Final Flashcards
What are the two aspects of King Lear’s double plot structure?
- Lear and his daughter’s
- Gloucester and his sons
What are the two different readings off King Lear?
- Redemptionist - Lear suffers personal pilgrimage and ends redeemed
- Apocalyptic - Views the world as hopeless, meaningless, and dark
What role does sight/blindness play in King Lear?
Lear and Gloucester are physically sighted but emotionally blind at the beginning
What is King Lear’s central theme?
Social justice and radical critique of political power
“Give me the map there. Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom: and ‘tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age;
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthen’d crawl toward death…
Which of you shall we say doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend”
- King Lear
-Lear
-He is using a love test to decide which of his daughters gets more land when its divided
“Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter;
Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;
No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour;
As much as child e’er loved, or father found”
-King Lear
-Goneril
-She’s being a massive suck up to her father in response to his love test
“Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
According to my bond; nor more nor less.”
-King Lear
-Cordelia
-Cordelia refuses to bend to his will. She loves him as her father, no more no less
Who are Edgar and Edmund?
Gloucester’s sons. Edmund is the bastard/master manipulator son with “skillz with a z,” and Edgar is legitimate (but better)
“Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me…
Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?…
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,–legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed”
-King Lear
-Edmund
-He is expressing that nature looks highly upon him as shown by his gifts and talents, but custom casts him out. He is reclaiming the title of bastard
“These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend
no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can
reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
scourged by the sequent effects: love cools,
friendship falls off, brothers divide: in
cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in
palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt son
and father. This villain of mine comes under the
prediction; there’s son against father: the king
falls from bias of nature; there’s father against
child. “
-King Lear
-Gloucester
-The world and familial relationships are being destroyed left and right and he blames the sun, moon, and stars because he doesn’t have a shred of accountability in his body.
“Why, after I have cut the egg i’ the middle, and eat
up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou
clovest thy crown i’ the middle, and gavest away
both parts, thou borest thy ass on thy back o’er
the dirt”
-King Lear
-Fool
-Compares Lear’s dividing of his kingdom to cutting up and egg and eating the parts seperately.
“Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her”
-KIng Lear
-Lear
-He is so hurt and surprised by Goneril sending him away that he hopes she has children just as thankless as he thinks she is being to him.
How do Kent and Oswald compare in King Lear?
While Kent is ever faithful to Lear, Oswald is Gloucester’s faithless servant
“If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,–
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both!
If it be you that stir these daughters’ hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely”
-King Lear
-Lear
-He is saying that most people have both needs and wants and he feels deserving of more than the bare minimum. He then goes on to claim rage and revenge against Regan after she refuses to help him. There is a dichotomy of rage and vulnerability
What does clothing symbolize in King Lear?
At the beginning, it symbolizes royal power and authority. As Lear strips it, he gains humanity
“Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!”
-King Lear
-Lear
-He is calling on the storm to give justice by punishing his daughters
“Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man”
-King Lear
-Lear
-He is calling on the storm to give justice by punishing his daughters for both kicking him out
Thou perjured, and thou simular man of virtue
That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming
Hast practised on man’s life: close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents, and cry
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinn’d against than sinning.
-King Lear
-Lear
-He is calling on the storm to give justice by punishing his daughters for both kicking him out and he’s throwing a fucking pity party
“I’ll speak a prophecy ere I go:
When priests are more in word than matter;
When brewers mar their malt with water;
When nobles are their tailors’ tutors;
No heretics burn’d, but wenches’ suitors;
When every case in law is right;
No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;
When slanders do not live in tongues;
Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;
When usurers tell their gold i’ the field;
And bawds and whores do churches build”
-Kinge Lear
-Fool
-Speaking a prophecy of a chaotic world, before anyone has died
“In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty,–
Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.
Fool goes in
Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp”
-King Lear
-Lear
-In the storm, Lear is beginning to have sympathy for others and show remorse by putting the Fool above himself.
“Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile:
Filths savour but themselves. What have you done?
Tigers, not daughters, what have you perform’d?
A father, and a gracious aged man,
Whose reverence even the head-lugg’d bear would lick,
Most barbarous, most degenerate! have you madded.
Could my good brother suffer you to do it?”
-King Lear
-Albany (Goneril’s husband)
-He is casting Goneril and Regan as monster’s for what they’ve done to their helpless father. Forshadows Albany’s moral transformation at the end
“Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester’s bastard son
Was kinder to his father than my daughters
Got ‘tween the lawful sheets.
To ‘t, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers.
Behold yond simpering dame…
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above:
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends’;
There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the
sulphurous pit,
Burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie,
fie, fie! pah, pah!”
-King Lear
-Lear
-He claims that adultury isn’t that bad because Edmund is far better than his daughters. He demonizes women because he’s a big fat mysogynist.
“Spring with my tears! be aidant and remediate
In the good man’s distress! Seek, seek for him;
Lest his ungovern’d rage dissolve the life
That wants the means to lead it…
My mourning and important tears hath pitied.
No blown ambition doth our arms incite,
But love, dear love, and our aged father’s right:
Soon may I hear and see him!”
-King Lear
-Cordellia
-Shows how much Cordellia actually cares for her father
“And the creature run from the cur? There thou
mightst behold the great image of authority: a
dog’s obeyed in office.
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!
Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;
Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind
For which thou whipp’st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.
Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks:
Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it.”
-King Lear
-Lear
-He is highlighted the corruption of political power because people in power can hide their injustices and make the truth what they wish
What is Peripeteia?
A reversal of fortune
