King Lear quotes Flashcards
Lear 1.1
“Nothing will come of nothing, speak again”
Lear, 1.4
“Who is it that can tell me who I am?”
Lear, 3.2
“I am a man more sinn’d against than sinning”
Edgar, 3.4
“Unaccomodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal, as thou art” Spoken in prose, contrasting Lear’s previous blank verse and iambic pentameter, showing he is no longer “Every inch a king”This was also the first recorded use of the phrase ‘unaccomodated man’ in english language
Bradley
“He dies in agony… Not of pain but of ecstasy” (In the belief that Cordelia is alive)
Bruce
“Although Lear’s actions don’t help, they are the catalyst rather than the cause”
Harold Bloom
“The descent from monarch to ‘unaccommodated man’ thus conveys most potently man’s fragility, fallibility and fatality”
Lear finally finds wisdom
“They told me I was everything: ‘tis a lis, I an not age-proof”
A. W. Schlegal
Lear’s downfall is a “fall from the highest elevation into the deepest abyss of misery”
Regan, 1.1
“He hath but slenderly known himself”
Fintan O’Toole
“In losing Cordelia, Lear loses his connection to that ordered feudal world”
A. C. Bradley
“Evil is overcome and replaced by order, unity and goodness”
Hazlitt
“Giddy anarchy”
Dr Samuel Johnson
Gloucester’s blinding scene is “one of the most painful in all English theatre”
Jan Kott
“All that remains at the end of this gigantic pantomime is the earth, empty and bleeding”
Samuel Johnson
“There is no scene which does not add to the aggravation or distress”
Samuel Johnson
“A play in which the wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry”
D. J. Enright
“The principal characters are not those who act but those who suffer”
George Bernard Shaw
“No man will ever write a better tragedy than Lear”
Kent, 1.1 [response to Lear]
“See better”
Goneril, 1.1
“Dearer than eyesight”
Gloucester, 4.1
“I stumbled when I saw”
Gloucester, 4.6
“I see it feelingly”
Cordelia, 1.1
“With wash’d eyes, Cordelia leaves you”
Foakes
“[Gloucester] gains true sight after he is blinded”
Lear, 1.1 [to Kent]
“Out of my sight”
Lear, 1.1
“Set my rest on her kind nursery”
Lear 1.1
“Great rivals in our youngest daughter’s loveLong in our court”
Lear, 2.4
“Thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty, and thou art love her twice”
R. W. Chambers
“A vast poem on the victory of true love”
Mark R. Schwehn
“Over time, duty and love become one and the same”
Hazlitt
“The indiscreet simplicity of her love and the hollowness of her sisters’ pretensions”
Cavall [on Edgar]
“He wants his father to still be a father, powerful, so that he can still remain a child”
Kahn
“The reason for Lear’s failure is that he fights against his own repressed need for a mother figure”
Lear, 1.1
“I lov’d her most”
Lear, 1.1 [imperatives]
“Speak” “give” “attend” “mend”
Lear, 4.7
“I am a very foolish, fond old man”
Edmund, 1.2
Refuses to “stand in the plague of custom”
France, 1.1
“That art most rich being poor”
Mark R. Schwehn
“Edgar decides to become a beggar, not just any other disguise, because he feels worthless”
Colie
“Lear and Gloucester’s realisation about the poor threatens the aristocratic code of the time”
Dollimore
“Lear loses his mind when he loses his social status”
Kenneth Muir
On Edgar”The roles he plays are the means by which he matures into royalty”
Lear, 1.1
“Her price is fall’n”
Gloucester, 1.2 [on Edgar]
“Unnatural, detested, brutish villain”
Lear, 2.4
“We are not ourselves when nature, being oppress’d, commands the mind to suffer with the body”
Edgar, 5.2
“Here father, take the shadow of this tree for your good host”
Gloucester, 1.2
“these late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us”
Lear, 1.1 [to daughters, on love test]
“where nature doth with merit a challenge”
Lear, 1.1
“A wretch whom nature is ashamed”
What words appear 40+ times?
“Nature” “natural” “unnatural”
Hooven
“Death is neither punishment nor reward: it is simply the nature of things”
Bradley [on the storm on the heath]
“Nature herself joins with the forces of evil in man to overpower the weak”
John F. Dannby [Historicist reading]
Argues that Lear dramatizes the meaning of nature, reflecting a debate about what nature was really like in Shakespeare’s time.
Edmund, 1.2
“Thou, nature, art my goddess”
Fool, 1.4
“May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse” Professional eccentric witty madness
Regan, 3.7
“Hang him instantly” Obsessed with madness of evil
Stage direction, 4.6
“Enter lear, [mad]”
Lear, 3.3
“My wits begin to turn”
Gloucester, 4.6
“The king is mad”
Edgar, 4.6
“O matter and impertinency mixed! Reason, in madness!”
Lear, 4.6
“Let copulation thrive… There is sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption”
Muir
“Edgar, in acting madness, precipitates Lear’s”
Orwell
“Madness is used to veil Shakespeare’s social criticism”
Heilman
on wicked characters “Their cool sanity is transmuted into moral madness”
Kiernan Ryan
“[Lear] displays a degree of rational thought amongst madness”
Edgar, 2.3
“Edgar I nothing am”
Human justice: Lear, 4.6
“Plate sin with gold,And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks”
Justice and morality: Edgar, 5.3
“The dark and vicious place where thee he got Cost him his eyes”
Divine justice: Lear, 1,1
Swears by Pagan deities: “Sacres radiance of the sun” “Mysteries of Hecate and the night” “Apollo” “Jupiter”
Divine justice: Lear, 2.4 [to Goneril]
“If you do love old-men… Send down and take my part” begging for help from the heavens
What word is said 31 times in the play?
