| “We shall express our darker purpose” | Lear- power |
| “we unburdened crawl toward death” | infantalisation theme- Lear will become a child before he dies |
| “we will divest us both of rule” | use of royal “we” Lear is ridding himself of all power- some directors literally have Lear remove a jacket at this point in the scene. |
| “nothing will come of nothing” | contradicts the following events of entire play, through Cordelia saying “nothing” Lear embarks on an emotional trajectory of development and gains insight. |
| “Out of my sight” | eyesight motif- ironic as Lear has lack of insight at this point |
| “better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better” | Lear to Cordelia Act one scene one, he disowns her |
| “who am I sir?” | Lear to Oswald, Act one scene 4 |
| “This is nothing Fool” | The Fool’s speech to Lear, this is Lear’s response |
| “Does any know me here?” | Loss of royal “we”, revealing Lear’s loss of status, social identity and power as a King. |
| “Into her womb convey sterility, Dry up in her the organs of increase” | cursing Goneril |
| “create her child of spleen” | give Goneril a child of a violent temper- ironic, Lear is arguably this child “old fools become babes again”. He’s lost his power and like a child is thus dependent upon his two daughters. |
| “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child” | vitriolic, ironic- Cordelia must feel this in a sense as she projected her true love and Lear being childlike in his anger is thankless. |
| “O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!” | Lear to fool, Act one scene 5 |
| “We are not ourselvesWhen nature, being oppressed, commands the mind To suffer with the body” | Allusion to Edmund’s earlier speech, Lear is indicating that we cannot always be held accountable for our actions when nature or illness is the cause. |
| ” O Regan, she hath tied Sharp- toothed unkindness” | Act 2 scene 2, Lear comes to Regan in a childlike way, like a child moving from one parent to another. Reveals his loss of power and status and his dependence on his daughters- he is infantalised. |
| “Allow not nature more than nature needs,Man’s life is cheap as beast’s” | man’s life becomes cheap as a beast |
| ” let not women’s weapons, water-drops, Stain my man’s cheeks””No, you unnatural hags””Nothing could have subdued nature To such a lowness but his unkind daughters””down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above” | Anti-feminist reading- Shakespeare is presenting a dystopian play whereby the struggle for Goneril and Regan to be independent from their father is portrayed as dangerous and threatening. |
| “Blow winds and crack your cheeks” “Your cataracts and hurricanoes” | plosive consonants, to recreate the storm |
| “drenched our steeples” | churches flooded, dystopian play presenting a world without God, ammoral society recreating the apocalypse described in the bible. |
| “spit fire, spout rain!” | monosyllabic, reflecting anger |
| “I am a man more sinned against than sinning” | progresses in this very scene- Marxist reading |
| “Art cold?I am cold myself” | like a toddler, again he is infantalised but begins to learn about the world around him |
| “where is this straw?” | straw becomes a valuable entity, Lear can now empathise with the rest of England, he is progressing as a person through suffering. |
| “this tempest in my mind””This tempest will not give me leave to ponder” | alluding perhaps to Lear’s awareness that he is losing his sanity, dementia, nature taking it’s course |
| “Poor naked wretches””I have ta’en Too little care of this” | social commentary, Lear is realising his lack of insight and his failure as a monarch- trajectory of learning. |
| “Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art” | Lear to Poor Tom |
| “Thou robed man of justice”- Edgar”his yoke fellow of equity”- The Fool | ‘Shakespeare makes a comment on contemporary justice system by staging a trial by a lunatic, counterfeit and a Fool’- Marxist |
| “When we are born we cry that we are comeTo this great stage of fools” | acknowledges his own foolishness |
| “We two alone will sing like birds i’the cage””As if we were God’s spies” | to Cordelia |
| “And my poor fool is hanged” | reference to Cordelia or actual fool? |
King Lear- Lear quotes
July 15, 2019