan; Lear’s
reaction is to call them names: “Thou art a boil…” (c 213 ff); he is stripped of his attendant knights: Lear argues for decency and
honor (“Oh reason not the need…O fool, I shall go mad” 259-281)—cast out into storm
ACT III
III.1 -News of Lear’s “heart-struck injuries” and that France has entered England
III.2* Heath Scene 1 (near Gloucester’s castle): Lear rants as Kent tries to find shelter from storm: language gradually deteriorates -
(metaphysical to physical, etc)—who talks/listens to whom?
III.3 -Gloucester and Edmund on division among Goneril/Regan forces
III.4* -Heath Scene 2 (hovel): Kent finds hovel; Lear (”tempest in my mind” 12); Lear enters like “walking fire” (107); Lear starts to
focus a bit on others not just self; language intensifies, images of fiends, etc. incoherent language; as Tom and Lear interact, Lear
wants to literally strip down to essences like Tom (Edgar disguised)
III.5 -Edmund plotting to arrest Gloucester for helping Lear
III.6* -Heath Scene 3 (farmhouse): Mock trial—Lear sets up stools and tries sisters; Gloucester comes in to rescue them; note
Edgar’s style at end—
III.7 -Gloucester made a captive; eyes are plucked out—se esp 82 ff
ACT IV
IV.1 -Gloucester led by Edgar; references to sight; note difference between Gloucester’s language now vs earlier, and here
Gloucester vs kent
IV.2 -Goneril and Edmund allies; Albany sickened by politics of it all, calls Goneril a fiend (66); images of appearances and
surfaces
IV.3 -Kent on Lear’s condition as one of shame re Cordelia; France had to return
IV.4 -Cordelia and her army pass on stage
IV.5 -Regan plots vs sister for Edmund
IV.6* -Fake Dover scene: note Edgar’s descriptions, use of sense images and impressions; the description of the fall, etc.;
-Lear entrance bedecked in weeds, mad, incoherent, repetitions in language—images of injustice/justice system; Reduces
all to basest elements, sight images (“I see it feelingly,” Gloucester, 147)
-Kent kills Oswald; discovers letter from Goneril to Edmund, love and loyalty
IV.7* -Lear (“You do me wrong to take me out o’th’grave 45) 9”I am a very foolish fond old man 60) and Cordelia together;
reports from war

ACT V
V.1 -Edgar gives letter to Albany; Edmund delights in situation (57 ff)
V.2 -Brief battle scene, 11 lines
V.3* -Lear wants to fly away to prison with Cordelia to escape world, Edmunds sends them off to be killed; Regan poisoned by
Goneril
-Edgar wounds Edmund who gradually confesses and repents after news of Gloucester’s death by broken heart
-they all forgot about Lear and send messenger off to save him and Cordelia
-Lear returns, howls, curses all—Fool is hanged—Lear tries ro speak Cordelia alive—
Albany: “Our present business / Is general woe.”
 FURTHER NOTES/QUESTIONS

-Lear’s language: what sorts of syntax characterize it? A language of communication or self definition/expression? Does
it change? Does Gloucester’s language change? Why does Edgar speak the way he does as Tom—why doesn’t he do that
when he leads Gloucester to the fake Dover cliffs?
-Are the Dover cliff scene and plucking out of eyes scenes playable? Is most of the play probable? Improbable? What is
the difference read vs acted out? Think of IV.6 (Dover scene)—to what degree is the play a poem whose basic
movements are not the action but interior, in the language of the speakers?
-images of animals, disease, nature gone foul, -- what do these reveal?? Images of physical pain—and general language of
savagery and pain
-what sorts of language define each character??
-how does language evolve through various scenes??

TYPICAL COMPLEX STRUCTURE: HEATH SCENES SYMMETRY

Scenes 2,4 6 deal with Lear; the intervening scenes 3, 5 deal with subplot as counterpoint to main plot.

