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?