| Arnold Kettle-society | -in King Lear, Shakespeare reveals from the start a society in turmoil |
| Frank Kermode-crafty | – Lear is the craftiest as well as the most tremendous of the Shakespeare tragedies |
| Samuel Johnson-G’s eyes bit | the extrusion of Gloucester’s eyes seems an act too horrid to be endured by dramatic exhibition, and must compel the mind to relieve its stress by increduity |
| Arnold Kettle- world in which | – Lear is a world in which the old order is decadent and the new people unprincipled |
| Arnold Kettle- people and order | -a conflict between “those who accept order(Gloucester, Kent) and the “new people, the individualists” |
| Arnold Kettle- summary of Lear story | – the Lear story is deep and complex |
| Nahum Tate- what date and how did change story | -1681- Lear ending too gloomy- devised happier ending where Lear does not die and there is a romance between Edgar and Cordelia |
| Joseph Wharton- Gloucester plot | -unlikely and distracting |
| Joseph Wharton- G+ R | -Goneril and Regan’s savagery too diabolical to be credible |
| Charles Lamb | -thought the play was unactable |
| DJ Enright-suffering | -the principle characters are not those who act,but those who suffer |
| LC Knights- exposure | -exposure is the very essence of King Lear |
| Harold Bloom | the descent from Monarch to ‘unaccomodated man’ thus conveys most potently man’s fragility, fallibility and fatality |
| Cunningham- Lear’s madness and Gloucester’s blindness | Gloucester will find “insight through blindness” and Lear “wisdom through madness in the play’s twinned key moral provocations” |
| Elton- Gods | Cordelia’s death and Gloucester’s blindness “are the actions of an upside-down providence in an apparently deranged universe” |
| LC Knights- human race | the play is a microcosm of the human race |
| William R Elton- last act | the last act shatters the foundations of faith itself |
| Jan Kolt- what Lear is about | King Lear is about the disintegration of the world |
| George Bandes-Cordelia | the living emblem of womanly dignity |
| George Bandes- play as a whole | titanic tragedy of human life |
| Samuel Johnson- tragedy of play | a play in which the wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry-a representation of the common events of human life |
| Arnold Kettle-Shakespeare as a writer | shakespeare was a realistic writer who presents us with actual situations..based on particular observations and insight |
| Jonathon Dollimore- Lear | what makes Lear the person he is-or was- is not kingly essence, but authority and his family |
| Jonathan Dollimore- what play is about | power, property and inheritance |
| Coppelia Kahn- feminist approach | play about male anxiety- Lear goes mad because he is unable to accept his dependence on the feminine, his daughters |
| Kathleen Mcklusklie- plays feminine viewpoint | “anti-feminine play- presents women as the primal sin of lust |
| Kathleen Mcklusklie- family | family relations are fixed and determined-any movement within them is portrayed as a destructive reversal of the rightful order |
| Kathleen Mcklusklie- conclusion | must be made to submit (Cordelia) or destroyed (Goneril and Regan) |
| BK Stuart- Lear | Lear would rather have flattery than the truth |
| William Hazlitt- Lear | Lear’s blindness to everything but the dictates of his passions or affections, that produces all his misfortunes |
| Charles Lamb- acting of Lear | to see Lear acted… has nothing in but what is painful and disgusting |
| Hal Holbrook- Lear as a father | he has clung steadfastly to the conviction that he is a loving father, despite all evidence on the contrary |
| Hal Holbrook- Lear’s intelligence | Lear is not a man of conscious intellect |
| Simon Wardle (2014)- knights and effect on Lear’s suffering | if Lear’s knights are presented as unruly and rebellious then Goneril and Regan’s criticisms can be justified |
| Simon Wardle-effect of knights on ending scene | Folio version (with knights) allows the scene to be staged as the celebrated return of a king from exile |
| Simon Wardle- servants and master | servants mirror the authority of their master |