Scene: III.2 III.3 III.4 III.5 III.6

lines: 95 23 175 24 113
Lear Subplot Lear Subplot Lear
-extreme passion -gradual slip -“wits are gone”-
-injustice rant -conscience-less -injustice of
daughters world
-exposed to nature -wants to strip -finds basic
nature of all:
vulnerability

Gloucester Edmund
tells Edmund betrays
help King Gloucester
re: III.3
KING LEAR ACT III

EACH SCENE STARTS TO LOWER ITS LANGUAGE LEVEL, SOMETIMES TOWARD THE SAVAGE BUT IS
THEN RAISED UP AT THE END TEMPORARILY, ONLY TO FALTER IN NEXT SCENE: ALL THIS SUGGESTS
THE WAY LEAR’S WORLD AS A WHOLE IS TOTERING ON EDGE OF INSANITY, PAIN, ETC.
III.2 language level slips, begins to rise, then falls into aphorism
SPEAKER ACTION LANGUAGE/STYLE
Lear, 1-9 personifies nature, addresses it as enemy metaphysical/moral
Lear 14-24 nature now “servile” to daughters as he is slave to them Governmental:tax, subscription,
ministers, slavery, “head”
Fool 25-35 “head’ reduced to toe to penis (impotence) sexuality/physicality
Kent 42-49 man’s nature Love over sex, internal over
ext.,personal and emotional
Lear 49-60 takes idea of internal and thinks of hidden evils morality, judgment, covert violence
Kent 60-67 house(society) refuses them— too deep into selves civil language undermined by hardness
Lear 67-73 wits turn, madness overtakes him; pities fool values seem reversed (vile things now
precious); language of embrace
Fool 79-95 sees Lear’s pity for other and so sees hope in Lear aphorisms, like Sybil
III.4 language slips into incoherence, animal images, countered by Gloucester
Kent 1-3 tyranny overwhelms natures balanced
Lear 6-22 mind/body in revolt, conscious of focusing too intensified; leaps, syntactic
much on self; “tempest in my mind” variations, numerous
caesuras
Lear 24-26 care for others expressed images domestic: clothing—more
like normal world
Lear/Fool/ Lear on causes of Edgar’s state, Edgar on evil “fiend”animal images, gross images, fiend images; Lear’s
?? really of self
Edgar 38-103
all 104-174 Gloucester enters with torch, fool calls him devil, Edgar descends in slime language; makes sure we
see darkness as
Gloucester tells story, will bring them to his house figurative: moral darkness; Gloucester language
promises civility
and order
III.6 Languages collide, explode—Edgar’s balanced couplets at end suggest potential order
mock trial Lear tries sisters in form of stools language of mock legal system (20,33) vs
language of fiends
(6,16,29,31); things warped (52), corrupt (54)
false (56)
Edgar’s balanced couplets at end promise order
Lear uses imperatives still

By IV.6 Lear speaks nonsense as Gloucester and Edgar do for different reasons
Each scene ends with faint promise of hope that is undermined by the general slide into chaos.

KING LEAR LANGUAGE AND IMAGERY

Cesare Pavese describes the "image narrative" as the set of connotations the images in a poem have when arranged in a structure: they form a s
sub plot which for Pavese is the main plot of the poem. It is a story of the reader's arc of responses through a poem. In KING LEAR the surfac
or external plot is far less important than this image narrative. What is going on in the characters' minds and how that evolves and devolves is t
essence of the play, and that is given in language. So, Lear says, “this contentious storm / Invades us to the skin” (3.4.6-7). And he then bewa
“tempest in my mind” (12). Not only the speeches of Lear but also of most of the other characters reveals a world that is falling apart, spinning
of control beyond the normal civil bounds of a society into a savage primitivism. This is a world of extremes.

How is this accomplished in language?

First there are sets of metaphors and images:
1)animals portrayed as savage beasts and used to describe characters; look at Edgar's descriptions in Act III; in 2.3.9 he says he will make him
"near to beast" as his disguise; Lear calls Albany a “detested kite” (1.4.253); the “wolfish visage” of Goneril (1.4.298)
2)the natural elements (a storm rages through most of Act III but is also the "tempest" inside Lear, Gloucester and others; see also Gloucester
famous speech at I.2.101-115, "These late eclipses..." which links outer and social and inner evils, but is immediately satirized by Edmund as
blaming externals for internal problems)
3)images of light and darkness (Gloucester arrives like a "living torch" out of the bleak darkness in Act III); the Fool often describes good/ba
characters in terms of light/darkness, calling, for example, Lear "Lear's shadow" in 1.4.220;
4) images of sight and vision (see extra handout) (the plucking out of Gloucester's eyes on stage visualizes this for us, or his "I see it feelingly
which summarizes the whole notion of interior vision);
5) sound/silence: Cordelia's reticence about her emotions and Lear's commands to Kent to be quiet in Act I create a pressure that explodes in t
loud cacophony of the rest of the play;
6) images of pain: the verbs strike, break, burst, pierce, tread on, bite, scourge, tear seem to appear every few lines;
7) images of disease, etc; 1.1.163 “foul disease” kent says of lear’s actions; (Lear to Goneril in 2.4.217 ff: "Thou art a boil, / a plague-sore, or
embossed carbuncle /In my corrupted blood.")
8) images of monsters and fiends (Edgar describes much of this and then later it is literalized when he describes and imaginary fiend, ironica
himself, who helps Gloucester in his mock leap to death); remember Lear's "Come not between the dragon and his wrath" in 1.1; Gloucester ca
Edgar a “monster” (1.2.92)
9) there are also contrasting sets of images: Goneril and Regan speak mostly in terms of commerce (1.4.227 ff), mercantile orientation while L
Kent-Gloucester speak in terms of the natural world.

