King Lear Quotes Flashcards
Lear
Gods and Justice
Act 2 Scene 2 after Goneril and Regan have betrayed him
‘Show obedience, if you yourselves are old, Make it your cause. Send down, and take my part’.
Lear is asking the gods to take his side and punish Goneril and Regan.
Edmund
We get what we deserve
Act 5 Scene 3
‘The wheel is come full circle’.
Edmund has been mortally wounded and says he got what he deserves. But does he deserve death?
Albany
Friends and Foes deservings
Act 5 Scene 3
‘All friends shall taste the wages of their virtue and all foes the cup of their deservings’. Explains why Edgar and Kent get to rule. However, this statement seems out of place as Lear just carried dead Cordelia onto the stage.
Edgar
Gods are just
Act 5 Scene 3
‘The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us’.
Gloucester and Edmund are both punished for their vices.
- ‘plague’ biblical connotations of 10 plagues of Egypt- Exodus
- oxymoron of ‘pleasant vices’. Pleasant immorality
- ‘the gods are just’ suggests he is trying to convince himself to believe it so that he can go to heaven
Gloucester
The gods
Famous quote
Act 4 Scene 1
‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport’.
- simile
- ‘wanton boys’ suggests they are spiteful, immature.
- ‘The gods are indifferent to human suffering and kill easily.’
- ‘sport’ associated with Gloucester at beginning
Kent
Wheel of Fortune
Act 2 Scene 2
‘Fortune, good night, smile once more, turn thy wheel’
Edgar
Last lines of the play
‘The weight of this sad time we must obey; speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long.
- royal ‘we’ evades closure but also suggests authority
- compare to Shakespeare’s other tragedies endings; ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Macbeth’ and ‘Hamlet’. They all have a sense of closure and moving forwards
Kent
Lear is dead
Act 5 Scene 3
‘Vex not his ghost: O let him pass! He hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer.’
- harsh sounds ‘t’, ‘s’ and ‘ck’
- rack was a torture instrument
‘Her voice
‘was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman’
Lear after Cordelia’s death
5.3
- soft tone
- A04 expectations of women
‘Is this the promised end?’
‘Or image of that horror?’
Kent and Edgar as Lear brings Cordelia’s body
5.3
- not rhythmic. Shows chaos, uncertainty
- ‘promised end’ is Judgement Day
‘I fear I am not’
‘in my perfect mind’
Lear with Cordelia and Doctor
4.7
- returning to clarity
- ‘fear’ suggests he is concerned, starting to have rational feelings again
- doesn’t use royal ‘we’, self recognition
‘When we are born
‘we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools’
Lear- stage of life
4.6
-metatextual: play talking about a play
‘Through tatter’d clothes
‘small vices do appear robes and furr’d gowns hide all’
Lear
4.6
- tone is rough for ‘tatter’d’ but smooth for ‘robes and furr’d’. The rich are corrupt and can cover it up with money
- clothes is a metaphor for money
- links to Lear in 3 iv when Lear takes off his clothes, symbolising he is getting rid if his corrupt past
‘The worst is not’
‘so long as we can say ‘This is the worst’’
Edgar
4.1
- superlative ‘worst’
- black humour
- ‘o’ sounds, sonorous, deep sound
‘I have no way, and therefore want no eyes;’
‘I stumbled when I saw’
Gloucester
4.1
-physically seeing vs mental knowledge. Life doesn’t take you anyway
‘The prince of darkness’
‘is a gentleman’
Edgar talking about the devil
3.4
‘Poor Tom’s’
‘a cold’
Edgar
3.4
‘expose thyself
to feel what wretches feel’
Lear
3.4
‘Poor naked wretches,
‘wheresoe’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm. How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you from seasons such as these?’
Lear
3.4
‘The art
‘of our necessities is strange that can make vile things precious’
Lear
When you’re desperate everything seems precious
3.2
‘A poor, infirm, weak
and despised old man’
Lear
3.2
‘Blow,
‘and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!’
Lear
3.2
‘Allow not nature
more than nature needs, Man’s life is cheap as beast’s’
Lear
2.4
‘O! Let me not be mad,
not mad, sweet heaven; Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!
Lear
1.5
‘How sharper
‘than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child’
Lear
1.4
‘Now gods,’
‘Stand up for bastards!’
Edmund
1.2
‘Fairest Cordelia’
‘that art most rich, being poor’
France
1.1
‘Nothing
will come of nothing’
Lear
1.1
‘I want that glib (shallow) and oily art’
‘to speak and purpose not’
Cordelia
1.1