King Lear Quotes (1) Flashcards

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1
Q

Gloucester (to Edgar)

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport”

A
  1. Gods- Regan- society and the role they play
  2. God doesn’t care for man even though asked for help. God is playing with us -> lack of justice.
  3. JC Maxwell- “A christian play about a Pegan world”
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2
Q

Gloucester and Edmund

  • Regarding Edmund S1
A
  • “knave” “saucily”
  • Edmunds silence symbolises his position
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3
Q

Edmund to Lear

“My services to your lordship”

A
  • Edmunds polite exterior conceals evil nature.
  • appearance vs reality
  • social standing
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4
Q

“Know that we** have **divided in three our kingdom

A
  • The royal WE
  • “Every Kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to nought” - Matthew 12:25
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5
Q

Gonerill-“Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty”

A

A03- Attitudes to women

-feels free on power

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6
Q

Goneril- “ A love that makes breath poor and speech unable”

A

Hyperbole- Goneril exaggerates her love to please Lear

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7
Q

Cordelia:

[aside] Then poor Cordelia!

A

Foreshadowing- literally poor

No dowry = no pity

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8
Q

“Now, our joy”

A

Favouritsm

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9
Q

Cordelia - “According to my bond”

A

daughter and father

  • Family relationships
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10
Q

Lear: “ Here I disclaim all my paternal care, propquinity and property of blood”

A

Close family ties

Kinship

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11
Q

Lear: “Hence and avoid my sight”

A

Foreshadowing blindness in subplot

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12
Q

Kent: “Thy safety being motive”

A

Kents love has no bounds

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13
Q

“She’s there, and she is yours”

“But now her price has fallen”

A
  • No value/worth
  • Attitudes to women
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14
Q

Cordelia: “ The jewels of our father, with washed eyes”

A

Cordelia can see her sisters true nature

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15
Q

Gloucester (A1 S2)

“Hum! Conspiracy! Sleep till I waked him- you should enjoy half his revenue”

A

Theme: Fathers misjudge children

  • Edmunds villiany prepares the way for Goneril and Regans treachery in the next act
  • Is taken in by false appearances and words, just like Lear
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16
Q

Edmund:

” All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit”

A

A04- Feels like he can control his own fate- illegitimate- god doesn’t decide.

-Illegitimacy- bided his time- Not usual to speak out and therefore is believed. Not something which would be made up.

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17
Q

Lear (A1 S4)

“What art thou?”

“What art thou?”

“What services canst thou do?”

A

Repetitive questions- confused.

Might know Caius is Kent

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18
Q

Lear: “Go you, call hither my Fool”

A
  • had to call 4 times
  • loss of power
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19
Q

Fool: “and did the third a blessing against his will”

A
  • Cordelia has benefitted
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20
Q

Fool (to Lear)

“my boy”

A

changed position to Lears conscience

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21
Q

Fool: “the hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, that it had its head bit off by its young”

A
  • masking and deciet
  • Bird imagery
  • Turn on those who rasied them
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22
Q

Lear: “Woe,that too late repents”

A

-Realises he has acted unwisely

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23
Q

[Exeunt KENT and KNIGHTS]

A
  • symbol of might and importance
  • power
  • With only the support of a few men, he cannot assert himself and regain control
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24
Q

Lear (to Goneril)

“Into her womb and convey sterility”

A
  • Cursing her
  • Calling upon nature
25
Q

Lear: “How sharper than a serpents tooth”

A
  • Sibilence, sly
  • masking- sheds a skin
  • Adam and Eve imagery
26
Q

Lear: I did her wrong

A
  • Recognition increases isolation
27
Q

Gloucester: “Villian”

A
  • Edgar is now viewed by a villian by Gloucester due to Edmunds manipulation
28
Q

Kent: “and turn their halcyon beaks”

A
  • About Oswald
  • King Fisher- if you hung it up, it would twist so the beak was facing the wind
  • False servants liek Oswald will turn their thoughts and deeds to suit their masters
29
Q

Kent: “Fortune, good night; smile once more; turn thy wheel!”

A

Wheel of Fortune mentioned in A2 S2

30
Q

Edgar (ACT 2 S3)

“…my face I’ll grime with filth, blanket my loins, elf all my hairs in knots”

A
  • Listing
  • Stream of Consciousness
  • Edgars situation mirrors Lears- reliant on charity, his world and expectations turned upsidedown.
  • Very short scene- quick descent and urgency
  • Foreshadows further difficulty as a social outcast
  • Assumed madness
31
Q

Lear: “By Jupiter, i swear, no.”

Kent: “By Juno, I swear, ay”

A

Lear- Biggest God- irony lost all power

Kent: Counselling God- he is the advisor

32
Q

A5 S1

Regan (to Edmund)

“Be not familiar with her”

A

A01: do not have sex

A02: Nonchalant but strong.

Imperative verb- an order

33
Q

A5 S1

Goneril

[aside] I had rather lose the battle than that sister/ Should loosen him and me.

A

A01: would rather lose the battle to France than let Regan have Edmund

A02: Dramatic and structural

  • Enjambment- physically losing grip

‘that’- removing emotion- not named.

34
Q

A5 S1

Edmund (Soliloquy)

“To both these sisters have I sworn my love;/ each jealous of the other, as the stung/ are of the adder”

A
  • A01 Foreshadows the death of Regan and Gonerill- the snake will live. Realises they are untrustworthy.

AO2: Snake imagery- ‘serpent like’
Similie- ‘as’

AO4- logistically should go with Regan. No longer married and will get the land.

35
Q

A5 S3

Lear

“like birds I’ th’ cage”

A

-A02: bird imagery, caged, free birds.

Simile- may be able to cage their bodies but not their souls

36
Q

A5 S3

Lear

“And pray,and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh/ at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues”

A

AO1: listing all the things they’ll do in the future.

