King Lear Quotes Flashcards
Gloucester to Kent
Describes how Edmund was conceived. Gloucester is not repentant for having a bastard son; this will come back to haunt him later.
“Though this knave came something saucily to the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair, there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowleg’d”
Lear to Gloucester/Kent
Out of laziness, Lear splits kingdom in three. Whichever daughter flatters Lear the most will get the most opulent third.
“We have divided / In three our kingdom; and ‘tis our fast intent / To shake all cares and business from our age.”
Cordelia to audience
Cordelia’s first words connect her to the audience. She refuses to flatter her father.
“What shall Cordelia speak? Love, / and be silent.”
Cordelia to Lear
She doesn’t want anything from Lear except fatherly love.
“Nothing, my lord.”
Lear to Cordelia
Mocking her; since she won’t flatter him, he won’t give her anything to get married with.
“Let it be so: thy truth then be thy dow’r!”
Lear to Kent
Cordelia was his favorite, and he had planned to stay with Cordelia in his old age
“I lov’d her most, and thought to set my rest / On her kind nursery.”
Kent to Lear
Calling him out on his flattery competition. (duty = Kent, power = Lear)
“Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak / When power to flattery bows?”
Lear to Kent
Banishing Kent from the kingdom because he spoke out against Lear in front of the Royal Court.
“If, on the tenth day following, / Thy banish’d trunk be found in our dominions, / The moment is thy death.”
Lear to Burgundy
Stabbing Cordelia in the back; impressing upon Burgundy that Cordelia is undesirable as a bride because he won’t give her anything.
“Will you, with those infirmities she owes, / Unfriended, new adopted to our hate, / Dow’r’d with our curse, and stranger’d with our oath, / Take her, or leave her?”
Cordelia to Lear
She didn’t commit a crime to lose Lear’s love, she just retained her virtue and integrity, and in so doing, she has lost Lear’s love.
“It is no vicious blot, murther, or foulness, / No unchaste action, or dishonored step, / That hath depriv’d me of your grace and favor, / But even for want of that for which I am richer— / A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue / That I am glad I have not, though not to have it / Hath lost me in your liking.”
Lear to Cordelia
In response to Cordelia saying that she did nothing wrong. This quote shows just how unhinged Lear is.
“Better thou / Hadst not been born than not t’ have pleas’d me better.”
King of France to Lear
This guy recognizes the value of Cordelia’s virtue and so he accepts her as his bride without any money from Lear.
“She is herself a dowry.”
King of France to Burgundy
Mocking Burgundy for not recognizing Cordelia’s true value, which is not in the form of money.
“Not all the dukes of wat’rish Burgundy / Can buy this unpriz’d precious maid of me.”
Cordelia to Regan and Goneril
Cordelia is very intelligent and realizes that Goneril and Regan are conniving and will want to take over their father’s power. She has the spunk and the verve to say this in front of the entire court.
“I know you what you are.”
Regan to Goneril
Foreshadowing the upsets in Lear’s kingdom / conspiring to control Lear in his retirement
“Such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent’s banishment.”
Edmund (soliloquy)
Being a child born out of wedlock, he is enraged that a cultural tradition is holding him back from getting his father’s power.
“Thou, Nature, art my goddess, to thy law / My services are bound. / Wherefore should I / Stand in the plague of custom, and permit / The curiosity of nations to deprive me, / For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines / Lag of a brother?”
Edmund (soliloquy)
Here Edmund is saying that since bastard children are born with fierce passion, they should be celebrated, even above legitimate children, because legitimate children are (literally) born from a sense of duty, rather than the passion that consumes lovers.
“Why brand they us / With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base? / Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take / More composition, and fierce quality, / Than doth within a dull, stale, tired bed / Go to th’ creating a whole tribe of fops, / Got ‘tween asleep and wake?”
Edmund to Gloucester
Edmund presents to Gloucester the letter that he forged in Edgar’s name, with a supposed (ridiculous) plot to murder their father and seize his lands and wealth.
“I hope, for my brother’s justification, he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.”
Gloucester to Edmund
Gloucester fails to see through this sham of Edmund’s, and so he completely believes that Edgar actually wrote this letter to Edmund.
“O villain, villain! his very opinion in the letter.”
Edmund to audience
Criticizing Gloucester for blaming his fortune on the stars.
Also, here Shakespeare mocks the human desire to lay blame elsewhere besides on oneself.
“An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!”
Edgar, Edmund
Edmund now feigns innocence in order to gain Edgar’s trust, so that he can betray him later.
“Some villain hath done me wrong.”
“That’s my fear.”
Edgar,
Edgar to audience
Announcing his plans to dupe Gloucester and Edgar into allowing him to have the power, lands and wealth.
“Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit.”
Goneril to Oswald
Conspiring to take over Lear’s power. She wants the servants to dress as she says so that she can show Lear who’s boss, even now.
“Put on what weary negligence you please, / You and your fellows; I’d have it come to question. / If he distaste it, let him to my sister, / Whose mind and mine I know in that are one, / Not to be overrul’d. Idle old man, / That still would manage those authorities / That he hath given away!”
Kent to audience
Working up the courage not to be outspoken, and showing his devotion to Lear; he’ll disguise himself and come back to serve Lear.
“Now, banish’d Kent, / If thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn’d, / So may it come, thy master, whom thou lov’st, / Shall find thee full of labors.”
Fool to Kent
The Fool is telling Kent that he’s foolish to follow Lear, because Lear doesn’t deserve it.
“if thou follow him, thou must needs wear my coxcomb.”
Fool to Lear
The Fool has license to criticize anyone, even the king, and so he does here. The “golden one” is Cordelia (she has blonde hair), and the Fool is calling Lear out on letting her go.
“thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gav’st thy golden one away.”
Fool to Lear
I don’t like being a fool very much, but being you would be worse.
“I had rather be any kind o’ thing than a Fool, and yet I would not be thee”
Fool to Lear
The Fool points out that Regan and Goneril want to take over Lear’s power, just like the baby cuckoo bird eventually takes over its host’s nest.
“The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, / That it had it head bit off by it young.”
Lear to Goneril
Lear thinks he can still count on Goneril to be on his side. (Oh how wrong he is.)
“Yet have I left a daughter.”
Lear to Goneril/Albany
Lear is realizing that Goneril and Regan are completely ungrateful and is burned by it.
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child!”
Albany to Goneril
This is the first sign that Albany wants to be reasonable about taking over Lear’s power.
“Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”
Fool to Lear
When you’re young, you can bounce back from foolishness. The only thing that can protect you in old age is wisdom. (Lear obviously missed this.)
“Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.”
Curan to Edmund
This is a consequence of Lear dividing the kingdom: Cornwall and Albany are now fighting for complete control of the whole kingdom.
“Have you heard of no likely wars toward, / ‘twixt the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany?”
Edmund to Edgar
Setting Edgar up.
“Pardon me: / In cunning I must draw my sword upon you. / Draw, seem to defend yourself; now quit you well.— / Yield! Come before my father. Light ho, here!— / Fly, brother.”
Edmund to Gloucester
Edmund’s MO (modus operandi, mode of operation) is to gain people’s trust, use that trust to his advantage, and then betray them.
“Look, sir, I bleed. . . . [Edgar] Fled this way, sir, when by no means he / could—
Persuade me to the murther of you lordship.”
Gloucester to Edmund
Sealing the deal: now that Gloucester thinks Edgar was trying to kill Edmund, Gloucester entrusts his lands and wealth to him rather than to Edgar, his legitimate son.
“of my land, / Loyal and natural boy, I’ll work the means / To make thee capable.”
Cornwall to Edmund
IRONY!!! Edmund seems so virtuous because he supposedly foiled a plot to murder Gloucester, so now Cornwall is trusting him with some power.
“For you, Edmund, / Whose virtue and obedience doth this instant / So much commend itself, you shall be ours. / Natures of such deep trust we shall much need; / You we first seize on.”
Kent to Oswald
Insulting Oswald to put him in his place, because Oswald has been strutting about the castle indulging his own self-interests, while Kent has always been loyal to Lear.
“A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver’d, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave.”
Kent to Cornwall
Stone-cutters and painters can make something beautiful even if they’re not that skilled, but tailors have to be skilled to produce a work of art, and so a tailor fashioned Oswald at his birth, because Oswald is an abhorrence.
“a stone-cutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though they had been but two years o’ th’ trade.”
Cornwall to Kent
Cornwall wants to emphasize that Lear no longer has any power, so he puts his most loyal servant into the stocks.
“Fetch forth the stocks! / You stubborn ancient knave, you reverent braggart, / We’ll teach you.”
Kent to Cornwall
Kent tells Cornwall that he’s too old to be punished, he’s just serving the rightful king.
“Sir, I am too old to learn. / Call not your stocks for me, I serve the King, / On whose employment I was sent to you.”
Edgar to audience
Edgar’s second soliloquy reveals his true biterness about Edmund and Gloucester.
“My face I’ll grime with filth, / Blanket my loins, elf all my hairs in knots, / And with presented nakedness outface / The winds and persecutions of the sky. / The country gives me proof and president / Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, / Strike in their numb’d and mortified arms / Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary; / And with this horrible object, from low farms, / Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills, / Sometimes with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, / Enforce their charity.”
