King Lear Quotes (1) Flashcards
Gloucester (to Edgar)
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport”
- Gods- Regan- society and the role they play
- God doesn’t care for man even though asked for help. God is playing with us -> lack of justice.
- JC Maxwell- “A christian play about a Pegan world”
Gloucester and Edmund
- Regarding Edmund S1
- “knave” “saucily”
- Edmunds silence symbolises his position
Edmund to Lear
“My services to your lordship”
- Edmunds polite exterior conceals evil nature.
- appearance vs reality
- social standing
“Know that we** have **divided in three our kingdom”
- The royal WE
- “Every Kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to nought” - Matthew 12:25
Gonerill-“Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty”
A03- Attitudes to women
-feels free on power
Goneril- “ A love that makes breath poor and speech unable”
Hyperbole- Goneril exaggerates her love to please Lear
Cordelia:
[aside] Then poor Cordelia!
Foreshadowing- literally poor
No dowry = no pity
“Now, our joy”
Favouritsm
Cordelia - “According to my bond”
daughter and father
- Family relationships
Lear: “ Here I disclaim all my paternal care, propquinity and property of blood”
Close family ties
Kinship
Lear: “Hence and avoid my sight”
Foreshadowing blindness in subplot
Kent: “Thy safety being motive”
Kents love has no bounds
“She’s there, and she is yours”
“But now her price has fallen”
- No value/worth
- Attitudes to women
Cordelia: “ The jewels of our father, with washed eyes”
Cordelia can see her sisters true nature
Gloucester (A1 S2)
“Hum! Conspiracy! Sleep till I waked him- you should enjoy half his revenue”
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
Edmund:
” All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit”
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.
Lear (A1 S4)
“What art thou?”
“What art thou?”
“What services canst thou do?”
Repetitive questions- confused.
Might know Caius is Kent
Lear: “Go you, call hither my Fool”
- had to call 4 times
- loss of power
Fool: “and did the third a blessing against his will”
- Cordelia has benefitted
Fool (to Lear)
“my boy”
changed position to Lears conscience
Fool: “the hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, that it had its head bit off by its young”
- masking and deciet
- Bird imagery
- Turn on those who rasied them
Lear: “Woe,that too late repents”
-Realises he has acted unwisely
[Exeunt KENT and KNIGHTS]
- symbol of might and importance
- power
- With only the support of a few men, he cannot assert himself and regain control
Lear (to Goneril)
“Into her womb and convey sterility”
- Cursing her
- Calling upon nature
Lear: “How sharper than a serpents tooth”
- Sibilence, sly
- masking- sheds a skin
- Adam and Eve imagery
Lear: I did her wrong
- Recognition increases isolation
Gloucester: “Villian”
- Edgar is now viewed by a villian by Gloucester due to Edmunds manipulation
Kent: “and turn their halcyon beaks”
- 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
Kent: “Fortune, good night; smile once more; turn thy wheel!”
Wheel of Fortune mentioned in A2 S2
Edgar (ACT 2 S3)
“…my face I’ll grime with filth, blanket my loins, elf all my hairs in knots”
- 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
Lear: “By Jupiter, i swear, no.”
Kent: “By Juno, I swear, ay”
Lear- Biggest God- irony lost all power
Kent: Counselling God- he is the advisor
A5 S1
Regan (to Edmund)
“Be not familiar with her”
A01: do not have sex
A02: Nonchalant but strong.
Imperative verb- an order
A5 S1
Goneril
[aside] I had rather lose the battle than that sister/ Should loosen him and me.
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.
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”
- 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.
A5 S3
Lear
“like birds I’ th’ cage”
-A02: bird imagery, caged, free birds.
Simile- may be able to cage their bodies but not their souls
A5 S3
Lear
“And pray,and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh/ at gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues”
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
A5 S3
Lear
“And fire us hence like foxes… The good years shall devour them”
AO1: Karma will come around
A02: “The good years..” - personifying time and years
-Simile of foxes- clever and wit
A5 S3
Edmund
“To send the old and miserable King”
A01: power trip- has risen after Lear
AO2: Iambic Pentametre
- Song, lyrical
- motif of age, prejudice carried throughout play
A5 S3
Albany and Edmund
[Throws down a glove]
- challenging- aware of power
AO2: Stage direction
AO4:- Edmund was a bastard son- difficult to change publics mind
-Duel
A5 S3
Edgar
“…A most toad spotted traitor”
Traitor repetition
Toad- low ranking animal
A5 S3
Edmund
“The wheel is come full circle; I am here”
AO2: repetitive language of destiny and fate
AO4: wheel of fortune
A5 S3
“Burst smilingly”
- Happened off stage- Dramatic device
A5 S3
Lear
“An my poor fool is hanged”
Parallel of Cordelia and the fool- both hanged
Lear
[dies]
- contrasts his unnatural life with a natural death
- sudden
A5 S3
Kent
“I have a journey sir, shortly to go;/ My master calls me, I must not say no”
AO1- Lear from beyond the grave
-Things happen in 3’s- Only Albany, Edgar and Kent survive
A02: Rhyming couplet
Goneril (to Edmund)
“wear this; spare speech [giving a favour]”
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
A4
Albany (to Goneril)
” Tigers, not daughters”
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.
A4
Albany (to Goneril)
“like monsters of the deep”
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
A4
Albany (to Goneril)
“…thou art a fiend/ a woman’s shape doth shield thee”
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.
A4
Albany (in relation to Goneril)
“The nature which contemns its origin cannot be borderd certain in itself”
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
A3 S7
Regan and Goneril
“Hang him instantly pluck out his eyes”
AO1:Abuse of power
AO2:S.S- immediate reaction to be evil- can no longer conceal themselves
A3 S7
Cornwall (to Edmund)
“…the revenges we are bound to take upon your traitorous father are not fit for your beholding”
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”
A3 S7
Regan (about gloucester)
“Ingrateful fox! ‘tis he.”
AO1:Mirrored by Lear
AO2:sly, cunning, anger
AO3: “it exposes the economic and social roots of injustice and inequality”
AO4: patriarchy questionned.
A3 S7
Gloucester (to Regan et al)
“thy cruel nails pluck out his poor old eyes”
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”
A3 S7
Gloucester to Regan et al
“The sea, with such a storm/ At his bate head in hell black night endured”
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.”
A3 S7
Gloucester
“I shall see/the winged vengeance overtake such children”
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
A3 S7
Regan (to Gloucester after he calls for Edmund)
“Thou call’st on him that hates thee”
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
Gloucester
“Oh my follies! Then Edgar was abused”
AO1: Aware of Edmunds manipulation
AO2: 360 degree- can now see clearly - Wheel of fortune and redemption
Cordelia
“O thou good kent!”
Benign character
‘o’ - praying, symbol of hope