-Madness? denial of reality

A02: Cordelia is scared- Lear is acting as a parent

37
Q

A5 S3

Lear

“And fire us hence like foxes… The good years shall devour them”

A

AO1: Karma will come around

A02: “The good years..” - personifying time and years

-Simile of foxes- clever and wit

38
Q

A5 S3

Edmund

“To send the old and miserable King”

A

A01: power trip- has risen after Lear

AO2: Iambic Pentametre

  • Song, lyrical
  • motif of age, prejudice carried throughout play
39
Q

A5 S3

Albany and Edmund

[Throws down a glove]

A
  • challenging- aware of power

AO2: Stage direction

AO4:- Edmund was a bastard son- difficult to change publics mind

-Duel

40
Q

A5 S3

Edgar

“…A most toad spotted traitor”

A

Traitor repetition

Toad- low ranking animal

41
Q

A5 S3

Edmund

“The wheel is come full circle; I am here”

A

AO2: repetitive language of destiny and fate

AO4: wheel of fortune

42
Q

A5 S3

“Burst smilingly”

A
  • Happened off stage- Dramatic device
43
Q

A5 S3

Lear

“An my poor fool is hanged”

A

Parallel of Cordelia and the fool- both hanged

44
Q

Lear

[dies]

A
  • contrasts his unnatural life with a natural death
  • sudden
45
Q

A5 S3

Kent

“I have a journey sir, shortly to go;/ My master calls me, I must not say no”

A

AO1- Lear from beyond the grave

-Things happen in 3’s- Only Albany, Edgar and Kent survive

A02: Rhyming couplet

46
Q

Goneril (to Edmund)

“wear this; spare speech [giving a favour]”

A

AO1: Gonerils power is through her sexuality

AO2: -want you
AO3: “Women are the source of lust, and Goneril and Regan are destroyed by their desire for Edmund”

AO4: Views on female sexuality- the source of evil

47
Q

A4

Albany (to Goneril)

” Tigers, not daughters”

A

AO1: Abuse of power by female insubordinate

AO2: metaphor- violent and powerful
AO3: McLuskie- “presents women as the source of the primal sin of lust, combining with concerns about the threat to the family posed by female insubordination”

AO4: Women in power and roles of women.

48
Q

A4

Albany (to Goneril)

“like monsters of the deep”

A

AO1: Turning on their own for self preservation

AO2: Simile- Cannibalism

AO3: McLuskie- “presents women as the source of the primal sin of lust, combining with concerns about the threat to the family posed by female insubordination”

A04: Attitudes to women

49
Q

A4

Albany (to Goneril)

“…thou art a fiend/ a woman’s shape doth shield thee”

A

AO1: Manipulated by woman’s innocence

AO2: Metaphor of devil and inside evil. Masking and deceit.

AO3:”either sanctified or demonised”

AO4: Female sexuality- reinfroces ideal of patriarchy.

50
Q

A4
Albany (in relation to Goneril)

“The nature which contemns its origin cannot be borderd certain in itself”

A

AO1: Cannot believe Goneril has turned on her father

AO2:Origin- Lear and how daughters would not be alive without him

AO3:” individuals are destroyed by the workings of political power and historical forces, not by fate of the Gods”- socialisation of daughters

AO4:Divine right of kings

51
Q

A3 S7

Regan and Goneril

“Hang him instantly pluck out his eyes”

A

AO1:Abuse of power

AO2:S.S- immediate reaction to be evil- can no longer conceal themselves

52
Q

A3 S7

Cornwall (to Edmund)

“…the revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding”

A

AO1: Looking out for Edmund- normally aggressive in language

AO2: Irony- Edmund is traitorous

AO3:” conflict between a rigidly hierarchal feudal world of shared values and an emergent new society of the rising individualists who reject old loyalties and beliefs”

53
Q

A3 S7

Regan (about gloucester)

“Ingrateful fox! ‘tis he.”

A

AO1:Mirrored by Lear

AO2:sly, cunning, anger

AO3: “it exposes the economic and social roots of injustice and inequality”

AO4: patriarchy questionned.

54
Q

A3 S7

Gloucester (to Regan et al)

“thy cruel nails pluck out his poor old eyes”

A

AO1: Torture on the old.Believes Lear has been wronged

AO2: Pluck- onomatopeia, poor old eyes

AO3: Victor Kiernan- “An older, more stable age has passed and now men are at the time is, pitiless and selfseeking”

55
Q

A3 S7

Gloucester to Regan et al

“The sea, with such a storm/ At his bate head in hell black night endured”

A

AO1: Goneril and Regan have left Lear vulnerable

AO2:Sea and storm, turbulent mind, age, vulnerable, no crown

AO3:John F Danby “conflict between two views of nature and benign, rational, and divinely ordered, the other self governed by self interest and appetite.”

56
Q

A3 S7

Gloucester

“I shall see/the winged vengeance overtake such children”

A

AO1:KArma

AO2:More than capable. Devil imagery

AO3: Wilson Knight “christian doctrines of redemprion and patience, heaven and hell”

AO4: Wheel of fortune and religion

57
Q

A3 S7

Regan (to Gloucester after he calls for Edmund)

“Thou call’st on him that hates thee”

A

AO1: The one who told them

AO2: ‘hates; - Harsh words to reveal reality

AO3: “Edmund is the model of the new man govered by self interest”

AO4: Would normally have no voice due to illegitimacy

58
Q

Gloucester

“Oh my follies! Then Edgar was abused”

A

AO1: Aware of Edmunds manipulation

AO2: 360 degree- can now see clearly - Wheel of fortune and redemption

59
Q

Cordelia

“O thou good kent!”

A

Benign character

‘o’ - praying, symbol of hope