Fool to Lear
The worst is yet to come. (speaking about Goneril and Regan)
“Winter’s not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way.”
Gloucester to Lear
Playing the peacemaker
“I would have all well betwixt you.”
Regan to Lear
Putting their conspiracy into action. Goneril has already rejected Lear, so Lear goes to Regan for charity, but Regan rejects him too.
“I cannot think my sister in the least / Would fail her obligation. If, sir, perchance / She have restrain’d the riots of your followers, / ‘Tis on such ground and to such wholesome end / As clears her from all blame.”
Regan to Lear
Putting their conspiracy into action. Goneril has already rejected Lear, so Lear goes to Regan for charity, but Regan rejects him too.
Regan to Lear
Again, Regan and Goneril are tag-teaming Lear to get his power from him.
“O, sir, you are old, / Nature in you stands on the very verge / Of his confine. You should be rul’d and led / By some discretion that discerns your state / Better than you yourself. Therefore I pray you / That to our sister you do make return. / Say you have wrong’d her.”
Lear to Regan
Recognizing that he’s vulnerable in his old age.
“Age is unnecessary.”
Goneril to Lear
“All’s not offense that indiscretion finds / And dotage terms so.”
Lear to Goneril/Regan
This starts Regan and Goneril’s process of stripping Lear of all his knights.
“Return to her? And fifty men dismiss’d? / No, rather I abjure all roofs, and choose / To wage against the enmity o’ th’ air.”
Lear to Goneril/Regan
Goneril and Regan are passing Lear back and forth in an attempt to get him to surrender his power.
“Return to her? / Persuade me rather to be slave and sumpter / To this detested groom.”
Lear to Goneril
Counting on Goneril to be more hospitable than Regan, because she flattered him more.
“Thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty, / And thou art twice her love.”
Goneril to Lear
More cutting down the numbers of the knights Lear gets to keep.
“What need you five and twenty? ten? Or five? / To follow in a house where twice so many / Have a command to tend you?”
Goneril to Lear
More cutting down the numbers of the knights Lear gets to keep.
Regan to Lear/Goneril
Why does Lear even need one knight? He’ll survive.
“What need one?”
Lear to Regan and Goneril
Cursing them for being ungrateful and turning him out.
“you unnatural hags, / I will have such revenges on you both / That all the world shall—I will do such things— / What they are yet I know not, but they shall be / The terrors of the earth!”
Cornwall to Gloucester
Telling Gloucester to shut Lear out. Gloucester does not say no, for which he will suffer later.
“Shut up our doors, my lord, ‘tis a wild night, / My Regan counsels well. Come out o’ th’ storm.”
Kent to Gentleman
Letting the audience know that France is invading England. This means that Cordelia wants to overthrow Regan and Goneril to restore the power to its rightful owner, her father Lear.
“But, true it is, from France there comes a power / Into this scatter’d kingdom; who already, / Wise in our negligence, have secret feet / In some of our best ports, and are at point / To show their open banner.”
Kent to Gentleman
The Gentleman is going to Cordelia. She does not know that Kent came back (disguised as Caius), so giving her this ring would let her know that she has an ally behind enemy lines.
“If you shall see Cordelia,– / As fear not but you shall,–show her this ring; / And she will tell you who your fellow is.”
Fool to Lear
The Fool is begging Lear to beg Regan and Goneril to let him back in; the night is cold and terrible. Nature treats everyone the same, whether king or peasant.
“Good nuncle, in, and ask thy daughters’ blessing: / here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool.”
Kent to Lear
Again, nature treats all men the same.
“things that love night / Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies / Gallow the very wanderers of the dark, / And make them keep their caves: since I was man, / Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, / Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never / Remember to have heard.”
Lear to Kent
Ultimate self-pity, which is the worst thing he can do at this point. He’s lamenting what others have done to him rather than taking a hit to his pride by taking responsibility for what he himself has done to cause his downfall.
“I am a man / More sinn’d against than sinning
Fool to Lear
Prophecy! 2 halves: first describes the present as the future, and the second describes something that the Fool will never come to know.
“When priests are more in word than matter; / When brewers mar their malt with
water; / When nobles are their tailors’ tutors; / No heretics burn’d, but wenches’
suitors; / When every case in law is right; / No squire in debt, nor no poor knight; / When slanders do not live in tongues; / Nor cutpurses come not to throngs; / When usurers tell their gold i’ the field; / And bawds and whores do churches build; / Then shall the realm of Albion / Come to great confusion: / Then comes the time, who lives to see’t, / That going shall be used with feet. / This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live before his time.”
