ENGLISH 12 AP
QUIZ: King Lear, Acts I - II
OPEN BOOK QUIZ: Please refer to your copy of King Lear as you answer the following
questions. Your answers must be in complete sentences.
King Lear William Shakespeare
Answer 7 of the following questions about the play (3 from one act and 4 from the other):
Act I:
1. With what specifics do Goneril and Regan describe their love for their father?
2. In what specific ways is Lear’s treatment of Kent and Cordelia similar? (do not answer this
superficially)
3. How does Lear describe Cordelia when he offers her to Burgundy?
4. When he accepts Cordelia, what do the words of the King of France reveal about Lear, Cordelia
and her sisters?
5. Why does Edmund believe he is better than the legitimate Edgar?
6. What is the function of the brief third scene in Act I?
7. (a) When Lear inquires about his Fool (I.iv), whom he has not seen for two days, what does the
Knight answer? (b) What is the effect accomplished by Shakespeare by this statement about the
Fool?
8. How does Kent introduce the motif of blindness into the play?
Act II:
9. What does Edmund do to convince his father that Edgar is a traitor to him?
10. How does Kent characterize and treat Oswald? Be specific.
11. What is the dramatic purpose of the maltreatment of Kent in scene ii?
12. Why has Edgar chosen to take on the appearance of “poor Tom”?
13. What truth does the Fool teach Lear in his speech that includes “. . . ‘Twas her brother that, in
pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay”? (scene iv)
14. What advice does Regan give to Lear? (see “O, sir, you are old. . . “)
15. Late in scene ii when Lear realizes that Regan is like Goneril, unfilial and heartless (after they tell
him he has no need of even twenty-five followers), what does he say?
16. What foreshadowing dominates the end of Act II?
17. Dramatically, in terms of main action and subplot, what has been accomplished in Act II?