King Lear William Shakespeare King Lear SuperSummary 1 Table of Contents O V ERV IEW 3 C H A P TER S UM M A RIES & A N A LYS ES 6 Acts I-II 6 Act III 12 Acts IV-V 16 C H A RA C TER A N A LYS IS 23 Lear 23 Cordelia 23 Goneril 24 Regan 24 Edgar 24 Edmund 25 Gloucester 25 Kent 25 The Fool 26 27 TH EM ES How Madness Reveals Truth 27 The Capacity to Endure Human Suffering 27 The Power of Fiction and Disguises 28 S YM B O LS & M O TIFS 29 Blindness 29 Clothing and Nakedness 29 The Storm 29 IM P O RTA N T Q UO TES 31 ES S A Y TO P IC S 41 Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary TEA C H IN G M A TERIA LS 2 43 Act I 43 Act II 46 Act III 49 Act IV 52 Act V 55 Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 3 Overview King Lear is a play written around 1606 by the English playwright William Shakespeare. Widely considered one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, King Lear tells the story of a king who goes mad after bequeathing his fortune and power to his daughters. It is loosely based on the myth of Leir of Britain, a legendary monarch said to have ruled Ancient Britons in the eighth century B.C. This guide refers to the 1999 Pelican Shakespeare edition. Please note that citations in the Summary section refer to line number rather than page number, so this guide can be used with different editions of the play. Plot Summary Lear, the aging king of an ancient pre-Christian England, decides to retire. He will divide his kingdom between his three daughters, leaving them and their husbands to rule jointly. But before he tells them which portion of land they will receive, Lear demands that they answer one little question: which of them loves him the most? Lear’s elder daughters, Goneril and Regan, praise their father obsequiously, and he rewards each of them—along with their husbands, Albany and Cornwall—with a third of the kingdom. He saves the best land for his favorite daughter, Cordelia. Cordelia, however, refuses to make a dishonest, toadying display of her love for her father as her sisters have. Outraged at her resistance, Lear curses and disowns her, ignoring the protests of his loyal advisor Kent, whom he exiles for his resistance. The King of France nevertheless marries Cordelia on the strength of her own merits, and Cordelia reluctantly departs, leaving her father in the care of her sisters. Meanwhile, Lear’s old friend, the Earl of Gloucester, has his own family troubles. Unbeknownst to him, his illegitimate son Edmund plots to betray his legitimate son Edgar and inherit his father’s title himself. Edmund plays on his father’s short temper and his brother’s trusting nature to trick Gloucester into believing that Edgar plans to kill Gloucester. Pursued by his father’s men, Edgar flees into the wilderness disguised as the mad beggar Poor Tom. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 4 Kent also disguises himself as the rough-and-ready Caius and finds his way back into Lear’s service. He worries that Lear will have more trouble with his daughters than he bargained for, a suspicion shared by Lear’s beloved Fool. Having relinquished his power, Lear finds that his temper tantrums no longer hold much sway over his children. When Goneril objects to his rowdy partying, he violently curses her and moves to Regan’s house. But Regan also refuses to house his drunken knights. The final straw comes when Regan puts the disguised Kent in the stocks, an insult to Lear’s authority. Maddened with rage, Lear runs out onto the wild heath amid a terrible storm. Kent and the Fool follow. Out in the storm, Lear loses his mind. As Kent and the Fool try to shelter him, they run into the disguised Edgar in a hovel. Edgar’s “madness” is so affecting that Lear strips naked in imitation of him, gaining a new understanding of the suffering of all the poor people in his kingdom. At last, Lear’s friends manage to get him into the hovel where he falls asleep. Gloucester arrives and warns them they need to leave. As a war for the kingdom brews between Goneril and Regan, the king must be protected quickly. Kent hurries Lear away, and the Fool mysteriously disappears from the play. Meanwhile, Edmund betrays Gloucester to the sisters, telling them that Gloucester knows of an invading French army led by Cordelia that intends to restore Lear to the throne. Regan and her husband Cornwall capture Gloucester and vengefully gouge out his eyes. A horrified servant who tries to stop them mortally wounds Cornwall in a struggle, leaving Regan open to accept Edmund’s seductions. Goneril’s husband, Albany, is disgusted and disturbed by his sadistic in-laws. The blinded Gloucester is thrown out to wander on the heath, where a horrified Edgar finds him. Gloucester, not recognizing his son’s voice, asks “Poor Tom” to lead him to a cliff’s edge so he can kill himself. Edgar pulls a trick on his father, taking him to a patch of flat ground. When he tries to jump, Gloucester only falls on his face. Edgar, still pretending to be a stranger, tells him that he miraculously survived his fall. Meanwhile, Kent leads Lear to safety with the French army and Cordelia. Half-mad and wandering around with flowers in his hair, Lear meets the broken Gloucester and consoles him. He also apologizes to Cordelia, having learned to understand his own terrible mistakes. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 5 On Edmund’s orders, Goneril’s servant Oswald tries to kill Gloucester. Edgar protects his father, by killing Oswald. On Oswald’s body, Edgar finds a letter from Goneril to Edmund in which she encourages Edmund to murder Albany and marry her. As Regan and Goneril are fight over him, Edmund strategizes about how to kill Lear, Cordelia, and Edgar so he can marry one of the sisters and become king himself. In a great success for Edmund, the English forces defeat the French and capture the reconciled Cordelia and Lear. After the victory, Regan and Goneril fight openly over Edmund, but before anyone wins, Regan dies; Goneril poisoned her. Albany, who learned from the disguised Edgar about Goneril and Edmund’s plot against him, confronts his murderous wife who commits suicide. Albany joins Cordelia’s army. Edgar reveals his identity to Gloucester who dies of the shock. The grieving Edgar then presents himself in disguise as a challenger to Edmund. The fate of the kingdom will rest on which brother wins in combat. After a tense swordfight, Edgar defeats Edmund and dramatically reveals his identity. Dying, Edmund tells his brother that he gave orders for Lear and Cordelia to be hanged. Edgar and Albany rush to stop the execution, but they are too late: Cordelia is dead. Lear appears, carrying her dead body and howling with grief. His heart broken, Lear dies. Kent, Albany, and Edgar are the only men left standing. Kent excuses himself, intending to follow his master Lear wherever he goes, even into death. Edgar and Albany are left alone to rebuild the shattered kingdom. Edgar closes the play with a shellshocked speech, declaring that the survivors must face this horrific time with honesty. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 6 Chapter Summaries & Analyses Acts I-II Act I, Scene 1 Summary Two noblemen, Kent and Gloucester, discuss a mysterious political change: the King plans to relinquish his power and divide his kingdom. Gloucester introduces Kent to his illegitimate son Edmund, making a few rude jokes about Edmund’s birth. King Lear arrives and welcomes his family members: his eldest daughter Goneril and her husband Albany, his middle daughter Regan and her husband Cornwall, and his youngest unmarried daughter Cordelia. Lear announces he will “shake all cares and business from our age,/Conferring them on younger strengths while we/Unburdened crawl toward death” (3941). He intends to divide his kingdom between his daughters and to marry Cordelia to one of two suitors, the King of France or the Duke of Burgundy. Before relinquishing his kingdom, Lear insists that his daughters tell him: “Which of you shall we say doth love us most,/That we our largest bounty may extend/Where nature doth with merit challenge” (51-53). The two eldest daughters take turns lavishly praising their father. Goneril goes first and shamelessly flatters him; Regan follows, saying that she loves her father as Goneril does, only even more. The youngest daughter, Cordelia, listens in horror to this insincere display. When it is her turn, Lear expects that his favorite daughter will praise him the most. But Cordelia refuses to speak. Instead, she critiques her sisters’ false flattery. Enraged by Cordelia’s refusal to play along, Lear banishes her, stripping her of her dowry. The shocked Kent tries to tell his master this is a terrible mistake, but Lear only turns his fury on his loyal councillor, banishing him as well. Without her dowry, Cordelia is left to whichever prince is willing to take her. Burgundy withdraws his suit, but the King of France sees Cordelia’s wisdom and goodness. She accepts his offer of marriage and departs for his kingdom. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 7 As the scene ends, the two elder sisters talk privately, remarking that their father is senile. They have little sympathy for their exiled younger sister. Act I, Scene 2 Summary Edmund, Gloucester’s illegitimate son, delivers a soliloquy on the injustices of his position in life. He swears allegiance to Nature rather than the customs of a society that denies him rank and power because his father wasn’t married to his mother: “Why bastard? Wherefore base,/When my dimensions are as well compact,/my mind as generous, and my shape as true,/As honest madam’s issue?” (6-9). Embittered by his ill-treatment, he plots to turn Gloucester against his legitimate brother Edgar and take over the dukedom himself. Gloucester appears in a flurry, shocked at recent events, including Kent’s banishment, hostilities between France and England, and Lear’s abdication of the throne. As he bustles in, Edmund makes an obvious show of hiding a letter, which Gloucester insists on seeing. It is a fake letter from Edgar, composed by Edmund. In it, Edgar supposedly asks Edmund to assassinate Gloucester with him. Appalled, Gloucester asks Edmund to investigate further. He reflects that the astrological signs bode ill; the stars predict war and discord within families and nations. When Gloucester leaves, Edmund scoffs at his father’s superstition, maintaining that the stars have no effect on human character: “I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing” (131-133). Edgar interrupts his musings. Edmund tricks him into believing that Gloucester is enraged with him. Although Edmund says he will try to calm their father down, he warns his brother to carry a weapon. Frightened and overwhelmed, Edgar departs. Edmund rejoices. His father’s credulity and his brother’s innocence both serve his purposes. Act I, Scene 3 Summary Goneril storms onstage in a huff, asking her servant Oswald if Lear hit one of her men for provoking his Fool. She is fed up with her father’s behavior. He and his entourage of drunken knights party day and night in Goneril’s house. She tells Oswald she plans to avoid Lear for a while and that he should tell her father she’s sick if he asks for her. She also counsels Oswald and the rest of her staff to be as rude and lazy as they like around Lear and his men. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 8 Act I, Scene 4 Summary The banished Kent disguises himself as a rough servant named Caius so he can watch over Lear; his loyalty to his master outweighs all other concerns. As Caius, he presents himself to Lear’s crew of knights and quickly earns Lear’s trust when he upbraids Oswald—who, as Goneril instructed him, is blatantly rude to the former king. The Fool, Lear’s much-beloved jester, is heartbroken since Lear sent Cordelia away. He now emerges to read his master a lesson in his mistakes. When he sings a mocking song, and Lear ominously asks, “Dost thou call me fool, boy?”, he replies, “All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with” (145-47). As the Fool mocks Lear and his daughters, the furious Goneril enters. She tells her father she will no longer tolerate his chaotic knights, and he must send at least some of them away. Lear flies into a rage and curses his eldest child, calling on Nature to “Dry up in her the organs of increase” so that she’ll never have a child of her own (275). With that, he departs, intending to go to Regan’s house where he believes he can do what he wants. Goneril sends Oswald ahead to warn Regan and to tell her to hold firm with their father. Her husband Albany warns her that this may be a mistake. Act I, Scene 5 Summary Lear sends the disguised Kent to deliver a letter to Regan’s castle explaining what happened at Goneril’s house. Left alone with the Fool, Lear broods. The Fool gently teases him and tries to warn him that Regan isn’t likely to behave any differently than Goneril. Lear is shaken by his recent fits of uncontrollable rage. He fears for his sanity, saying, “O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!/Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!” (43-44). Act II, Scene 1 Summary Edmund hears rumors about a war brewing between Albany and Cornwall, who both may have designs on the undivided throne. Regan and Cornwall will visit the Gloucester household that night, giving Edmund more opportunity to scheme. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 9 He continues his plot against his own family, telling Edgar: “My father watches. O sir, fly this place” (20). The enraged Gloucester, Edmund claims, is on Edgar’s trail, and Edmund will need to pretend to attack his brother in order to keep him safe. Edmund draws his sword, and the bewildered, frightened Edgar flees into the night. Edmund wounds himself to give the impression that Edgar injured him. When Gloucester appears, Edmund spins a tale in which Edgar mutters of patricide and chants magical charms. Crazed with rage and grief, Gloucester threatens to have his legitimate son killed and vows to grant Edmund his title and lands, just as Edmund plotted. Cornwall and Regan arrive and commiserate with Gloucester. They also swear friendship with Edmund, whom they see as a potentially useful man. Act II, Scene 2 Summary Goneril’s steward Oswald meets Kent outside Gloucester’s house. Kent, remembering Oswald’s rudeness to Lear, is accordingly rude to Oswald, going on an exuberant tirade against him: Oswald, Kent says, is: [a] knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, threesuited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superservicable, finical rogue (13-17). At last, Kent draws his sword, and Oswald screams for help. Edmund, Gloucester, Regan, and Cornwall overhear the ruckus and confront the two men. Kent won’t budge, and Cornwall commands him to be put in the stocks for his insolence. Regan adds that, in spite of his old age, Kent must sit in the stocks all day and all night. With Kent imprisoned, everyone but Gloucester departs. Gloucester empathizes with Kent and says he will try to change Cornwall’s mind. Whatever happens, he and Kent both know that Lear won’t take this well; it is a serious insult for Cornwall to put Lear’s servant in the stocks. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 10 Act II, Scene 3 Summary Edgar, on the run, pauses to deliver a soliloquy. Confused and terrified, he considers his options, all of which are bad. Nowhere is safe, and no friendly face can be trusted. His best option is to disguise himself as someone no one looks at twice. He decides to dress up as a vagrant madman called Poor Tom, vowing, “[M]y face I’ll grime with filth,/Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots,/And with presented nakedness outface/The winds and persecutions of the sky” (9-12). He will chant nonsense, beg for alms, and entirely unmake himself: “Edgar I nothing am” (21), he says. Act II, Scene 4 Summary Lear and the Fool arrive at Gloucester’s house and find Kent in the stocks outside. Lear is outraged and unbelieving, shocked that Cornwall would dare to disrespect his servant this way. Kent also tells Lear that Oswald delivered letters from Goneril ahead of his arrival. The Fool isn’t surprised; this is exactly what he predicted, and he sings cryptic little songs to that effect. Lear rushes off and returns with Gloucester who tries to calm him down. Cornwall delayed his meeting with Lear, refusing to jump at the former king’s command. When Cornwall and Regan eventually arrive, Lear is furious with them, and they coolly condescend to him. When Goneril appears, the two sisters present a united face against their father, asking him why he needs even one servant, let alone his retinue of rowdy knights. As before, Lear flies into a rage, calling Regan “a boil,/A plague-sore, or embossèd carbuncle,/In my corrupted blood” (222224). As madness descends upon him, Lear flees from the house, pursued by the Fool and Kent. In spite of Gloucester’s appalled protests, his family lets him go. There is a violent storm brewing, and the family is reluctant to follow Lear into it. Acts I-II Analysis The first acts of King Lear gather like the storm that breaks at the end of Act II. The play begins with a queasy lightning flash: Lear’s manipulative question to his daughters. Right away, readers are exposed to a world in which love is corrupted into a tool for maintaining power. In relinquishing his kingdom to his children, Lear attempts to exert a deeper power through emotional backchannels, demanding that his daughters bow to his demands for a Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 11 very specific kind of affection and attention. As Cordelia points out, these demands border on emotional incest. Something is thoroughly out of order in Lear’s kingdom, and the balance of nature is about to set it right, through means that no mere human is going to like very much. The daughters’ different responses to Lear’s manipulation set up one of the play’s big themes: reality and self-delusion. Cordelia’s refusal to play her father’s game infuriates him because he doesn’t get to bask in obsequious praise. More than that, however, the refusal is a critique of Lear’s emotional dishonesty, revealing that his self-image can’t stand up to resistance or disagreement. He depends on the belief that he’s the finest father and the best king in all the world, and any threat to that belief shakes his whole worldview. As Regan points out, “[H]e hath ever but slenderly known himself” (1.1.298-99). Lear, like all the play’s characters, will reckon with what he really is over the course of the play. Questions of truth and deception touch on every character’s predicament. The parallel stories of Edmund and Edgar provide a piquant example. Edmund, Gloucester’s illegitimate son, uses deception to rise to a noble position that feels truer to his self-image, but this new reality is based entirely on treacherous falsehoods. Meanwhile, Edgar, the legitimate son, finds truth through his seemingly false disguise as the mad “Poor Tom.” The play repeatedly insists that public status and honor are essentially worthless. Contact with reality and with one’s true self involves complete humility, even abasement. In turn, pride and power sever the play’s characters from reality and the perceptions of others. These early acts also set up two contrasting views of man and nature, one of which is exemplified by Lear and Gloucester, while the other is exemplified by Edmund. Lear and his ilk profess faith in the old Medieval traditions of noble birth and kingly patriarchy. When this worldview is shattered by his daughters’ lack of deference, Lear devolves into madness. Edmund, meanwhile, represents the “New Man” emerging in Shakespeare’s time. This figure rejects Lear’s Medieval worldview and instead adopts a Hobbesian view of the world in which all men war against one another for an advantage. This is reflected in Edmund’s selfinterested schemes which recall Machiavelli’s 1513 book The Prince. Though written almost one hundred years earlier, The Prince remained highly influential in Shakespeare’s era. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 12 Act III Act III, Scene 1 Summary Out on the heath in a raging storm, Kent meets a gentleman who tells him he’s seen Lear, running wild and shouting into the wind and rain. The conditions are so wild that even “the cub-drawn bear would couch,/The lion and the belly-pinchèd wolf/Keep their fur dry” (12-14). Yet the elderly and maddened Lear is exposed to the elements. Kent warns this gentleman that Albany and Cornwall are secretly plotting against each other and that the King of France —Cordelia’s new husband—plans to invade and take the country back from these treacherous dukes. If the gentleman goes to Dover, he can deliver news of Lear’s plight and give Cordelia Kent’s ring as a token. The gentleman agrees, and Kent rushes off to search for Lear. Act III, Scene 2 Summary Lear, followed by the loyal Fool, spits fury at the weather: Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!/You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout/Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks./You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,/Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,/Singe my white head (1-6). The Fool struggles to get his master to shelter. Lear continues to rage at the sky, and the sky rages back. Kent joins the Fool in an attempt to get Lear into the shelter of a nearby hovel. Lear comes back to himself for a moment, understanding that he’s losing his mind. He also returns to the people around him, asking the Fool: “How dost, my boy? Art cold?/I am cold myself” (69-70). He agrees to go to the hovel. The shaken Fool ends the scene with a cryptic prophecy of confusion and danger in England. Act III, Scene 3 Summary Gloucester confides in Edmund: he is appalled by the way Lear’s daughters treat their father. When he objected, he reports, Cornwall and Regan turned him out of his own house and forbade him from communicating with Lear. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 13 He goes on, explaining the two dukes’ secret enmity and telling Edmund he received a confidential letter about the approaching French invasion. He plans to rescue Lear, regardless of Cornwall and Regan’s prohibitions. All of these confidences play right into Edmund’s hands. After his father departs, he vows, “This courtesy forbid thee shall the duke/Instantly know, and of that letter too,” and relishes his imminent victory: “The younger rises when the old doth fall” (20-24). Act III, Scene 4 Summary Kent leads Lear and the Fool to the hovel. Still bewailing his daughters’ betrayal, Lear hurries his friends in first. In a moment of lucidity, he pauses to think of all the “poor naked wretches” (30) enduring this storm with him even now. Just then, a scream comes from within the hovel, and the Fool rushes out, claiming there’s a lunatic inside. This is “lunatic” is Edgar, deep in disguise as the beggar Poor Tom. Edgar raves, speaking of “the foul fiend” and singing snatches of bawdy ballads. Lear takes to this madman immediately and personally, believing that only treacherous daughters like his own could have made this man so mad. He deliriously interrogates Edgar and strips off his own clothing in imitation of this naked beggar. The beleaguered Fool tries to forestall him: “Prithee, nuncle, be contented; ‘tis a naughty night to swim in” (110-11). Gloucester arrives. Without recognizing his own son, he hurries the group toward a safe house. Edgar must listen and keep his disguise up as Gloucester describes his son’s supposed betrayal, lamenting, “I loved him, friend,/No father his son dearer” (167-68). Act III, Scene 5 Summary Edmund delivers his father’s intelligence about the French invasion directly to Cornwall, who hurries to inform Regan. Cornwall also tells Edmund that his betrayal of his father has made him the Earl of Gloucester. Edmund will take his father’s title, and Cornwall will treat him as his own son. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 14 Act III, Scene 6 Summary Kent and Gloucester bring Lear to a safe house. Edgar keeps up his mad ranting, speaking of damnation. Lear, spurred on, hallucinates an imaginary courtroom in which he puts his daughters on trial while the Fool and Edgar play along with his delusions. Edgar is so moved to intense pity by Lear’s madness that his tears threaten his disguise. At last, Lear falls into a troubled sleep. Gloucester and Kent return to collect him in a litter vehicle and carry him to Dover, where Cordelia’s army will offer him sanctuary. Everyone departs but Edgar, who remains to reflect on his experience with the king: “How light and portable my pain seems now,/When that which makes me bend makes the king bow” (107-108). Act III, Scene 7 Summary Goneril, Regan, Albany, Cornwall, and Edmund meet to plot revenge on Gloucester, whom they’ve captured for supporting Cordelia and rescuing Lear. Goneril and Edmund depart to prepare for war, leaving Regan and Cornwall to deal with Gloucester. The bloodthirsty couple tie Gloucester up and interrogate him, ignoring his cries for decency and mercy. When he doesn’t give them the answers they want, Cornwall puts out one of his eyes. Regan won’t be satisfied until he puts out the other. But as Cornwall moves to do just this, one of his horrified servants, horrified tries to fight him off. After a bloody struggle, Cornwall kills him and completes the job, blinding Gloucester as he recites these terrible words: “Out, vile jelly./Where is thy luster now?” (84-85). When Gloucester howls for Edmund, Cornwall and Regan reveal that Edmund betrayed him. They throw him out into the storm again to “smell/his way to Dover” (94-95). Cornwall realizes his servant mortally wounded him. The scene ends as two traumatized servants make plans to help the unfortunate Gloucester, bandaging his bleeding eye sockets and finding him a guide. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 15 Act III Analysis Act III contains one of the most famous scenes in all of world literature: Lear’s mad caper in the storm. An image of man as a tiny, angry, frightened speck amid wild nature, the storm scene is at once harrowing and blackly comical. Through this confrontation between despair and absurdity, the play’s most vivid picture of the human condition emerges. As Lear leaps around naked and Edgar rants and raves, a strange coherence emerges from their lunacy. While Edgar’s madness is feigned and Lear’s is true, both men come to a deeper understanding of their own natures—and human nature—through their seeming disconnect from reality. For Edgar, the externalizing of his internal predicament as a loveless exile driven to despair by treachery provides a strange relief; his mad-speak is as inventive and exuberant as it is horrific. For Lear, the sight of Edgar’s naked misery brings him to the realization that every man, himself included, is nothing but a “poor, bare, forked animal” (3.4.108). It’s through this realization that Lear finds his way to empathy for the first time—an empathy that demands he relinquish his puffed-up self image as mighty king. Later, this behavior will be referred to as “reason in madness.” This runs counter to Edmund and Cornwall’s “madness in reason,” a self-interested rationality that results in so much blood and death. These scenes also mark the beginning of Edgar’s role as an artist. Just as Edgar externalizes his misery in a kind of performance art, he provides a model and a mirror for Lear. Lear sees himself in Edgar, even accusing Edgar’s nonexistent daughters of having brought him to this pass, and finds a curious relief in that seeing. While the play offers no pat answers to questions of human suffering and human evil, it suggests that one way to grapple with these concepts is by creating artistic reflections of them—the better to see them, feel them, and even play with them. The poet John Keats would later remark on this quality in King Lear, writing that its truthfulness makes it beautiful even though it depicts horrors. But art isn’t a total solution to the mysteries of evil and pain, and Gloucester’s gruesome blinding makes that very clear. This scene is at once symbolic—Gloucester, who has proven so bad at seeing what’s true, can only see what’s real after he loses his literal eyes—and nastily concrete. The sadistic Cornwall’s cry, “Out, vile jelly./Where is thy luster now?” (3.7.8485), returns us once more to the irreducible facts of the human body: its vulnerability and its mortality. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 16 Acts IV-V Act IV, Scene 1 Summary Having resigned himself to his terrible circumstances, Edgar believes he’s hit such an absolute low that there’s nowhere to go but up. At that moment, he sees the blinded Gloucester led by an old man and concludes, “The worst is not/So long as we can say, ‘This is the worst’” (27-28). Edgar presents himself as a guide to the miserable Gloucester, who wants to be led to the cliffs of Dover, where he can throw himself to his death. The old man leading Gloucester protests that Edgar is a madman; Gloucester, unperturbed, replies, “‘Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind” (48). Although Edgar can barely keep up his act, he agrees to guide his father to the cliffs. Act IV, Scene 2 Summary Goneril, Oswald, and Edmund discuss changes they’ve observed in Albany, who now seems to have qualms about his family’s behavior, particularly Goneril’s. Goneril is neither surprised nor upset. She wants to marry Edmund now, and Albany can die for all she cares. Goneril and Edmund part with a kiss, and she sighs, “O, the difference of man and man:/To thee a woman’s services are due;/My fool usurps my body” (26-28). Albany enters and roundly curses his wife, accusing her of vicious cruelty to her father whom he remembers as a good and righteous king. Goneril retorts that she doesn’t expect Albany to step up and repel the French invaders. In the midst of their fight, a messenger brings news that Cornwall, stabbed by his servant during Gloucester’s blinding, is dead. Aghast to hear of the blinding, Albany wonders why Edmund didn’t stand in Cornwall’s way. Privately, he asks the messenger for more of the story. Act IV, Scene 3 Summary Kent meets with a gentleman who brings news of the invasion. The King of France rushed home to deal with a domestic problem, leaving behind a general to take charge of the war. Cordelia, who remains in England, was horrified to hear of her father’s suffering. Kent remarks Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 17 that human personalities must be determined by the stars; how else could such a kind woman have two villainous sisters. Kent tells the gentleman that, though Lear is safe, he will resist seeing his loyal daughter. Lear’s terrible choices, Kent adds, “sting/His mind so venomously that burning shame/Detains him from Cordelia” (46-48). Kent, meanwhile, must take care of some secret business. He leaves Lear in the gentleman’s care. Act IV, Scene 4 Summary Cordelia consults with a doctor about her father. She laments that Lear was discovered, completely mad, singing to himself and wearing a crown of flowers and weeds. She wonders desperately if anything can cure him; the doctor advises her that what he needs is sleep. Cordelia sends men to find her father so she can keep him under her protection. A messenger arrives to tell Cordelia that the British forces are marching toward them. Cordelia prepares for war, motivated by love rather than power. She says, “No blown ambition doth our arms incite,/But love, dear love, and our aged father’s right” (27-28). Act IV, Scene 5 Summary Regan and Oswald discuss imminent war plans. Regan is less interested in the details of the fight than in Goneril’s communications with Edmund. Like her elder sister, Regan wants to marry him and feels her claim is better. She tells Oswald, “My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talked,/And more convenient is he for my hand/Than for your lady’s” (33-35). Act IV, Scene 6 Summary Edgar claims to have led Gloucester to the cliffs of Dover. In reality, they are on a flat patch of ground. Edgar falsely describes the dizzying view from the heights above the sea: “The murmuring surge/That on th’ unnumb’red idle pebble chafes/Cannot be heard so high. I’ll look no more, Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight/Topple down headlong” (20-24). At first, Gloucester is suspicious, noting that the ground feels pretty flat and that his guide’s voice has changed. Ultimately, he accepts Edgar’s fiction and prepares himself for death. But when he tries to throw himself over the imaginary cliff, Gloucester merely falls on his face. Using a new voice, Edgar tells him that he survived a fall from a terrible height, characterizing the event as a miracle. He adds that Gloucester’s guide was a thousand-nosed Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 18 demon and that Gloucester was saved by some divine intervention. Shaken, Gloucester resolves to endure his pain until he dies naturally. The mad Lear arrives wearing his flower crown. He speaks nonsense, seeing imaginary animals and phantom daughters while singing songs about lechery, corruption, and the stench of mortality. Like the Fool and Edgar before him, Lear’s madness demonstrates more understanding of the world than his sanity did. Gloucester recognizes his king by the sound of his voice, but Lear does not recognize Gloucester. In his insanity, Lear mocks him, telling him to read nonexistent papers that Gloucester couldn’t see even if they existed and admonishing him, “What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes” (150-151). Finally, Lear recognizes Gloucester and sits down to console him as he weeps. “Thou must be patient,” he tells him: “We came crying hither;/Thou know’st, the first time that we smell the air/We wawl and cry” (178-80). Cordelia’s gentlemen arrive to take Lear to safety. He impishly runs away from them. Edgar collects news of the impending battle from one of these gentlemen and then reintroduces himself to Gloucester as a sane man offering to guide him. Oswald interrupts them and intends to murder Gloucester. Edgar fights and slays him. With his dying breath, Oswald tells Edgar to carry a letter to Edmund. It is a love letter from Goneril in which she begs Edmund to kill Albany and marry her. Edgar vows to stand in Edmund’s way. But first, he must take his father to a safe place. Act IV, Scene 7 Summary Cordelia and Kent reunite. She thanks him profusely for taking care of her father. The doctor tells Cordelia that Lear is now safely asleep, bathed, and dressed. Upon seeing him, Cordelia is deeply moved by the sight of her frail old father asleep after his ordeal, remarking, “Was this a face/To be opposed against the jarring winds?” (32-33). Still apparently mad, Lear wakes up and chides Cordelia for waking him from death. Yet he quickly comes back to himself, newly humbled and self-aware. He tells her, “Pray, do not mock me./I am a very foolish fond old man […] And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 19 perfect mind […] Do not laugh at me;/For, as I am a man, I think this lady/To be my child Cordelia” (61-72). Cordelia weeps as father and daughter reconcile. Kent and a gentleman discuss the imminent war and the bloody battle to come. Act V, Scene 1 Summary At the head of a crowd of soldiers, Edmund and Regan discuss Albany’s wavering and Oswald’s disappearance. Regan quizzes Edmund on whether he slept with Goneril, which he denies. Goneril and Albany interrupt this conversation. Albany tells them that Lear is with Cordelia. Goneril suggests that they all unite against France since France is their common enemy. As Goneril and Regan jockey to prevent each other from being with Edmund alone, the three exit together. Edgar appears to Albany in disguise, gives him a letter, and tells him that if the English forces are victorious over the French, Albany should sound a trumpet to summon a champion who will help him. Edmund reappears and tells Albany it is time to fight. Left alone, Edmund addresses the audience. Having sworn love to both Goneril and Regan, he muses over whether to sleep with “[b]oth? One? Or neither? Neither can be enjoyed,/If both remain alive” (59-60). He also vows that if his forces win the battle, both Cordelia and Lear will receive no mercy. Act V, Scene 2 Summary Edgar leads Gloucester away from the battle, concealing him in the shadow of a tree. Shortly thereafter, he returns and tells Gloucester that all is lost. With Cordelia’s forces defeated, Gloucester must flee. Gloucester resists, wanting only to die, but Edgar chides him: “What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure/Their going hence, even as their coming hither;/Ripeness is all” (9-11). Gloucester follows him. Act V, Scene 3 Summary The triumphant Edmund enters with his captives, Lear and Cordelia, and instructs guards to take them to prison. Cordelia laments their fate, saying she could tolerate her own fall but not her father’s. Lear gently calms her: “Come, let’s away to prison./We two alone will sing like Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 20 birds i’ th’ cage” (8-9). Edmund sends an ominous soldier after them with bloody instructions. Albany demands that Edmund surrender the captives so that Albany may treat them fairly. Edmund weasels his way around this request, and Albany warns him he shouldn’t take liberties: he’s a subject, not a brother. Regan rebukes Albany, warning him that when she marries Edmund, the two men will be brothers. Goneril pushes back, and the two women squabble over Edmund in Albany’s face. Based on the letter Edgar gave him, Albany arrests Edmund on charges of treason. He sounds the trumpet to summon the mysterious champion Edgar promised. Regan, overcome with a sudden sickness, is carried away. In private, Goneril gloats that she poisoned her sister. The champion appears: It is Edgar himself in another disguise. He accuses Edmund of treachery and conspiracy and challenges him to a final duel. The brothers battle, and Edgar mortally wounds Edmund. Albany produces Goneril’s letter to Edmund, confirming the charges against him and implicating her. Desperate, Goneril runs away. The dying Edmund readily admits to all of the charges laid at his feet and asks who it is that killed him. Edgar reveals himself at last, and Edmund marvels, “The wheel is come full circle” (176). Edgar explains to Albany that Gloucester is dead. When Edgar revealed his identity, Gloucester’s “flawed heart—/Alack, too weak the conflict to support—/‘Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,/Burst smilingly” (199-202). Moved by this story, Edmund asks Edgar to go on; Edgar duly recounts his reunion with the disguised Kent, during which the two men shared their stories of exile. A gentleman rushes in screaming that Goneril poisoned Regan and killed herself. Kent arrives asking after Lear, and Albany demands that Edmund tell them where the king and his daughter are. Edmund, slowly dying, reflects on the deaths of the two women who loved him and makes a new resolve: “Some good I mean to do,/Despite of mine own nature” (248-49). Before he is carried away to die offstage, he tells Albany to rush to the castle to halt Lear and Cordelia’s execution. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 21 But it is too late. Lear appears carrying Cordelia’s hanged body and crying “Howl, howl, howl!” (263). The stunned onlookers watch as Lear wails over his daughter’s corpse: “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,/And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,/Never, never, never, never, never” (313-15). In despair, Lear too dies. Shocked and grieving, Albany turns to Kent and Edgar, begging them to rule the kingdom. Kent refuses, saying he has other work to do: “I have a journey, sir, shortly to go./My master calls me; I must not say no” (328-29). Edgar and Albany are left alone to try to heal the broken state. Edgar closes the play with these solemn words: “The weight of this sad time we must obey,/Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say./The oldest hath borne most; we that are young/Shall never see so much, nor live so long” (330-33). Acts IV-V Analysis The agony of the last acts of King Lear is all the powerful because Shakespeare sets readers up for a happier ending than he delivers. Shortly before the tragic conclusion, many characters come to terms with their ordeals and find ways to endure. Edgar uses the power of language to persuade Gloucester that, even blind and miserable, his life is a miracle. Lear finds an impish kindness in the depths of his madness, begs Cordelia’s forgiveness, and faces imprisonment with humble courage. Edmund has a deathbed change of heart and renounces his villainies, remembering that he was once beloved. But all these glimmers of hope meet with a universe full of incomprehensible cruelty. The end of the play is famously brutal. Lear howls over Cordelia’s corpse, speaking words that will resonate with anyone who has ever grieved: “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,/And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,/Never, never, never, never, never” (5.3.313-15). Here, Lear confronts the horrors of human evil and the final incomprehensibility of mortality. His chilling refrain of “Never” suggests a man trying to make himself understand a word in a foreign language. Cordelia’s death is unnatural but also inevitable; as Macbeth remarks of his dead wife in his eponymous play, “She should have died hereafter.” Death comes to all, and that is the final inscrutable darkness everyone must confront. The senselessness of Cordelia’s death was deeply disturbing to audiences throughout the play’s life. One watcher, the 17th-century playwright Nahum Tate, was so appalled by this Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 22 ending that he rewrote the play to rescue Cordelia and marry her off to Edgar. But Shakespeare’s King Lear offers no such consolations. How humans live in the face of arbitrary, senseless death is the play’s great question. King Lear offers only a ghost of an answer, a spark in the darkness. By the end of the play, nearly everyone is dead or about to be dead—the loyal Kent implies that he’ll follow Lear into death. Only Albany and Edgar remain. Edgar, who transformed his pain into art over the course of the play, gets the final words, a commentary on words themselves. In order to “obey” the gravity of this hideous moment, Edgar says they must “[s]peak what we feel, not what we ought to say” (5.3.331). To speak the truth is to admit what we do not know and to refuse to escape into fantasy and self-delusion as so many characters do during the play. Only by meeting pain head-on can humans live complete and honest lives. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 23 Character Analysis Lear Lear is a mighty figure and a titan among Shakespeare’s tragic heroes. But he’s also a smallminded, ill-tempered, and self-involved old man—at least at the start. Lear’s initial bad decision to ask his daughters how much they love him before he’ll give them his kingdom sets the scene for the whole play. This demand suggests a world where love is nothing but an expression of power. Lear is fortunate to be truly loved by Cordelia, Kent, and his Fool, who refuse to play along with his manipulative game. As his plan backfires, Lear rediscovers his connection to reality over the course of the play. When he goes mad in the midst of a terrible storm, his madness paradoxically reconnects him to reality: he remembers that he, like Edgar’s beggar “Poor Tom,” is a “poor, bare, forked animal” (3.4.108), a mortal being in a painful and unpredictable world. Over the rest of the play, he acts on what he’s learned, consoling the blinded Gloucester, humbling himself before the wronged Cordelia, and submitting to imprisonment with a wisdom that comes from a sense that there are things in this world more important than power and status. But this isn’t a morality play—at least, not in the conventional sense—and Lear receives no reward for his education in harsh reality. Instead, he is forced to endure his beloved daughter’s senseless death. In his lament over her body, Lear asks the profound, broken, human question about the mortality of those we love: “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life/And thou no breath at all?” (5.3.313-14) Cordelia Alone among her sisters, Cordelia is a truth-teller. Like Edgar, she’s a victim of her family’s schemes, shortsightedness, and selfishness. Unlike Edgar, she’s a shrewd seer right from the start, well aware that Lear’s manipulations fly in the face of real love. Cordelia’s profound courage and goodness are at first visible only to a few other clear-eyed characters: Kent, the Fool, and the King of France, who marries her and later helps her mount an invasion to save her father. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 24 Cordelia is Lear’s favorite, but he only comes to understand his daughter’s true worth after he rejects her for refusing to play along with his games. Her brutal and preventable death speaks to the play’s unflinching engagement with the world’s injustices. When the 17th-century playwright Nahum Tate reworked King Lear to be a little more palatable for squeamish audiences, he was so appalled by this ending that he rescued Cordelia and married her off to Edgar. Goneril Goneril is the eldest of Lear’s daughters. Like her sister Regan, she is conniving and selfish. But she’s also pitiable. She seems to be the least favorite of Lear’s daughters. Less tricky than Regan and less beloved than Cordelia, she’s set up to fail from the start in Lear’s “wholoves-me-most?” contest. And when Lear turns on her in anger, his curse entreating the gods to make her infertile draws attention to the fact that this eldest daughter, married for some time, is still childless. Her unhappy marriage to Albany degenerates over the course of the play, and when Regan’s lust for Edmund imperils Goneril’s own claim on Edmund’s heart, Goneril turns to murder, poisoning her own sister. Regan Regan is the middle child of the Lear family and the cleverest schemer of the bunch. Her cunning play off Goneril’s initial love-speech—“I love you just like Goneril says, but even more!”—suggests that she’s learned manipulation and power-lust at her father’s knee. Regan becomes steadily more frightening over the course of the play. She takes sadistic pleasure in gouging out Gloucester’s eyes and instructing that he be thrown out to “smell/his way to Dover” (3.7.94-95). Her eventual death-match with Goneril over Edmund’s favor—a deathmatch she loses—suggests a poisonous dynamic running deep in Lear’s family: these two sisters have been trained to believe that love and power are commodities that must be won at any cost. Edgar The earnest, trusting Edgar grows up fast over the course of the play. Gloucester’s legitimate son, he is easily fooled by the machinations of his half-brother Edmund. When he flees into the night, he chooses the least comfortable disguise he can, becoming the naked lunatic “Poor Tom.” His time as Poor Tom is as transformative for him as it is for Lear. In enacting Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 25 the role of a gibbering and impoverished beggar, he comes into contact with a deep reality about human life: we’re all a suit of clothes and a roof away from our helpless animal nature, and we rely on each other to keep the wolves away Edgar also becomes an artist through his disguise, constructing a vivid imaginary “cliff of Dover” to save his father’s life. When Edgar concludes that humans must “speak what we feel, not what we ought to say,” he’s refers to the truths that art can reveal as well, as the honesty of a person like Cordelia or Kent. Edmund The illegitimate Edmund is a charismatic, eloquent, and ruthless villain—right up until the end of his life. Embittered by his father Gloucester’s scorn for him, Edmund becomes obsessed with climbing the social ladder. He spends most of the play turning families against each other to further his own ends. He sows division between his father and his brother, and he encourages Goneril and Regan to fight—and ultimately die—for his love. But when Edgar at last defeats him, some glimmer of humanity seeps out of Edmund. Remembering that “Edmund was beloved,” he tries to stop Cordelia and Lear’s executions—executions he ordered. Many of the play’s questions about fate and character center on this complex figure. Gloucester The Earl of Gloucester, like his friend and counterpart Lear, begins the play hot-tempered and small-minded. Openly scornful of his illegitimate son Edmund, he is a despotic parent, demanding perfunctorily that Edmund show him his private correspondence. Unfortunately for him, this demand plays right into Edmund’s plan to disinherit his innocent half-brother Edgar. Gloucester’s immediate willingness to believe that his loving son Edgar wishes to kill him suggests his fearful limitations. Like Lear, he is so self-involved he can’t recognize love or treachery where he finds them. Ironically, it’s only after Gloucester is violently blinded that he can see the truth. Kent The heartbreakingly loyal Kent sticks by Lear no matter what, understanding that the king needs support most when he is at his worst. Like Edgar, Kent finds freedom in his disguise. As Caius, he is able to speak bluntly for the first time. He takes great pleasure in doing so, as Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 26 in Act 2, Scene 2 when he gleefully and colorfully insults Goneril’s servant Oswald. A pragmatist, Kent focuses on getting Lear out of the storm at all costs. But when his master finally dies, he is unable to continue living. The Fool Like Kent and Cordelia, the Fool is willing to speak truth to power. Unlike Kent and Cordelia, the Fool gets away with it, precisely because he is a fool. This is a recurring character archetype that emerges in some form in most of Shakespeare’s plays, including As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A licensed jester who is allowed to say things to the King that no one else could, the Fool is the first to get through to Lear. He has genuine affection for his “nuncle Lear,” the same kind of honest love that motivates Cordelia to tell Lear what he really doesn’t want to hear. Some productions even cast the same actor as Cordelia and the Fool; they’re never on stage together. The Fool follows Lear willingly into the terrible storm, after which he disappears without explanation, mysteriously absorbed into the play’s darkness. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 27 Themes How Madness Reveals Truth The lunatics of King Lear—pretended and actual—are forever in closer contact with reality than the seemingly sane. This is evident in the Fool, whose job is to veil the harsh truth in the garb of nonsense riddles and bawdy songs. The same is true of Edgar, who capers naked in his shocking disguise as Poor Tom, and Lear himself. The play’s madmen, either implicitly or explicitly, reveal one of the play’s central truths: Every human is, at root, a frail and fallible mortal. Lear’s madness is especially poignant and meaningful. Lear feels madness creep up on him throughout the play. In private conversation with the Fool, Lear expresses his fear of this ultimate loss of control: “O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!/Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!” (1.5.43-44). But within his madness, Lear finds release. His ravings in the storm unleash deep rage, but they also bring him closer to others. Fully in touch with his own helplessness, Lear finds empathy for the Fool, Edgar, and all poor people wandering through the storm. Lear’s madness also allows him to empathize with the blinded Gloucester, whom he consoles like a weeping child. Madness takes everything from Lear, only to restore him to a richer and more truthful reality. Descending to his most abased depths, he discovers his weakness and also his connection to everyone who lives. Lear acknowledges this when he cries out, “Reason in madness!” (4.6.168–169). By contrast, Edmund, Cornwall, and the other schemers of the play exhibit the inverse of his declarative: madness in reason. By acting on rational self-interest, these characters leave untold death and destruction in their wake. The Capacity to Endure Human Suffering King Lear turns an appalled eye on the depth and breadth of human pain. At one of the play’s most agonizing moments, when the shocked Edgar gapes at his blinded father, he marvels, “The worst is not/So long as we can say, ‘This is the worst’” (4.1.27-28). In King Lear, there is a seemingly bottomless well of pain in the world—enough that, as Lear points out, babies’ first act upon joining the human drama is to cry helplessly. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 28 What’s more, the play suggests, human suffering goes deeper than any earthly redemption. Toward the end of the play, many of the characters allow their terrible suffering to transform them, as they come into closer contact with truth and empathy for the people around them. When the villainous Edmund gets caught up in this redemptive movement, using his last breath to try to stop the executions of Lear and Cordelia, there is a glimmer of true hope. This hope is dashed moments later, when Lear enters carrying the body of his only truly loving child, the play’s most uncomplicatedly good character. Edgar’s final words speak to the last possible spark in the cavernous darkness of the play’s ethical world. Those who try to make it through the ordeal of life must “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say” (5.3.331). All that humans can do in the face of suffering, Edgar’s closing lines suggest, is to try to speak truth to it, to keep our eyes steady on the reality of pain, and not to flee into fantasies of power and privilege. The Power of Fiction and Disguises While the world of King Lear is unrelentingly dark, it is not without its beauties. In a play intensely focused on reality and falsehood, it makes sense that one of the most powerfully redemptive moments comes through fiction, the art that straddles the gap between those poles. Edgar’s vivid word-picture of an imagined cliff of Dover is, on one hand, a barefaced lie. He leads his father to level ground and invents a sea-cliff for him to leap over. But he uses that lie to bring his father to a poignant truth. In spite of Gloucester’s blindness and in spite of his heartbreak and suffering, Edgar sends him over the edge of the imaginary cliff to remind him, “Thy life’s a miracle” (4.6.55). Fiction also appears as a theme in Edgar and Kent’s disguises. Both men are downtrodden and cast from the favor of men to whom they feel true love and loyalty. Both externalize their feelings of exile in their costumes: Kent becomes the rugged soldier Caius, while Edgar becomes the utterly abased madman Poor Tom. These humble disguises paradoxically grant their wearers new powers. In confronting and enacting the emotional truth of their circumstances, both Kent and Edgar become exuberant, virtuosic speakers and inventors. The play suggests that the inventiveness and emotional truth of fiction provide a way for humans to acknowledge and connect with reality. Edgar and Kent’s fictions bring them strange joy in an unendurable world and allow them to communicate the will to live to the sufferers around them. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 29 Symbols & Motifs Blindness Blindness manifests most literally in King Lear through the unfortunate Gloucester, whose eyes Regan and Cornwall gouge out. Only after this hideous loss does Gloucester see all that he was blind to before: the loyalty of his betrayed son Edgar, the heartless cruelty of the false Edmund, and the pure malice of his erstwhile allies. In the literal case of Gloucester, as well as in a heap of metaphorical references scattered throughout the play, blindness is paradoxically related to sight. The characters repeatedly demonstrate how one’s own prejudices and fears can blind someone to reality. The two fathers of the play, Lear and Gloucester, are so hampered by their own petty insecurities and egoism that they cannot perceive what is true. They must lose their “eyes” and their “I”s— meaning, their identities—to truly see reality. Part of that seeing is the capacity to see oneself and to know oneself to be weak, foolish, and flawed. Clothing and Nakedness When the mad Lear meets the disguised, raving, and naked Edgar in the storm, he takes a shine to him and quickly strips off his own clothes to imitate this “philosopher.” As in so many moments in this play, what at first appears to be absurd reveals a deep truth. Lear’s literal and symbolic nakedness reflect what his maturation. He learns that the difference between a king and a beggar is largely an outward performance. Beneath the ermine robe, a king is just as mortal, fleshly, and weak as a scraggly lunatic. Here, nakedness represents vulnerability and truthfulness. Specifically, Edgar’s nakedness is a form of speech that tells Lear a truth he cannot hear any other way. The Storm A wild storm brews ominously for much of the first half of the play. When it breaks, and Lear, Kent, the Fool, and Edgar flail around exposed to the wind and rain, catastrophe turns its other face and becomes enlightenment. The storm here represents the incomprehensible and unpredictable power of that which is beyond human: nature, divinity, fate, and death. Taking a good battering from this storm—that is, truly confronting his own smallness, weakness, and mortality—deeply alters Lear, forcing Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 30 him to understand that he’s a “poor, bare, forked animal” (3.4.108) just like everyone else. In this suffering, there is a paradoxical salvation. Lighting illuminates as much as it destroys. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 31 Important Quotes 1. “Tell me, my daughters/(Since now we will divest us both of rule,/Interest of territory, cares of state),/Which of you shall we say doth love us most,/That we our largest bounty may extend/Where nature doth with merit challenge.” (Act I, Scene 1, Lines 48 - 53) Lear’s fateful question tells us a great deal about his character. His demand that his daughters flatter him before he will give them the land is a form of emotional terrorism and a private tyranny born of insecurity and power-hunger. That his two eldest daughters readily play along suggest that this is not an unfamiliar pattern in the royal family. Over the course of the play, this inflated, egocentric king will have to learn that he, like everyone else, is just a mortal man. 2. “Good my lord,/You have begot me, bred me, loved me: I/Return those duties back as are right fit,/Obey you, love you, and most honour you./Why have my sisters husbands, if they say/They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,/That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry/Half my love with him, half my care and duty:/Sure, I shall never marry like my sisters,/To love my father all.” (Act I, Scene 1, Lines 95 - 104) Cordelia’s retort to Lear’s emotional demands is both reasonable and revealing. She works like a logician, pointing out that it doesn’t make much sense to get married if all your love goes to your father. But this argument is also emotive, suggesting a squeamish incestuous current in Lear’s claims to his daughters’ love. 3. “[…] 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? Well then,/Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land./Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund/As to th’ legitimate. Fine word, “legitimate.”/Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,/And my invention thrive, Edmund the base/Shall top th’ legitimate. I grow, I prosper./Now, gods, stand up for bastards.” (Act I, Scene 2, Lines 9 - 22) Edmund’s first soliloquy is a masterpiece of broad villainy. Edmund introduces himself and Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 32 his motives plainly: he wishes to be a self-made man, regardless of society’s prejudices against his illegitimacy, and he is willing to trample both his father and brother to gain power. His sense of self is straightforward yet mysterious; he blames “Nature” for his cruelty while his conscience about his own behavior is utterly untroubled. Although he later criticizes the idea that the stars determine people’s actions and fates, he is invested in the notion that he was immutably made, which excuses his villainy as inevitable. 4. “Hear, Nature, hear, dear goddess, hear!/Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend/To make this creature fruitful./Into her womb convey sterility,/Dry up in her the organs of increase,/And from her derogate body never spring/A babe to honor her. If she must teem,/Create her child of spleen, that it may live/And be a thwart disnatured torment to her./Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,/With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,/Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits/To laughter and contempt, that she may feel/How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is/To have a thankless child.” (Act I, Scene 4, Lines 272 - 275) Lear’s infamous curse is terrifying in its grotesquerie. Here, Lear invokes Nature, begging this cruel goddess to inflict a demonic child on Goneril, one that will wrack both her body and her heart. His images are as invasive as they are ugly. His vivid imagination of Goneril’s failing body projects his own fear and loathing of age onto his daughter. Lear once more oversteps, unable to see his daughter as a separate creature from himself. 5. “Look, sir, I bleed.” (Act II, Scene 1, Line 42) When Edmund wounds himself in order to cast suspicion on Edgar, he repeatedly draws his father Gloucester’s attention to this injury—but without much avail. This moment, in which Edmund tries to get a little attention even in the midst of a doubly treacherous plot, hints at the ugly interconnections between power and love—or lack thereof—in these complicated families. Gloucester, caught up in revenge, cannot see his son’s injury; when he eventually swears to make Edmund his heir, his choice has less to do with affection for his bastard son than vengefulness against the legitimate. 6. “A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson, glassgazing, superservicable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 33 in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deny’st the least syllable of thy addition.” (Act II, Scene 2, Lines 13 - 22) Kent’s rant against Oswald is exuberant and pointed. A cautious diplomat in his former life, the costumed Kent discovers a zestful love of language in the freedom of his lowly disguise. But the points he makes here are also meaningful. In attacking Oswald’s slavish acquiescence to Goneril’s instructions, he makes it clear that the selfish actions of men who stand for nothing oil the way for real cruelty. 7. “Whiles I may 'scape,/I will preserve myself: and am bethought/To take the basest and most poorest shape/That ever penury, in contempt of man,/Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth;/Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots,/And with presented nakedness outface/The winds and persecutions of the sky./The country gives me proof and precedent/Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,/Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare 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, sometimes with prayers,/Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod, poor Tom,/That's something yet: Edgar I nothing am.” (Act II, Scene 3, Lines 5 - 21) As he flees capture and death at the hands of his own father, Edgar externalizes his own inner experience. The world around him having gone mad, Edgar finds his best disguise in the costume of a mad, self-tormenting beggar. This is a pragmatic disguise—no one wants to look at a madman—but also a portentous one. As Poor Tom, Edgar—like Gloucester in his costume as Caius—will encounter truths about human life that complacent comfort only conceals. With a loss of identity comes the discovery of reality. 