“God”
Divine justice: benign: Regan, 2.4
“Bless’d Gods”
Divine justice: benign:Albany, 4.2
“You are aboveYou justicers”
Divine justice: benign:Cordelia, 4.7
“O you kind Gods”
Divine justice: benign:Edgar, 5.3
“The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices,Make instruments to plague us”
Divine justice: benign:Gloucester, 4.6
“You ever-gentle Gods”
Divine justice: malign: Gloucester, 4.6
“As flies to wanton boys are we to th’gods;They kill us for their sport”
Divine Justice: Norman Maclean
“Lear believed in a universe controlled by divine authority, harmony, ordered in it’s parts”
Human justice: Goneril, 5.3
“The laws are mine, not thine. Who can arraign me for’t?”
Edgar, 1.3
“Some villain hath done me wrong”
Edgar, 2.3
“Edgar I nothing am”
Edgar, 5.3
“We should speak what we feel, not what we ought to say”
Edgar 5.3 [to Edmund]
“I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund”
Edgar, 2.3
“I will preserve myself to take the basest and most poorest shape”
Gloucester, 4.1
“O dear son Edgar… Might I but live to see thee in my touchI’d say I had eyes again”
Edgar, 4.6
“Reason, in madness!”
Lear, 3.4 [on Edgar]
“Philosopher”
Edgar, 3.4 [on Lear]
“Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art”
Cavell
“He wants his father still to be a father, powerful, so that he can still remain a child”
Leo Kirschbaum
“His various roles do not tell hs more abour Edgar”
Fool, 1.4
“I am a fool, thou art nothing”
Fool, 2.4
“Fathers that wear ragsDo make their children blind”
Fool, 1.5
“She that’s a maid now”
Lear, 5.3
“And my poor fool is hanged”
G. Wilson Knight
“the Fool is used as a chorus”
Goneril, 1.4
“All-licens’d”
France, 1.1
“Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich being poor”
Lear, 4.7
“You are a spirit I know” Cordelia has transcended physical level
Cordelia, 1.1
“The jewels of our father, with wash’d eyes Cordelia leaves you”
Brandes
“The living emblem of womanly dignity”
Cordelia, 1.1 [to G+R]
“I know you what you are”
Goneril, 1.1 [to Regan]
“You see how full of change his age is”
Goneril, 1.3
“Old fools are babes again”
Goneril, 2.4 [to Lear]
“What need you five-and-twenty? Ten? Or five?”
Goneril, 1.5 [to Albany]
“this milky gentleness and course of yours” Macbeth: “Milk of human kindness”
Goneril, 3.7
“Pluck out his eyes”
Goneril, 4.2 [to Albany]
“Milk-liver’d man! That bear’st a cheek for blows”
Goneril, 5.1
“I had rather lose the battle than that sister Should loosen him and me”
Goneril, 5.3 [aside]
“If not I’ll ne’er trust medicine”
J. Stampfer
“[Goneril] is, from the point of view of conscience, an animal or beast of prey”
Hazlitt
“Their deliberate hypocrisy adds the lasting finishing to the odiousness of their characters”
Goneril, 1.1 [to Lear]
“I love you more than words can wield the matter”
Regan, 2.2 [sadistic]
“Till night, my Lord, and all night too”
Regan, 3.7 [sadistic]
“One side will mock the other”
Regan, 2.4
“O, sir, you are old”
Regan, 3.7
“Hang him instantly”
Wharton
Goneril and Regan’s behaviour is “Too diabolical to be creditable”
Regan, 1.1
“I am made of that selfsame metal that my sister is, And prize me at her worth.”
Edmund, 1.2
“Now, gods, stand up for bastards”
Gloucester, 2.1
“Loyal and natural boy”
Edmund, 3.3
“The younger rises when the old doth fall”
Edmund, 5.1 [on Goneril and Regan]
“To both these sisters I have sworn my love”
Edmund, 5.3
“Some good I mean to do Despite of mine own nature”
G. Wilson Knight
“Edmund’s fate is nobly tragic”
Hazlitt
“All [he does is] managed with an uncommon degree of skill and power”
When Edmund is punished for his ruthless rise to power, he says “the wheel is come in full circle, I am here”. This is similar to what?
Sophocles ‘Ajax’ when upon the death of Ajax, Teucer states “that wheel comes surely round”
Edmund, 1.1 [to Gloucester]
“No my lord”
Gloucester, 4.1
“I stumbled when I saw”
Gloucester 4.1
“As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods.They kill us for their sport”
Gloucester, 3.4
“I am almost mad myself”
Edmund, 1.2
“A credulous father”
Gloucester 3.4 [to Lear and Edgar]
“Our flesh and blood is grown so vile”
Gloucester,
“I am your host, do me no foul play, friends”
Gloucester, 2.1
“My old heart is crack’d, it’s cracked!”
Kent, 5.3
“I have a journey sir, shortly to go.My master calls me; I must not say no”
Kent, 1.1 [to Edmund]
“I must love you and sue to know you better”
Kent, 1.1 [opening lines]
“I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall”
Kent, 1.1 [pun]
“I cannot conceive you”
Kent, 4.3
“It is the stars, the stars above us govern our conditions”
Kent, 2.2 [to Oswald]
“Filthy, worsted-stocking knave”
Kent, 2.4 [says of himself]
“Having more man than wit about me”
Coleridge
“The nearest to perfect goodness in all Shakespeare’s characters”
Kent, 1.1
“See better”
Dollimore
“King Lear questions the Jacobean status quo”
Nahum Tate
“A heap of jewels, unstrung and unpolished”
Emma Smith
The lack of emotion in evil characters would have worried Christian Jacobean audience, especially as King Lear is “a Christian play about a pagan world”
