Shakespeare's King Lear

Themes and issues

Love test
Lear is the only serious performance of Shakespeare the interest and situations of which are derived from the assumption of a gross improbability
what can you say to draw / A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
Lear’s wisdom
The moral order, Cordelia, Kent, and fool
There is something of disgust at the ruthless hypocrisy of her sisters, and some little faulty admixture of pride and sullenness in Cordelia's
"Nothing".
Freedom lives hence and banishment is here.
Thou madest thy daughters thy mothers, for … thou gavest them the rod
The subplot
Gloucester. What paper were you reading?
Edmund. Nothing, my lord.
Gloucester. No? What needed then that terrible dispatch of it into your pocket? The quality of nothing hath not such need to hide itself
The problem of evil
These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us.
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, / They kill us for their sport.
“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeits of our own behavior, we make guilty of our disasters
the sun, the moon, and the stars.”
Questions
o What does act five begin with?

o What does Albany say about the war?

o What does Edgar give Albany?

o Why does Edmund become a commander of armies?

o What does Edmund decide about the sisters?

o What is the result of the battle?

o What happens to Edmund?

o What happens to Goneril and Regan? To Lear and Cordelia? To Gloucester? To Edmund? To
Edgar? To Albany?
Memorable quotes
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all

Edgar, The oldest hath borne most, we that are young

Shall never see so much