8. “Cry to it, nuncle, as the cockney did to the eels when she put 'em i' the paste alive; she knapped 'em o' the coxcombs with a stick, and cried 'Down, wantons, down!' 'Twas her brother that, in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.” (Act II, Scene 4, Lines 120 - 124) The Fool’s seemingly nonsensical interjections often play a blackly comic role, deflating the King’s agonies. Here, he compares Lear’s anguished “rising heart” to a pie full of live eels and makes a crude sexual joke along the way. The Fool, like Edgar, brings Lear back down to Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 34 earth, reminding him of the animal simplicity beneath all his assumed grandeur. 9. “You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need./You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,/As full of grief as age; wretched in both./If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts/Against their father, fool me not so much/To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,/And let not women's weapons, water-drops,/Stain my man's cheeks. No, 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. You think I'll weep./No, I'll not weep./I have full cause of weeping, but this heart/Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,/Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!” (Act II, Scene 4, Lines 271 - 286) Lear’s outburst at his elder daughters brings the dangerous complexity of the Lear family’s relationships to the breaking point. Raging and storming, Lear loses his grip on himself. He is at once terrifying and pitiful as he searches for words strong enough to communicate his fury. He is also tormented by the knowledge that he is losing touch with his sanity; even as he attempts to make a show of overwhelming power, he despairs of his own mind. This is the speech of a man divided against himself, and that internal division is externalized in his fracturing family. 10. “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!/You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout/Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks./You sulph’rous and thoughtexecuting fires,/Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,/Singe my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder,/Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world,/Crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once,/That makes ingrateful man.” (Act III, Scene 2, Lines 1 - 9) Lear’s famous cry in the storm shows an external world fully inhabited by a madman’s thoughts. The storm ominously mirrors all the divisions and furies of the play’s families; Lear, losing his mind, reads it as an image of rage and a destroyer of reason. Those “thoughtexecuting” thunderbolts, for instance, could be read either as killing thought, or moving as fast as Lear’s own uncontrollable mind. When he hopes the storm will “crack nature’s molds,” he reaches out for utter destruction of matter and order alike. Nature itself is thrown off balance, and all will pay for it. 11. “I'll speak a prophecy ere I go:/When priests are more in word than matter;/When brewers Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 35 mar their malt with water;/When nobles are their tailors' tutors,/No heretics burned, 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' th’ 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.” (Act III, Scene 2, Lines 81 - 96) The Fool’s ominous prophecy, like Lear’s address to the storm, foretells a world turned upside down. It does so in a prescient, almost postmodern style. After his fairy-tale account of an upended world, the Fool attributes this prophecy to Merlin, who hasn’t been born yet. In this curious instant, the Fool breaks both the fourth wall and the timeline of the narrative, reaching out to his audience as a contemporary who nevertheless lays claim to a home in the distant past. Lear’s world is so scrambled that even its fictional reality is fragile and uncertain. 12. “Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,/That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,/How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,/Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you/From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en/Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;/Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,/That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,/And show the heavens more just.” (Act III, Scene 4, Lines 30 - 38) Lear’s storm-tossed epiphany leads to a new experience of empathy. In his moments of lucidity between mad fits, he is suddenly able to feel the pain of the poor and to notice his Fool’s shivering. Madness, in driving Lear from his egocentric but fragile self-image as a powerful king, puts him in contact with a reality it’s all too easy and convenient for the wealthy and powerful to ignore. This speech occurs immediately before the disguised Edgar appears as “Poor Tom,” and Lear’s crazed embrace of this “philosopher” is colored by a genuine moment of revelation. 13. “A servingman, proud in heart and mind; that curled my hair, wore gloves in my cap, served the lust of my mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven. One that slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it. Wine loved I deeply, dice dearly; and in woman out-paramoured the Turk. False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 36 poor heart to woman. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend. Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind; Says suum, mun, ha, no, nonny. Dolphin my boy, my boy, sessa! let him trot by.” (Act III, Scene 4, Lines 85 - 101) Edgar’s invented backstory for Poor Tom has a wild poetry; like Gloucester, Edgar finds liberation in his disguise, and his invention here is far more detailed than it would need to be for the mere sake of concealment. There is relish and humor as well as darkness. By concocting this fiction, Edgar, becomes an artist. Like the Fool’s nonsense songs, Edgar’s inventions and nonsense are meaningful, touching on sexual perfidy and animal lusts concealed beneath perfume and gloves. 14. “Poor Tom, that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water; that in the fury of his heart, when the foul fiend rages, eats cow-dung for sallets, swallows the old rat and the ditch dog, drinks the green mantle of the standing pool; who is whipped from tithing to tithing, and stock-punished and imprisoned; who hath had three suits to his back, six shirts to his body, horse to ride, and weapon to wear; But mice and rats, and such small deer, Have been Tom's food for seven long year. Beware my follower. Peace, Smulkin; peace, thou fiend!” (Act III, Scene 4, Lines 128 - 139) As Edgar’s mad-scene develops, his imagination populates not his back-story as a servingman and a madman. Poor Tom’s imagined abasement—eating rotting animals and cow pies, drinking foul green water—is a nightmare version of real suffering. But there’s also a bitter comedy here, as there is in the rest of this scene: it’s so grim, the reader has to laugh. 15. “Out, vile jelly./Where is thy luster now?” (Act III, Scene 7, Lines 84 - 85) Cornwall’s sadistic words as he blinds Gloucester are matched in spite a few lines later when Regan leaves the maimed old man to “smell his way to Dover.” This merciless attack marks the true death of order and civilization in Lear’s England. As Gloucester notes, he is Regan and Cornwall’s host, and they break every code of hospitality and human conduct through their gruesome act. The queasily tangible image of “vile jelly” suggests the reduction of all that is human to mere foul matter in this new, chaotic world order. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 37 16. “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods;/They kill us for their sport.” (Act IV, Scene 1, Lines 37 - 38) The blinded Gloucester’s famous, pithy, and bitter summation of the human condition speaks to his despair. This is an utterly hopeless worldview, a response to a life that seems painful and indifferent to the point of cruelty. This theme of blows upon blows upon blows, seemingly without reason, will return until the end of the play. 17. “Come on, sir; here's the place: stand still. How fearful/And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low!/The crows and choughs that wing the midway air/Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down/Hangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade;/Methinks he seems no bigger than his head./The fishermen that walk upon the beach/Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,/Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy/Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge/That on th’ unnumb’red idle pebble chafes,/Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more,/Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight/Topple down headlong.” (Act IV, Scene 6, Lines 11 - 26) Like the Fool’s prophecy, Edgar’s construction of an imagined cliff of Dover gestures at the fictionality of the stage. The vivid picture Edgar draws here creates a reality; Shakespeare would evoke a “real” cliff on stage in exactly the same way as this pretended one, through language. That Edgar uses this fiction to restore some hope to his father’s heart is one of the few glimmers of redemption in the play’s grim world. 18. “What, art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears. See how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark in thine ear: change places and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?” (Act IV, Scene 6, Lines 150 - 154) Lear’s madness makes him into a philosopher. His scene with Gloucester is at once poignant and funny; it even inspired Samuel Beckett’s dark comedy, Waiting for Godot. Here, he also raises one of the play’s ongoing paradoxes: Physical blindness—and, by extension, impairment and suffering generally—allows for a new and more truthful kind of seeing. Through his ordeal, Lear now understands that title and position are nothing more than costumes. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 38 19. “If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes./I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester./Thou must be patient. We came crying hither;/Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air/We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee. Mark […] When we are born, we cry that we are come/To this great stage of fools.” (Act IV, Scene 6, Lines 176 - 183) As Lear consoles Gloucester, he connects them both back to their babyhood. Old age, sometimes read as a second infancy, brings the two suffering friends back to a new simplicity of understanding. This touching scene also connects to the play’s ideas about the malleability of reality: the world is a “stage of fools,” a play acted by idiots—which may put the reader in mind of a similar idea, less gently delivered, in Macbeth, of humans as nothing but bad actors delivering lines. 20. “Pray, do not mock me./I am a very foolish fond old man,/Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;/And, to deal plainly,/I fear I am not in my perfect mind./Methinks I should know you, and know this man:/Yet I am doubtful, for I am mainly ignorant/What place this is; and all the skill I have/Remembers not these garments; nor I know not/Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;/For, as I am a man, I think this lady/To be my child Cordelia.” (Act IV, Scene 7, Lines 61 - 73) When Lear reunites with Cordelia, he is waking from a much-needed sleep—a richly symbolic image of a return to reality. The fuddled Lear finally tells the simple, humble truth: he is a foolish old man losing his mind, but Cordelia is his true daughter. Part of coming to grips with the world, the play suggests, is gaining the self-knowledge to recognize one’s own limitations. 21. “What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure/Their going hence, even as their coming hither;/Ripeness is all.” (Act V, Scene 2, Pages 9 - 11) Edgar, exhorting Gloucester to keep going in spite of all his suffering, provides him with an injunction rather than a platitude. “Ripeness,” here, seems to be a resignation to what the world gives you. It is a form of acceptance in tune with Lear’s realizations about his own weaknesses. Gloucester will nonetheless die soon, but his heart will “burst smilingly” at the revelation that his true son has been leading him all along. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 39 22. “No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:/We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:/When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,/And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,/And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh/At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues/Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,/Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;/And take upon's the mystery of things,/As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,/In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,/That ebb and flow by the moon.” (Act V, Scene 3, Pages 8 - 19) Lear’s gentle speech to Cordelia brings all of the ways he’s changed into relief. He peacefully surrenders kingship, self-interest, and self-righteousness; he knows that part of this vision involves seeking forgiveness. Thus, to live is to be one of “God’s spies”: no longer blind, but a seer. 23. “Thou’st spoken right; ’tis true./ The wheel is come full circle; I am here.” (Act V, Scene 3, Pages 175 - 176) Here, Edmund undergoes a major reversal, seeing his downfall as part of the spinning of fortune’s wheel and as the inevitable consequence of his own actions. His slow death alters him in many ways: he feels sudden empathy for his father, for Lear, and for Cordelia, whom he tries to save with his last breath. His “I am here” is rather like Lear’s acknowledgement of his own foolishness. In death, the slippery, treacherous Edmund must acknowledge exactly who, where, and what he is. 24. “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,/And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,/Never, never, never, never, never.” (Act V, Scene 3, Pages 313 - 315) Lear’s lament over Cordelia’s body is one of the most famous and beautiful expressions of grief in the English language. Much of his language in these final moments turns on repetitions. His unbelieving litany of “never”s brings home the true incomprehensibility of death. 25. “The weight of this sad time we must obey,/Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say./The oldest hath borne most; we that are young/Shall never see so much, nor live so long.” (Act V, Scene 3, Pages 330 - 333) Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 40 Edgar closes the play with these lines, which echo the first scenes—in which Cordelia speaks what she feels, not what she ought to say—and Edgar’s own experiences in disguise, when he gets at the felt truth through a strange, lunatic kind of art. These are the words of a man coming to grips with reality, as all the characters of the play must. That reality is not an uplifting one: Edgar has seen too much incomprehensible pain and death to feel cheery about the prospect of kingship. But there is the tiniest flicker of hope in the fact that Edgar, unlike his predecessor, will be a king who knows himself and knows from the start that the world is full of pain. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 41 Essay Topics 1. What does King Lear’s use of literal and metaphorical blindness suggest about the play’s vision of the world? What’s the meaning of seeing in this play? 2. Why does Lear ask his daughters the fateful question at all? What does the first scene reveal about Lear’s character, and how does Lear’s question relate to the terrible events that follow? 3. Lear’s Fool disappears without a trace after the storm scenes. Why might this be? What does the Fool mean to the first half of the play, and why might he not fit into the second half? 4. What role does disguise play in King Lear? How do Edgar and Kent’s disguises change them? For example, consider how they speak in and out of disguise. 5. King Lear, with its three daughters—the elder two villainous, the youngest virtuous—at first seems to be structured like a fairy tale. But that fairy tale turns grimly realistic pretty fast. How and why does the play work with and against the shape of a fairy tale or folk tale? 6. What do you make of Edmund’s deathbed repentance? Consider Edmund’s last scene in light of the rest of the play. Does his remorse strike you as genuine? And is his sudden turn consistent with his actions up to this point? 7. There’s a notable lack of mothers in King Lear: Lear and Gloucester are both single fathers, and none of the daughters have children. Why might that be? How does the absence of a “Queen Lear” or a “Countess of Gloucester”—or a “Gloucester’s mistress,” for that matter— work with the play’s themes? 8. Edmund introduces himself with a big speech about human nature: Only idiots, he says, believe that their character is determined by the stars. How does the rest of the play reflect on that idea? What roles do fate and randomness play in the world of King Lear? Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 42 9. Write a scene in the Lear household that takes place when the daughters are all children. What do you imagine home life might have been like for Lear’s daughters? Why might the sisters have the relationships with each other and with their father that they do? Reread their scenes carefully to inform your imagination. 10. Take a close look at Edgar’s last lines. Why did Shakespeare choose to end the play on this note? How does speaking “what we feel, not what we ought to say” relate to the horrible tragedies the survivors have just witnessed? Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 43 Teaching Materials How to use Use these Teaching Materials to assess comprehension and facilitate analysis of a challenging text. Reading-check questions can be used after students read chapter sets independently or as a group. Reading-check, reading comprehension, multiple-choice, and/or short-answer questions can be used as formative assessment tools as readers proceed through the book unit, or as summative assessment tools after the completion of the chapter set or book. Use the questions to review aloud after reading multiple chapter sets, or after completing the book in preparation for the unit test. Questions can also be utilized in lesson planning and unit design. Use questions as: Discussion starters (examples throughout) Entrance and exit “tickets” Writing activity ideas Prompts to create opportunities for finding evidence and support in the text, employing critical thinking skills, and practicing test-taking skills Reading-Check, Discussion, and Quiz Questions Act I READING CHECK 1. Which of Lear’s three daughters refuses to flatter him when he demands to know who loves him most? Answer: Cordelia Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 44 2. Who is banished by Lear for defending Cordelia’s behavior and objecting to her banishment? Answer: Kent 3. Who offers to marry Cordelia after she is banished from her father’s kingdom? Answer: the King of France 4. How are Edgar and Edmund related? Answer: Edmund is Edgar’s illegitimate half-brother. Discussion Suggestion: Use the above question to introduce discussion on how Edmund’s ambitions, despite his illegitimate status, cast him as the “New Man” emerging in Shakespeare’s time, who rejects the Medieval Era’s emphasis on noble birth as the signifier of one’s worthiness to rule. 5. According to the forged letter, Edgar asks Edmund to assassinate whom? Answer: their father, Gloucester 6. What is the source of the argument between Goneril and Lear that causes Lear to leave? Answer: Lear’s retinue of 100 rowdy knights 7. To whose home does Lear go after his argument with Goneril? Answer: Regan’s QUIZ 1. Weary of his kingship, what does Lear decide to do at the beginning of the play? A) remain king but entrust Gloucester with running his kingdom B) divide his realm amongst his three daughters C) retire and cede his territory to the King of France Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 45 D) wait for Regan and Goneril to take action 2. What explanation does Cordelia give for why she loves Lear less completely than Regan and Goneril say they do? A) She recalls ways in which Lear mistreated her as a child. B) She has no interest in inheriting part of Lear’s kingdom. C) She reserves one-half of her love for her future husband. D) She is too melancholy to profess love for anybody. 3. Why does the King of France say he still wants to marry Cordelia, even after she’s been disinherited? A) He is impressed by the virtuous nature Cordelia showed in answering Lear honestly. B) He says he would rather inherit nothing than inherit a mere third of Lear’s kingdom. C) He says Cordelia’s physical beauty makes her an attractive wife regardless of her wealth. D) He is desperate for a wife and is willing to marry a woman with no inheritance. 4. What is the source of Edmund’s resentment? A) Gloucester disinherited him because Edmund is a lazy drunk. B) Cordelia rejected his marriage proposal without providing a reason. C) Edgar will receive all Gloucester’s lands and titles because Edmund is an illegitimate son. D) Gloucester refuses to pay Edmund’s gambling debts to teach him a lesson. 5. What is Edmund’s attitude toward his father’s beliefs regarding astrology? A) He does not understand astrology, but he supports his father in his beliefs. B) He wholeheartedly shares those beliefs after a lengthy study of astrology. C) He has no opinion of astrology and does not care what his father believes. D) He thinks his father’s beliefs are superstitious, as he would be an illegitimate son no matter his astrological sign. 6. After being banished, why does Kent disguise himself as a servant named Caius? A) to watch over Lear and remain loyal to him B) to observe Lear and report on his activities to Goneril C) to spy on Edmund and expose his treachery to Lear D) to hide from Albany and Cornwall who want him dead Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 46 7. Who is most forceful in reproaching Lear to his face about giving his land and fortune to Regan and Goneril? (short answer) QUIZ ANSWERS 1. B. Lear plans to bequeath everything to his three daughters, though not before demanding to see an exaggerated display of flattery. 2. C. Cordelia loves and obeys Lear as she believes a dutiful daughter should—no more, no less. To claim all her love is reserved for Lear would be a lie and an insult to her future husband. 3. A. The King of France is deeply impressed that Cordelia would risk losing everything in an effort to remain honest and upright. 4. C. The fact that Edmund will never inherit his father’s land and titles simply because he is illegitimate causes him to reject the Medieval social order that dictates this. 5. D. Just as Edmund rejects the old social structures, so too does he reject the superstitions undergirding them. 6. A. Kent’s banishment does not alter his sense of duty with respect to his sovereign, Lear. 7. The Fool. This is consistent with Shakespearean conventions and the social conventions of Medieval courts, in that the fool or jester often provided the king with the wisest—and harshest—counsel. Act II READING CHECK 1. Who are Regan and Goneril’s husbands, respectively? Answer: the Duke of Cornwall and the Duke of Albany Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 47 2. Which two characters do Regan and Cornwall enlist in service of their schemes in Act II, Scene 1? Answer: Edmund and Gloucester 3. What do Regan and Cornwall do to Kent after his altercation with Oswald? Answer: imprison him 4. What is the weather like outside when Regan turns Lear away? Answer: It is storming. 5. Which characters follow Lear outside after his fight with Regan in Act II, Scene 4? Answer: the Fool and Kent QUIZ 1. How does Edmund suffer a sword wound in Act II, Scene 1? A) Edgar stabs him in an argument. B) He stabs himself intentionally. C) He cuts himself accidentally. D) Highwaymen attack and rob him. 2. Why does Kent hate Oswald so much, going so far as to draw his sword on him? A) Oswald had an affair with Kent’s wife. B) Oswald owes Kent money. C) Oswald is jealous of Kent. D) Oswald insulted Lear. 3. What does Edgar disguise himself as in Act II, Scene 3? A) a madman B) a knight C) a steward D) a prince Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 48 Discussion Suggestion: Use the above question to jumpstart a discussion on how Edmund’s and Edgar’s predicaments are mirror images of one another; consider the ways in which Edmund uses deception to rise to a noble status, while Edgar uses deception to lower himself in status in pursuit of larger truths. 