King Lear Critic Quotes

Question 1

Richard Adams

Answer 1

It is the most appropriate conclusion possible.

Question 2

Susan Bruce

Individuality and Society

Answer 2

Individuals represent a much greater social divide.

Question 3

Susan Bruce

Lear’s actions

Answer 3

Lear’s actions are a catalyst, not a cause, because this world faces inevitable destruction outside an individuals control

Question 4

Susan Bruce

Mistakes

Answer 4

Mistakes seem to have more to do with fatherhood than character

Question 5

Susan Bruce

Edmund

Answer 5

A Renaissance audience would immediately know that he was the villain because of his illegitimacy

Question 6

Susan Bruce

End

Answer 6

‘No one wins in this game’ and forty years later, England would fall apart just like ‘King Lear’ in the English Revolution

Question 7

Susan Bruce

Illegitimacy

Answer 7

‘The gods have not quite yet stood up for bastards’. Legitimacy is still presumed as latest legitimacy act in 1976 says illegitimate children can only be legitimate if their parents marry

Question 8

M J Kidnie

Answer 8

‘Members of the gentry, foreign ambassadors, butchers, tailors and leather workers, citizens’ wives, prostitutes…’

Question 9

Jan Kott

Answer 9

‘The stage is empty throughout: there is nothing’

Question 10

Susan Bruce

Misogyny

Answer 10

‘You can be an angle (Cordelia), or you can be a monster (Goneril and Regan). There is no middle ground’.

Question 11

Selden

Answer 11

‘We are left with a maimed (permanently damaged) society’

Question 12

G I Duthie

Answer 12

‘God overthrows the absolutely evil… he deals strangely with the Cordelia’s of this world’

Question 13

Sean McEvoy

Answer 13

‘Lear has to be stripped of all his office and power before he can see through the ideology of kingship’

Question 14

Dollimore

Answer 14

‘a play about power, property and inheritance’.

Question 15

Everett

Answer 15

‘In the storm scene Lear is at his most powerful’.

Question 16

Maxwell

Answer 16

'’King Lear’ is a Christian play set about a Pagan world’

Question 17

Feminist critics

Answer 17

Although there is a positive representation of women, it still reaffirms patriarchal power

Question 18

All Bruce

7

Answer 18

Individuals represent a much greater social divide.

Lear’s actions are a catalyst, not a cause, because this world faces inevitable destruction outside an individuals control

Mistakes seem to have more to do with fatherhood than character

A Renaissance audience would immediately know that he was the villain because of his illegitimacy

‘No one wins in this game’ and forty years later, England would fall apart just like ‘King Lear’ in the English Revolution

‘The gods have not quite yet stood up for bastards’. 1976 says illegitimate children can only be legitimate if their parents marry

‘You can be an angle (Cordelia), or you can be a monster (Goneril and Regan). There is no middle ground’.

Question 19

All Smith

2

Answer 19

'’King Lear’ tells King James how not to rule’.

'’King Lear’ is dystopian’.

Question 20

All McLuskie

2

Answer 20

‘presents women as the source of primal sin of lust’

‘Shakespeare reinforces patriarchal power’