| view Edmund as “another lago” | Barker |
| would percieve Edmund as the play’s hero – a character wronged by old systems of power who has decided he will be oppressed no longer. | Marxist reading |
| “A microcosm of the human race” | L.C Knights |
| “The principal characters are not those who act, but those who suffer.” | D.J Enright |
| “King Lear is about the disintegration of the world” | Jan Knolt |
| “Fall from the highest elevation into the deepest abyss” | August Wilhelm Schlegel |
| “A destructive reversal of the rightful order” | Kathleen McLuskie |
| “(On the gouging out of Gloucester’s eyes) .. an act too horrid to endured in dramatic exhibition.” | Samuel Johnson |
| “Women are made either to submit – Cordelia – or must be destroyed – Goneril and Regan.” | Kathleen McLuskie |
| “Cordelia’s return is a restoration of patriarchy, of the old order. But this cannot be wholly reduced to male power.” | Kathleen McLuskie |
| “Family relations in this play are seen as fixed and determined, and any movement within them is portrayed as destructive reversal of natural order.” | Kathleen McLuskie |
| “King Lear is too huge for the stage” | Bradley |
| “There is no supernatural justice – only human natural justice.” | S.L Goldberg |
| “Lear goes mad because he is unable to accept his dependence on the feminine, his daughters.” | Coppelia Kahn |
| “The horror of Lear’s story is the unnatural behaviour of Goneril and Regan .. not only personal sins but an upsetting of civilised values.” | Helen Norris |
| “the coils of Evil spread and fester in the subplot of the play” | Hal Holbrook |
| “he has clung steadfastly to the conviction that he is a loving father, despite all evidence of the contrary.” | Hal Holbrook |
| “Lear’s madness is not so much a breakdown as a breakthrough. It is necessary” | A. Kettle |
| “It is through his madness (..) that Lear comes to a new outlook on life.” | A. Kettle |
| Lear finds “wisdom through madness” | Cunningham |
| Tragedy is misogynistic, the protagonist is always male. Shakespeare aligns anarchy and sexual insubordination through Goneril and Regan. | Feminist reading |
King Lear Critical Quotes/Views
July 31, 2019