| Samuel Johnson- Cordelia’s death | I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia’s death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor |
| Warton- Edmund and Edgar | the plot of Edmund against his brother destroys the unity of the fable |
| Kenneth Tynan- lack of sympathy for Lear | Lay to rest the archaic notion that Lear is automatically entitled to our sympathy because he is a king who suffers |
| Dr Johnson- Cordelia’s death | contrary to the natural ideas of justice |
| Trevor Nunn- Shakespeare’s tragedy | Shakespeare concludes that life isn’t like a morality play |
| Trevor Nunn- Lear and Gods | Lear sees himself as a conduit of the Gods |
| Trevor Nunn- Edmund | evidence of a solitary shocking atheist intelligence |
| A. C Bradley- Lear’s death | dying in unbearable joy |
| Susan Bruce- Lear’s death | Lear’s ghost departs with the sense that everything has fallen apart |
| Susan Bruce- Lear’s actions | they are a catalyst rather than a cause |
| Susan Bruce- Edmund | We are offered an insight into to Edmund that renders him more complex than he otherwise might be |
| Susan Bruce- appeal of Edmund | Edmund appeals to a meritocratic ideal |
| Yeats- Lear as a history | less as a history of one man and his sorrows than as the history of a whole evil time |
| Jonathan Bate- humanity and social class | humanity is best represented by the more lowly characters |
| Jonathan Bate- lessons of play | warnings against the temptations of absolutism |
| Simon Mendes- private and public | how the personal and the political are inextricably linked |
| Simon Mendes- Lear and daughters | He doesn’t have good relationships with his daughters |
| Simon Russell Beale- scene with Lear and Cordelia | the scene when Lear wakes out of sleep and sees Cordelia is a very angry scene |
| Simon Mendes- Lear’s golddiggers | Once the money stops and they don’t have a social rank, people abandon him |
| Simon Russell Beale- beauty | There is a beauty in the play that has to be acknowledged |
| Simon Russell Beale- redemption | Without cruelty and rage and violence there is no redemption |
| Anne Marie Taylor- Lear’s madness | The most remarkable aspect of the drama is the central figure’s restoration of sanity at the end of the play |
| Anne Marie Taylor-structure | The structure of the play is wild and wandering |
| Hazlitt- family | Shakespeare showed a firm faith in filial piety |
| Swinburne (1880)- pity | pity and mercy are words without living meaning |
| Wilson Knight- Lear’s death | (comedy means) Lear is not even allowed to die tragically |
| Wilson Knight- tragedy within play | The tragedy is purposeless and unreasonable |
| Dollimore- criticism of Edgar and Albany | try to recuperate their society in just those terms the play is subjected to skeptical interrogation |
| Leonard Tennenhouse- what play is about (social class) | reaffirming oppressive structures |
| Michael mangan- love trial language | Lear, Goneril and Regan are playing an eleborate language game |
| Michael mangan- love trial and nature of scene | public nature cannot be stressed too much |
| Michael mangan- public lang in love trial | the participants are speaking the language appropriate to rituals of state |
| Michael Mangan- Cordelia criticism | Lear’s sens of rejection is not without foundation |
| Michael Mangan- evil character’s speech | the discrepancy between what they will say to Lear’s face and what they will say behind his back is significant |
| Micahel Mangan- what Lear story is about | men and women displaced from their usual identities in society |
| Michael Mangan- heath | a picture of a world turned upside down |
| Michael Mangan- Edgar | Edgar is a chameleon figure |
| Michael Mangan- Edgar and Edmund | comprise reversed images of each other |
| Michael Mangan- Shakespeare’s landscapes | non-illusionistic |
| Michael Mangan- Edgar as hero | Edgar becomes a martial hero |
| Michael Mangan- goodness | goodness can only survive in disguise |
| Michael Mangan- what Lear wanted from love trial | the position without the responsibility |
| Michael Mangan- Lear when realises poverty | more sympathetic and impressive figure than at any other point in the play |
| Michael Mangan- Edmund end | decides to do one good deed before he dies |