There are also syntactic elements that portray this extreme world:
1) Lear and Gloucester speak in terms of commands, fiats, decalarrive sentences of assumed fact, questions that are really just rhetorical
includes the "let it be" and "may it be" which are forms of the imperative subjunctive; apostrophes and prayers are also examples of extreme
emotion; kent curses Oswald at 2.2.13ff; “degenerate bastard” lear says of goneril at 1.4.244 and then at 268 ff curses her to be sterile and then
at 2.4.126 and 2.4.274
2) The fool speaks often in riddles and proverbs which satirize the sense of absolutes, and in terms of the subjunctive ("if..." is a major locuti
him): "If a man's brains were in's heels, were't not in danger of kibes [chilbains]?" (1.5.8) His rhetoric suggests the world of contingency that L
must adopt instead of his absolutes;
3) Kent, Cordelia and Edgar use some questions throughout, and Lear uses genuine ones towards the end.

LANGUAGE OF COMMAND IN LEAR

COMMANDS, ETC: EXTREMES: used by all characters, suggesting nature of this world// a fairy tale world of absolutes---very
little persuasive argument as with Othell’s conditional sentences, macbeth’s questions
-FIAT, PRONOUNCEMENT, PETTITION, INTERROGATION, COMMAND
Nothing can come of nothing
-DEMANDING, ORDERING, EXCLAIMING, PRONOUNCING
LET IT BE/MAY IT BE…DONE (LATIN HORATIVE, IMPERATIVE SUBJUNCTIVE)
1.4.8: Let me not stay a jot for dinner
1.5.46: let me not be mad
1.1: let it be so; thy truth be thy dower
-DECLARATIVE for simple unqualified assertions
-FOOL: uses language of ifs, contingencies, complexities

LEAR’S PROGRESS ON HEATH/END

A--iii.2.68—TO FOOL, SHOWS CONCERN AT END, HUMANITY
B--iii.4.28-36 QUESTIONS AND ASSERTION NOW HAVE HUMANITARIAN CONCERN, BUT IN 10 LINES SIGHT OF TOM
DRIVES HIM NUTS
C--iv.7—OUT OF GRAVE, GENUINE QUESTIONS NOW
D--LAST LINES OF PLAY: QUESTION, COMMAND, ASSERTION COME TIGETHER IN CONCERN FOR FOOL, CORDELIA,
STATE---

GONERIL AND REGAN USE LANGUAGE OF MERCANTILE, CALCULATION

FOOL’S PROVERBS
1.4.124
1.5.8
1.5.30
2.4.7
2.4.68
3.6.16
Do we hear from him later??????

KING LEAR
FURTHER IDEAS WITH ADDITIONAL REFERENCES
Cesare Pavese describes the "image narrative" as the set of connotations the images in a poem have when arranged in a structure: they form a s
sub plot which for Pavese is the main plot of the poem. It is a story of the reader's arc of responses through a poem. In KING LEAR the surfac
or external plot is far less important than this image narrative. What is going on in the characters' minds and how that evolves and devolves is t
essence of the play, and that is given in language. So, Lear says, “this contentious storm / Invades us to the skin” (3.4.6-7). And he then bewa
“tempest in my mind” (12). Not only the speeches of Lear but also of most of the other characters reveals a world that is falling apart, spinning
of control beyond the normal civil bounds of a society into a savage primitivism. This is a world of extremes.

How is this accomplished in language?

