Sight and Blindness

Question 1

What is a key theme throughout King Lear?

Answer 1

The importance of seeing yourself and the world clearly

Question 2

How is seeing yourself clearly reflected throughout Lear?

Answer 2

Through sight and blindness, light and dark, eyes and weeping

Question 3

What is the earliest reference to eyes?

Answer 3

In (I:I) after Lear explains his ‘darker purpose’

Question 4

What has Lear failed to do when he says ‘darker purpose’ (I:I:36)?

Answer 4

Lear has failed to see the true intentions of his daughters, the truth to their words even though the are manipulating him and the situation

Question 5

How does Kent warn the King that he is behaving foolishly?

Answer 5

“See better, Lear” (I:I:158)

Question 6

What does Kent beg of Lear in the first Act?

Answer 6

To let him remain: “The true blank of thine eye” (I:I:159)

Question 7

How does Lear respond to Kent’s open mindedness about his decisions and leadership?

Answer 7

“Out of my sight” (I:I157)

Question 8

What is Lear unable to see?

Answer 8

Anyone’s faults or merits clearly especially his own or those he trusts leading to his ‘metaphorical blindness’

Question 9

What does Lear refuse to do with those who offend him?

Answer 9

He refuses to look at those who offend him and as a result banishes them from their sight

Question 10

Apart from Kent, who else criticises Lear’s actions and examines/considers them closely?

Answer 10

The Fool

Question 11

What quotation does the Fool use to sum up Lear’s behaviour in a metaphor?

Answer 11

“So out went the candle and we were left darkling” (I:IV:213)

Question 12

What does the Fool’s metaphor act as?

Answer 12

A prediction for the end of Act II when Lear is overwhelmed by dark thoughts and shut out in the storm

Question 13

What is Lear seen as?

Answer 13

A candle; as a monarch he is the source of light and life in the kingdom

Question 14

What happens when Lear ‘burns out’?

Answer 14

All of the characters associated with Lear are ‘left darkling’

Question 15

What happens to Lear’s ability to ‘see’ after the storm on the heath?

Answer 15

Lear is able to see more clearly, this is apparent when he comes into contact with Gloucester in (IV:6:146-152)

Question 16

What does the use of black humour heighten with regards to sight?

Answer 16

The pathos of the old man’s suffering, but it also comes as something of a relief

Question 17

What have many critics found about Lear’s puns about eyes?

Answer 17

Desperately cruel

Question 18

However, after going through the suffering what have both Lear and Gloucester been able to now do?

Answer 18

‘See how the world goes’

Question 19

What did both Gloucester and Lear do when they physically were able to see?

Answer 19

They stumbled when they saw

Question 20

What is Gloucester’s blinding a physical manifestation of?

Answer 20

Mental torture, which is a reflection of Lear’s mental torture on the heath

Question 21

What does Gloucester ask Edmund in (I:II)?

Answer 21

He asks Edmund to “look into” Edgar’s treachery

Question 22

What happens to Gloucester in (III:7)?

Answer 22

The references to eyes come thick and fast with Goneril’s ‘Pluck out his eyes!” (III:7:5) with the physical blinding

Question 23

What happens until Cordelia’s return?

Answer 23

Until Cordelia’s return, like Gloucester, we feel that all is ‘dark and comfortless’ (III:7:84)

Question 24

What is Cordelia associated with?

Answer 24

Healing tears and radiant light

Question 25

What did Lear refuse to do even throughout his confrontations with Goneril and Regan and during his decent into madness?

Answer 25

He refused to weep

Question 26

What can Lear’s desperate struggle against weeping be seen as a proof of?

Answer 26

His determination not to be vanquished by his daughters

Question 27

When does Lear finally cry?

Answer 27

When he is reunited with Cordelia

Question 28

How is Lear defiant in Act V?

Answer 28

He is defiant as he and Cordelia will not cry even in prison

Question 29

What happens when Cordelia is hanged?

Answer 29

Lear gives into his grief

Question 30

What quotation is used to highlight Lear’s grief in the final Act?

Answer 30

“Howl, howl, howl!/O, you are men of stones!/ Had I your tongues and eyes I’d use them so/That heaven’s vault should crack” (V:3:255-257)

Question 31

What happens to Lear’s sight at the death of Cordelia?

Answer 31

His eyes fail him as he mourns the loss of his ‘best object’ (I:I:214), when he thinks he has seen her breathing