King Lear: Study Questions These questions may serve to guide your thinking, discussions, and journal entries as we read King Lear. In the opening scene of the play, how would you respond to Lear’s demand if you were in his daughters’ place? What, in essence, is Lear asking for in exchange for his kingdom? Lear is struggling with conflicting roles: the public man, who is the king, and the private man, who is a father. How does do these conflicting roles affect the decisions he makes? Is the figure of Lear essentially male? Is gender more central to his actions than his role as king and his relationship as father to his daughters? Is Lear a man wronged (“sinned against”) than wronging (“sinning”), as he claims? Why does the Fool have such an important part in this play? Why does he disappear after Act III? To a great extent, King Lear is a play about old age and the conflict between older and younger generations. How true a picture of this issue does the play paint? What difference does age make in how Lear and Cordelia view the world? Gloucester and Edmund? Kent (48 years old) and Edgar (in his 20s)? Kent and Lear? What purpose does the parallel plot of Gloucester and his sons have in the play? Is Lear a sane man at the opening of the play who slowwly loses his mind or a witless old man who gradually regains his sanity? In Act IV, Scene 6, when Lear asks Gloucester how he “sees how the world goes,” Gloucester replies, “I see it feelingly.” At the end of the play, Edgar says, “The weight of this time we must obey / Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” How doe these lines apply to the play as a whole? “Nature” is one of the most frequently used words in this play. Likewise, more animal imagery is usede in King Lear than in any other Shakespeare play. In what ways are these words / images used and to what purpose? Is Lear a noble character, a classic tragic hero? If not, who is the tragic hero in this play? Note George Orwell’s definition: "A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him." Lear has a grand life, a long and successful reign, but he dies a miserable man. What is the relative value of living well and dying dreadfully versus a wretched life and a glorious death? Loyalty is a key issue for Lear. Is loyalty the defining quality of love?