First there are sets of metaphors and images:
1)animals portrayed as savage beasts and used to describe characters; look at Edgar's descriptions in Act III; in 2.3.9 he says he will make him
"near to beast" as his disguise; Lear calls Albany a “detested kite” (1.4.253); the “wolfish visage” of Goneril (1.4.298)
2)the natural elements (a storm rages through most of Act III but is also the "tempest" inside Lear, Gloucester and others; see also Gloucester
famous speech at I.2.101-115, "These late eclipses..." which links outer and social and inner evils, but is immediately satirized by Edmund as
blaming externals for internal problems)
3)images of light and darkness (Gloucester arrives like a "living torch" out of the bleak darkness in Act III); the Fool often describes good/ba
characters in terms of light/darkness, calling, for example, Lear "Lear's shadow" in 1.4.220;
4) images of sight and vision (see extra handout) (the plucking out of Gloucester's eyes on stage visualizes this for us, or his "I see it feelingly
which summarizes the whole notion of interior vision);
5) sound/silence: Cordelia's reticence about her emotions and Lear's commands to Kent to be quiet in Act I create a pressure that explodes in t
loud cacophony of the rest of the play;
6) images of pain: the verbs strike, break, burst, pierce, tread on, bite, scourge, tear seem to appear every few lines;
7) images of disease, etc; 1.1.163 “foul disease” kent says of lear’s actions; (Lear to Goneril in 2.4.217 ff: "Thou art a boil, / a plague-sore, or
embossed carbuncle /In my corrupted blood.")
8) images of monsters and fiends (Edgar describes much of this and then later it is literalized when he describes and imaginary fiend, ironica
himself, who helps Gloucester in his mock leap to death); remember Lear's "Come not between the dragon and his wrath" in 1.1; Gloucester ca
Edgar a “monster” (1.2.92)
9) there are also contrasting sets of images: Goneril and Regan speak mostly in terms of commerce (1.4.227 ff), mercantile orientation while L
Kent-Gloucester speak in terms of the natural world.

There are also syntactic elements that portray this extreme world:
1) Lear and Gloucester speak in terms of commands, fiats, decalarrive sentences of assumed fact, questions that are really just rhetorical
includes the "let it be" and "may it be" which are forms of the imperative subjunctive; apostrophes and prayers are also examples of extreme
emotion; kent curses Oswald at 2.2.13ff; “degenerate bastard” lear says of goneril at 1.4.244 and then at 268 ff curses her to be sterile and then
at 2.4.126 and 2.4.274
2) The fool speaks often in riddles and proverbs which satirize the sense of absolutes, and in terms of the subjunctive ("if..." is a major locuti
him): "If a man's brains were in's heels, were't not in danger of kibes [chilbains]?" (1.5.8) His rhetoric suggests the world of contingency that L
must adopt instead of his absolutes;
3) Kent, Cordelia and Edgar use some questions throughout, and Lear uses genuine ones towards the end.