4. How would you describe Lear’s attitude at Regan and Cornwall’s home? A) full of vigor and charm B) calm and collected C) bored and lethargic D) full of rage but impotent 5. How does Regan respond to Lear’s request that she let him inside? A) She enthusiastically welcomes him with open arms. B) She cautiously lets him in under certain conditions. C) She refuses and tells him to go back to Goneril’s. D) She imprisons him with Kent. QUIZ ANSWERS 1. B. Edmund does this to frame Edgar, in an effort to convince Gloucester to have his legitimate son killed. 2. D. The ever-loyal Kent is aghast at the disrespect Oswald shows Lear. 3. A. As a madman, Edgar hopes to find truth in deception. 4. D. This is indicative of Lear’s rapidly deteriorating mental state. 5. C. Now that Regan has her inheritance, she has little patience for her father. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 49 Act III READING CHECK 1. Who plans to invade Britain to wrest power from Albany and Cornwall? Answer: the King of France 2. Who remains at Lear’s side while Kent searches for him? Answer: the Fool 3. To what type of shelter does Kent lead Lear and the Fool to avoid the storm? Answer: a hovel 4. Edmund plans to betray his father to whom? Answer: Cornwall Discussion Suggestion: Use the above question to discuss the parallels between Edmund’s betrayal of his father and Regan and Goneril’s betrayal of theirs; explore these generational conflicts with special attention to Edmund’s line, “That which my father loses—no less than all. The younger rises when the old doth fall.” 5. Which character do Lear, Kent, and the Fool find inside their shelter with them? Answer: Edgar 6. By what nickname does Edgar refer to himself while disguised? Answer: Poor Tom 7. In Lear’s hallucination, which characters are put on trial? Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 50 Answer: Regan and Goneril 8. Who wounds Cornwall in an attempt to stop him from harming Gloucester? Answer: a servant QUIZ 1. According to Kent, what is the nature of the relationship between Albany and Cornwall in Act III? A) strong, inseparable allies B) open enemies vying for control of Britain C) apparent allies who are secretly plotting against one another D) disinterested parties barely aware of one another’s actions 2. What does the Fool do to close out Act III, Scene 2? A) deliver a prophecy B) run back out into the storm C) give a soliloquy mocking Lear D) stab and murder Kent 3. Why do Regan and Cornwall drive Gloucester out of his home? A) for secretly plotting against them with Lear B) for refusing to house their knights on his estate C) for merely expressing pity for Lear D) for the misdeeds of his son, Edmund 4. What best describes Lear’s reason for tearing off his clothes in the shelter? A) He is unbearably feverish, suffering physical illness. B) He feels he has been reduced to a mere animal, like Poor Tom. C) He wants to give his clothes to Kent, who is cold. D) He is delusional and believes it is bedtime. Discussion Suggestion: Use the above question to discuss how, through Lear’s real madness and Edgar’s feigned madness, important truths are revealed to each man about the human condition. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 51 5. Why does Gloucester speak openly of his son’s supposed betrayal in Edgar’s presence? A) He does not recognize Edgar. B) He is referring to Edmund, not Edgar. C) He is attempting to provoke Edgar. D) He has already forgiven Edgar. 6. How does Edmund become the new Earl of Gloucester? A) His father, the current Earl of Gloucester, gives up this title to him. B) He murders the current Earl of Gloucester. C) Albany gives him this title in return for betraying Cornwall. D) Cornwall gives him this title in return for betraying his father. 7. What major development is revealed by the letter that Gloucester shows Edmund and Edmund later shows Cornwall? (short answer) 8. In what way do Regan and Cornwall physically harm Gloucester before throwing him out into the storm? (short answer) QUIZ ANSWERS 1. C. Although Albany and Cornwall appear to be working together, each wishes to rule Britain alone. 2. A. His prophecy predicts that Britain will descend into chaos. 3. C. Regan and Cornwall are so full of contempt for Lear that the mere suggestion of pitying him is enough to draw their ire. 4. B. Lear feels that he, like Poor Tom, is “no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal.” 5. A. Edgar’s disguise and actions are so convincing that his own father does not recognize him. 6. D. The title is a reward for Edmund’s loyalty and the culmination of his attempts to force his way into the nobility through Machiavellian manipulation and ingenuity. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 52 7. The French army has landed in England. 8. They gouge out his eyes. Act IV READING CHECK 1. Who agrees to lead Gloucester to the cliffs of Dover? Answer: Edgar 2. Whom does Goneril want to marry after growing disillusioned about Albany? Answer: Edmund 3. At the end of Act IV, Scene 2, whose death is reported to Albany by a messenger? Answer: Cornwall’s 4. Who wrote the letter addressed to Edmund that fixates Regan in Act IV, Scene 5? Answer: Goneril 5. In Act IV, Scene 5, who is Edmund going to kill “in pity of his misery,” according to Regan? Answer: Gloucester 6. How does Gloucester survive what he believes is a jump from the cliffs of Dover? Answer: Edgar led him to a patch of flat ground, not the cliff’s edge. 7. How does Oswald die? Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 53 Answer: Edgar kills him in a fight after Oswald attempts to murder Gloucester. 8. Where are Cordelia and Lear finally reunited? Answer: a French military camp QUIZ 1. Why does Gloucester want to go to Dover? A) to rendezvous with the King of France and the French Army B) to catch up with Lear, whom he still pities C) to find Edgar, who he believes currently resides there D) to throw himself off the cliffs to his death 2. Why does Goneril grow disillusioned with Albany? A) She suspects Albany has aligned with Regan against her. B) Albany no longer approves of her increasingly immoral behavior. C) Albany has grown too bloodthirsty and violent for her. D) She now doubts Albany possesses the intelligence to carry out her plans. 3. To what is Kent referring when he says, “It is the stars. The stars above us govern our conditions”? A) how different Edmund is from Edgar B) how different Cordelia is from her sisters C) the causes of Lear’s mental deterioration D) his own continued loyalty to Lear Discussion Suggestion: Use the above question to discuss the extent to which outcomes and actions in King Lear are determined by uncontrollable fate versus divine intervention or human agency. Which characters believe that destiny is controlled by the stars? Which do not? What themes does Shakespeare convey through these competing philosophies? 4. According to Kent, why will Lear resist seeing Cordelia? A) He is ashamed of disinheriting her. B) He is still angry that she wouldn’t devote all her love to him. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 54 C) He is infuriated that her husband invaded Britain. D) In his madness, he forgets who she is. 5. What most motivates Cordelia as she prepares for battle in Act IV, Scene 4? A) ambition to amass power B) hatred of her sisters C) love for her father D) allegiance to France 6. What is a reason that explains why Regan believes she is more suitable than Goneril to be Edmund’s wife? A) Regan is more beautiful. B) Regan’s claim to the realm is stronger than Goneril’s. C) Regan believes Goneril will die in the battle. D) Regan is a widow. 7. Why does Regan regret letting Gloucester live after blinding him? A) As long as Gloucester lives, Edmund cannot inherit his title. B) Gloucester possesses a legitimate claim to her realm. C) Gloucester will inspire pity from the masses, driving them against Regan. D) Gloucester has allied with Goneril against her. 8. Why is it ironic when Lear finally acknowledges the falseness of his daughters’ flattery in Act 4, Scene 6? A) because Lear makes more sense in madness than he did when sane B) because Lear himself is a notorious giver of false flattery C) because Lear is wearing a crown of weeds, which symbolize flattery D) because his daughters never offered their flattery QUIZ ANSWERS 1. D. Blinded, betrayed, and miserable, Gloucester sees no reason to go on living. 2. B. Both Goneril and Oswald are deeply dismayed by Albany’s dramatic change in attitude toward their schemes. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 55 3. B. Kent believes that Cordelia’s loving spirit must be the result of preordained forces, given her sisters’ cruelty. 4. A. Lear deeply regrets the unkindness and narcissistic need for flattery he displayed at the beginning of the play. 5. C. On the eve of battle, Cordelia says, “No blown ambition doth our arms incite, But love, dear love, and our aged father’s right.” 6. D. Regan tells Oswald, “My lord is dead. Edmund and I have talked, And more convenient is he for my hand.” 7. C. Of Gloucester, Regan says, “Where he arrives, he moves All hearts against us.” 8. A. One of the play’s major themes is the extent to which sensible truths are revealed through bouts of so-called madness. Act V READING CHECK 1. What does Edmund plan to do with Lear if his army is victorious? Answer: kill him 2. Which of the two factions wins the battle in Act V, Scene 2? Answer: the British (Regan, Edmund, etc.) 3. What happens to Cordelia and Lear in the immediate wake of the battle? Answer: They are imprisoned. 4. Who is the “champion” that Albany heralds after the battle, according to Edgar’s instructions? Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary Answer: Edgar himself 5. Who poisons Regan? Answer: Goneril 6. How does Cordelia die? Answer: Her jailer kills her, at Edmund’s instruction. 7. After Lear dies, which two characters does Albany want to rule the kingdom? Answer: Kent and Edgar QUIZ 1. What is Albany’s primary motivation for joining forces with Regan’s army? A) to enact revenge on Lear B) to please his wife Goneril C) to oppose the French invasion D) to get closer to Edmund 2. How does Albany learn that Goneril plans to have him killed? A) He overhears her talking about it with Edmund. B) He discovers it in the letter Edgar gives him. C) Edmund brags to Albany about it. D) Regan reveals it while sharing Goneril’s plan to marry Edmund. 3. What does Edgar say to convince Gloucester to save himself after the battle? A) “The gods are just.” B) “Thy life’s a miracle.” C) “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” D) “Men must endure.” Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 56 King Lear SuperSummary 57 Discussion Suggestion: Use the above question to discuss Shakespeare’s theme that the will to keep on living, even—and perhaps especially—amid abject suffering, is a virtue in and of itself, with an emphasis on how this reflects 16th and 17th century Christian values. 4. What is Edmund’s excuse for wanting to keep Lear and Cordelia detained? A) They may try to kill themselves to avoid the shame of defeat. B) He wants them to suffer so they will be more forthcoming in interrogations. C) Their presence may divide the troops’ loyalties. D) Albany will be lenient towards them because he is married to Cordelia’s sister. 5. For what crime does Albany try to arrest Edmund? A) murder B) treason C) impersonating a noble D) theft 6. How does Goneril die? (short answer) 7. What happens to Gloucester after Edgar reveals his identity? A) Infuriated, he attempts to kill Edgar. B) He wanders off without a word. C) His heart bursts, and he dies. D) He joins Edgar’s side, and they confront Edmund. 8. How does Albany learn of Edmund’s plans to have Lear and Cordelia killed in custody? A) from Edmund himself B) from Lear and Cordelia after they escape C) from a letter intercepted by Edgar D) from Goneril who brags about it QUIZ ANSWERS 1. A. Unlike other characters with whom he is aligned, Albany is driven not by ambitions for power or personal grievance; he wants to protect British sovereignty against an invading force. Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022 King Lear SuperSummary 58 2. B. Edgar retrieved the letter after killing Oswald and, disguised, delivers it to Albany. 3. D. This sentiment is one of the play’s most important themes. 4. C. Edmond’s true agenda, however, is to have them murdered. 5. B. The rationale is that Edmund refused Albany’s orders to turn Lear and Cordelia over to him. 6. She commits suicide. 7. C. Edgar explains this to Edmund after mortally wounding him. 8. A. Edmund reveals this in his dying breath, to do “some good.” Downloaded by rawan saket - rawansaket@yahoo.com Do not distribute. Copyright © SuperSummary 2022