King Lear

King Lear

"I am a man more sinned against than sinning."
III.2.59-60

Essay Title:

To what extent do you agree with Lear’s statement above? Discuss Lear’s role in the play and explore his journey from tyrant to humility and death.

Things to include:

Introduction: Lear’s complex characterisation, neither all good or bad
Lear as a tyrant at the beginning: pride, blindness, foolishness, egotism
What makes Lear more sympathetic: authority, treatment by Goneril and Regan, powerlessness
Madness: learning process, sees what he could not before, concern for the poor, the outcast and for social justice
Suffering: learns to distinguish appearance from reality, concern for others, awareness of his own culpability?
Things that make Lear less sympathetic: self obsessed, vengeful, hatred of women, (misogyny) does not accept his own guilt?
Reconciliation with Cordelia: has learnt how to love
Redemption through suffering
Do we feel his sufferings have been in vain?

"His [Lear’s] story, put in the simplest terms, is the story of his progress from being a king to being a man, neither more nor less."

From Arnold Kettle, Literature and Liberation: Selected Essays 1988

"Do not laugh at me,
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia."
4.7.67-69

Nicholas R Evans

Lear Quotations

"We have divided

In three our kingdom…while we

Unburdened crawl toward death." 1.1.36-40

"Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again." 1.1.90

"So young and so untender?" 1.1.108

"Come not between the dragon and his wrath!" 1.1.122

Regan: ‘Tis the infirmity of his age, yet he hath
Ever but slenderly known himself." 1.1.295

"You have that in your countenance
which I would fain call master." Kent 1.4.22-232

Lear:          Who am I, sir?
Oswald:     My Lady’s father.
Lear:          My Lady’s father? My lord’s knave,
               You whoreson dog, you slave, you cur!     1.4.76-79

Lear: Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool: All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with. 1.4.141-143

"I have used it, nuncle, e’er since thou mad’st
thy daughters thy mothers; for when thou gav’st them
the rod and putt’st down thine own breeches." 1.4.163-165

"Who is it that can tell me who I am?" 1.4.221

"sharper than a serpents tooth it is
To have a thankless child." 1.4.280-81

"O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven" 1.5.43

"O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous;
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life is cheap as beast’s." 2.2.453-456

"You unnatural hags,
I will have such revenges on you both" 2.2.467-8

"O fool, I shall go mad." 2.2.475

"Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once
That make ingrateful man!" 3.2.8-9

"I am a man more sinned against than sinning." 3.2.59-60

"My wits begin to turn." 3.2.67

"O, Regan, Goneril,

Your old, kind father, whose frank heart gave you
All" 3.4.19-20

"Poor naked wretches…" 3.427-36

"Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air
Hang fated o’er men’s faults light on thy daughters." 3.4.66-67

"Unaccomodated man is no more but such a poor,
bare, forked animal as thou art." 3.4.105

Cordelia: Alack, ‘tis he. Why, he was met even now
As mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud 4.4.1-2

Cordelia: O dear father,
It is thy business that I go about 4.4.24-25

"they told me I was everything; ‘tis a lie" 4.6.104

"You do me wrong to take me out o’the grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fir that mine own tears
Do scold like molten lead." 4.7.45-48

"I am a very foolish, fond old man…
and to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind." 4.7.60-63

"Do not laugh at me,
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia." 4.7.67-69

"We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness." 5.39-11

"And my poor fool[Cordelia] is hanged. No, no, life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life
And thou no breath at all." 5.3.304-306