| Shelley- 1821- appraisal of Lear | the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art in the existing world |
| Tolstoy-characters- Edmund, Edgar, Gloucester | superfluous characters of villain Edmund and the unlifelike Gloucester and Edgar |
| George Orwell- Edgar | Edgar is a superfluous character |
| Faguet- criticism of King Lear as play | almost anybody, no matter who, could write it |
| Granville Barker- opposition to Charles Lamb | King Lear was meant to be acted |
| AC Bradley- setting | the warm castle is in hell, the storm-swept heath a sanctuary |
| Enid Welsford- family | the breaking of ties of close blood, is so abnormal and unnatural that it must be a symptom of some convulsion in the frame of things |
| John Holloway-ending | the idea of being brought back to rectitude is what the play ends with |
| C.J Sisson- justice | there is in fact poetic justice enough in King Lear- Evil is destroyed. |
| AC Bradley- Shakespeare’s stance on evil | Shakespeare opposes the presence and influence of evil by the presence of human virtue, fidelity and self-sacrificial love |
| Enid Welsford- good stupid | Shakespeare tends to give more intellectual ability to his sinners than to his saints |
| Enid Welsford- Edmund | Edmund is so shrewd and witty that he almost wins our sympathy for his unabashed cruelty |
| Barbara Everett- Lear | the play moves us by sympathy for Lear |
| John Holloway- play’s relevance throughout history | has life and meaning for all times |
| Wilson Knight- Lear as a child | Lear is mentally a child, in passion a titan |
| Philip Allan literary guide- Albany | the last lines should go to Albany |
| Philip Allan literary guide- Albany’s development | metamorphosis from nonentity to man of integrity and inner strength |
| Wilson Knight- religious view of play | this play is purgatory |
| Wilson Knight- Edmund | purely selfish, soulless and in this respect, bestial |
| Wilson Knight- Gods to Gloucester | The gods are to Gloucester kind |
| Sam Mendes- Cordelia’s response in love trial | as much a political act of rebellion as a personal one |
| Wilson Knight- comedy | From the start, the situation has a comic aspect |
| Wilson Knight- Lear as a father | He understands the nature of none of his children |
| Wilson Knight-Edgar’s role in relation to fool’s | Edgar succeeds the fool as the counterpart to the breaking sanity of Lear |
| Wilson Knight- Edmund’s death | Edmund’s fate is nobly tragic |
| Wilson Knight- Lear’s reaction to Cordelia’s death | underlying tension in Lear- between an absolute knowledge that Cordelia s dead and an absolute inability to accept it |
| Wilson Knight- Lear’s death | no mitigation in Lear’s death, hence no mitigation in ending of play |
| Martha Burns- Goneril and Regan compliment | Goneril and Regan are formidable |
| Hudson- description of Goneril and Regan | personifications of ingratitude |
| Arnold Kettle- Cordelia in first scene | at the beginning, it is Cordelia who is the most heroic one |
| Harley Granville Parker- criticism of Cordelia | Cordelia has more than a touch of her father in her |
| N Brooke- blame of Lear | Lear’s willful folly in A1 Sc1 is the fault which brings the vengeful heavens literally crashing about him |
| Andrew Hadfield- Lear’s potential | The play does not represent a king who is ineffective or unimpressive, but one who has not taken enough care of his kingdom |
| RA Peck- Edmund | If Shakespeare does not expect us to approve of Edmund, he certainly takes no pains in preventing us from doing so |
| Arnold Kettle- Gloucester criticism | moral laxity |
| Robert West- overly complimentary edmund | Edmund still has a share in being |
| Moseley- eye gauging | Gratuitous cruelty |
| Thorndike- Goneril and Regan | Inhuman sisters |
| Race Capet- Edmund and society | Edmund’s very existence as a bastard indicts the order the rejects him |
| Coppelia Kahn- shakespeare anti-fem- cordelia | Cordelia’s return is a restoration of the patriarchy |
| Alexander Legget- Poor tom compared to Edgar | Poor Tom is a more vivid and recognisable character than Edgar |
| AC Bradley- Edgar | Edgar’s christian values are commented on |
King Lear critic quotes
July 7, 2019