LEAR SOME IMAGES AND REFERENCES TO SIGHT AND BLINDNESS

Context: world darkening Lear's "darker purpose" 1.1.36

Fool, 1.4.208: So out went the candle, and we were left darkling.
1.4.220 Lear as Lear's shadow
--Goneril calls Lear "Dearer than eyesight" 1.1.56
--1.1.157 ff
Lear” Out of my sight!”
Kent: See better, Lear, and let me still remain
The true blank of thine eye.
--1.1.268 Cordelia coomends lear to sisters with "washd eyes"
--1.2.33 ff "let's see" Gloucester repeats three times concerning the fake letter that will eventually do him in
--1.4.214 Lear on not being seen, a question of identity
--1.4.292-93 Lear would "pluck out" his own "old fond eyes" at Goneril's rejection
--1.4.336 Albany wonders of Goneril "How far your eyes may pierce"
2.1 scene is at night, Edmund calls for lights (30)
--2.1.119 Regan on "dark eyed night"
--2.2.167 Kent hopes for "heavy eyes" (sleep) not to see the "shameful lodging" and general predicament
--2.4.68 Fool of "blind men" being led astray
--2.4.163 lear commands lightning to Strike Goneril's "scornful eyes" and her "fierce eyes"(167) and tells Oswald to be out "from my
sight" (182), he won't "see" Goneril anymore (215); Lear wants to be seen by Gods who he hopes will show pity (267)
Act III, Heath, storm, darkness
--3.1.8 "eyeless rage" of elements reveal Lear's state of mind
--3.2.55ff--Lear tells evil to hide from sight
--3.4.106 --Gloucester enters dark with torch, Fool calls him "a walking fire"
--3.6.23 Mock Trial: Edgar asks sarcastically, "wans't thou eyes at trial?"; Fool ironically says he sees Lear as a "joint stool" (51) Lear is
using to represent the daughters and their "warped looks" (52)
--3.7.5 Goneril's offhanded remark, "Pluck out his eyes," will govern the scene; when Gloucester talks about leetting Lear esacpe so the
sisters "pluck out his poor old eyes" or "In his annointed flesh stick boarish fangs" he is being figurative, ironically not knowing this will
be literalized on him....(56-57); when his eyes are being cut out ("vile jelly" according to Cornwall, 83) his slain servant asks him to
remember and see with one one good eye(81)
Act IV mostly daylight
--4.1.18-19 Gloucester: "I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; / I stumbled when I saw." He wants to "see" Edgar again (see him
as alive); "'Tis time's plague when madmen lead the blind" (46)Edgar aside re Gloucester: "B'ess thy sweet eyes, they bleed" (54);
Gloucester describes self as one who "will not see / Because he does not feel"
--4.2.52 Goneril tells Albany he doesn't have an "eye" for the sort of mischief she is about; "See thyself, devil," he responds (59), then
comes news of Gloucester's losing his eyes (68ff)
--4.3.17-30 Descriptions of Cordelia weeping yet happy to be finally having possibility of seeing Lear and being reconciled ("heavenly
eyes," 31) 4.4.29 Cordelia wants to 'hear and see" Lear
--4.6: Edgar describes Dover cliffs to blind Gloucester, visual images dominate but all senses involved-- ("I'll look no more" he says at 22
because of the supposed high cliffs)--Edgar tells him to "but look up" at 59 which seems a kind of taunt to let him understand how blind
he has been; 85; Lear comes in dressed in flowers--"Oh thou side-piercing sight" says Edgar; Lear too seems to taunt Gloucester when
Gloucester asks if Lear knows him and Lear answers "I remember thine eyes well enough. Dost thou squiny at me? No, do thy worst
blind Cupid; I'll not love" (135-36). But then Lear says: "your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light; yet you see how this
world goes" to which Gloucester replies: "I see it feelingly" (144-47) Look with thine ears (149)
Act V
5.3.262 Lear wants a "looking glass" not to see with but to test for Cordelia's possible breath; recognizes Kent ("dull sight" 283)
Lear's last words: “Do you see this? Look on her! Look her lips, / Look there, look there--" (311-312)

LEAR IV.6
PART A
--Edgar creates false Dover by appealing to senses: touch (the “steep” ground at 3), balance, even change in own voice made to
seem only product of Gloucester’s blindness (5-:), a sort of false logic)
--Edgar visualizes everything—dizzy height (12)—lines:12-24: he diminishes everything through similes: crows like beetles,
fishermen like
mice, hearing even used (so far can’t be heard) as diminishment
--Note how Edgar cleverly assumes certain things and then talks about their smallness so as to implant the question of size and
perception, not the fact that they are supposedly at the cliffs—Edgar also expresses his fear at 26-27: “for all beneath the moon /
I would not leap upright.” he even suggests his own sight is deficient (23) to give a more earnest and realistic sense by suggesting
his own imperfect perception trying to decipher the scene
PART B
Edgar pretends he has watched it from bottom of cliffs and Gloucester actually fell—rhetoric makes it believable by saying the
secen he sees is unbelievable—wants him to speak to prove he’s alive, he says, but really to get Gloucester to start affirming life
42-48: shows surprise he’s alive
49-55: more surprise, ten mast height image (visual)
69-79; supposed fiend (irony) Edgar calls Tom (self) fiend (“he had a thousand noses, /Horns whelked and waved like the
enridged sea’) who also always used language of devils etc knowing that as Tom he often mentioned devils, a fact Gloucester
picks up on and makes the event more believable to him—Gloucester, embarassed, then blames the fiend (75-79)
PART C
Lear enters “bedecked with weeds”—so absurd, comic as visual scene, takes edge off present scene
83ff- Lear speaks incoherently
107ff- though his language is crude, sexual, violent, there valid perceptions in it and the “sulphurous pit” (128) the world
has become
PART D
Encounter Gloucester/Lear
147 ff—to see “feelingly,” to see not things but qualities in world
159 ff—language breaks down, unclear references—repetitions of “Now,” “kill” and “Sa” (movement from abstract idea
and knowledge of moment to rage to babble)
PART E
Edgar kills Oswald gets letter: language reverts to action—language of letter reveals more than was intended—

The scene moves from imaginary action (led to Dover, the leap); to the fantastic (Lear’s appearance); to questions of what
is real; what is known and seen, and then to real action in the killing of Oswald. Language is replaced by action as the
entire world of the play slides into war and chaos in the last scenes of the play. Language, able to create an order, has been
used to undermine it earlier, and the efforts of Kent, Edgar and even Lear and Gloucester have been unsuccessful.