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:

. Why would a former king assume that the order of nature should take some notice of him?

. Is nature totally indifferent to human affairs?

. 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?

. 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?"

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?

. One answer:

1. 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?

. 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:

. Elizabethans believed that the natural world reflected a hierarchy that mirrored good government and stable monarchy

. Natural vs. Unnatural behaviours

. 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:

. 57 different animals are mentioned

. Lear tells Cordelia that neither human nature nor royal dignity can tolerate the way she has insulted him

. 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

. 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

. 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.

. Gloucester, deceived by Edmund, considers Edgar's supposed plot to murder him to be contrary to nature ("Unnatural", "Brutish")

. 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.

. 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"

. "Fen-sucked fogs, the enmity o' the air, the word and owl, the worm, the sheep, the cate,"

. "The poor, bare, forked animal" (3.4.105) that is Edgar as Poor Tom

. Edmund calls Goneril and Regan, "Most savage and unnatural" (3.3.7)

. Lear asks, "Is there any cause in nature that makes/these hard hearts?" (3.6.76-77)

. 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"

. Goneril and Regan are "tigers, not daughters" and they are "dog-hearted", full of "sharp-toothed unkindness"

. His daughters are "pelican daughters" (the pelican was thought to feed its young with its own blood)

Nature

. 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

. 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

. 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

. 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

. 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 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

. 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 non-answer. 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)

. 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.