| “When thou dost ask me blessing I’ll kneel down and ask of thee forgiveness” | 5.3.10; Lear’s recognition of the error of his ways is vital to the reconciliation, because he has finally understood the depth and sincerity of Cordelia’s love for him. |
| “Why brand they us with base? With baseness, bastardy? Base, base?” | 1.2.9; Edmund’s first soliloquy. Plosives emphasize his frustration at the rigid social structure that limits him. |
| “Here I stand your slave, A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man” | 3.2.19; Inversion of order, displaying Lear’s fall. Could be seen as a moment of anagnorisis. Some critics argue Lear’s identity is used as a social construct as he loses his mind when he loses his status. |
| “When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools” | 4.6.178; social corruption/mockery. Meta-theatrical. Lea implicitly reveals his awareness of playing the role of king and of his folly. |
| “The wheel has come full circle, I am here” | 5.3.173; wheel of fortune. Punishment for Edmund’s sins. Some argue ‘KL’ is a demonstration of what happens when there is a catastrophic redistribution of power; questioning Jacobean structure. |
| “Take physic, pomp, Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel” | 3.4.34; Lear feels he deserves to experience what homeless beggars have to live through, highlighting how he has developed from a self-absorbed monarch to a humble human being. Recognizing his failings as a king. |
| “Why I do trifle thus with his despair is done to cure it” | 4.6.33; Edgar can be seen as manipulative, akining his deceit to his brother’s. However, he intends good to Gloucester, as he wishes to cure his depression as Edgar knows that G believes heavily in the gods of the play. |
| “evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star” | 1.2.126; Gloucester deceives himself as he blames the misgivings of the world on astrology, common for the Jacobean period. Animalistic imagery. Goat’s akin to the Devil for the christian audience. |
| “To take the basest and most poorest shape […] of Bedlam beggars” | 2.2.178; Edgar goes down the chain of being, as a disguise that will protect himself and deceive others. Basest echoes Edmund. Bedlam a reference to the Bethlehem Hospital. |
| “I had rather lose the battle than that sister should loosen him and me” | 5.1.18; Hyperbolic. Shows the true extent of Goneril’s wickedness, or possibly the potency of Edmund’s skill in tactical courtly romances. |
| “Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit” | 1.2.181; challenge the system, Edmund is smart. |
| “The gods are just and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us” | 5.3.169; Harsh belief that people get what they deserve in a cruel world. Mankind traps himself in his own misfortune. Suggests the gods are disruptive. |
| “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport” | 4.1.38; Gloucester sees the gods as destructive children. Simile suggests + is bad? Dramatic irony in that G doesn’t know Edgar is close, as Poor Tom. |
| “Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land” | 1.2.15; the modal auxiliary verb is augmented by the use of monosyllabic words to emphasize the true desire and determination of Edmund. Betrayal. |
| “Come, let’s away to prison; we two alone will sing like birds i’the cage” | 5.3.9; In A1S1 Lear banished Cordelia, and now wants to spend the rest of his days with her-> ironic? Lear assumes that Cordelia would want this despite the anguish he caused her. |
| “Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again” | 1.1.90; imperitive, threatening. Nothing arguably becomes a motif in the play. |
| “There she shook The holy water from her heavenly eyes” | 4.3.30; emotive religious imagery depicts a romanticized portrayal of Cordelia, arguably undermining her agency. Either a Mary or an Eve. |
| “Dry up in her the organs of increase” | 1.4.271; assumes that having children is the be-all-end-all for women (Mary I, tension of James). |
| “O sir, you are old: Nature in you stands on the very verge of her confine. You should be ruled” | 2.2.335; a blunt statement on Lear, however considering how things have gone thus far, possibly some sympathy for Regan’s claim. The apostrophe augments the pity expressed, creating a patronizing tone. |
| “The younger rises when the old doth fall” | 3.3.23; dramatizing a social issue where the elites were generally a group of old men, e.g Robert Cecil who took over from his father Sir William Cecil. Results in large group of young men bitter over the matter. |
| “who is it that can tell me who I am?””Lear’s shadow” | 1.4.221; Lear is now insubstantial, a mere afterimage of the old Lear, demonstrating the effects of dementia on the sufferer. |
| “O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! I would not be mad” | 1.5.43; the use of the apostrophe and the repetition of mad highlights the grief felt. The begging nature makes him seem weaker than previous scenes. |
| “My wits begin to turn. Come on, my boy. How dost my boy? Art cold?” | 3.2.78; on the brink of insanity Lear begins to sympathize with the fool, and those beneath him in general. |
| “thou mad’st thy daughters thy mothers” | 1.4.165; Lear has lost the respect of his once sycophantic daughters after they gained power. He now needs to be ‘ruled’. |
| “they told me I was everything; ’tis a lie” | 4.6.104; Betrayal of Lear’s daughter’s. Cordelia being more honest with ‘nothing’. |
| “O, let him pass. He hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer” | 5.3.312; all of society is a torture house. Apostrophe shows pity and love from Kent? |
| “I am a fool, thou art nothing” | 1.4.184; The fool is highlighting the deteriorating state of Lear, augmented by the motif phrase ‘nothing’. |
| “I am tied to the stake and I must stand the course” | 3.7.53; Gloucester like a bear (sport in Jacobean period). Animalistic imagery. Burning stake? |
| “Now by Apollo, King, thou swear’st thy gods in vain” | 1.1.162; Apollo was an archer known for having good eye-sight. Lear is totally morally blind. |
| “Strike flat the thick rotundity o’the world, Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once” | 3.2.7; nihilistic state of mind. Wants all creation to stop. Semen-> man’s fault, as no mother present? |
| “O, how this mother swells up toward my heart! Hysterica passio, down” | 2.2.246; wandering womb. Lear doesn’t want these emotions. Toxic masculinity. Absence of a real mother, Lear has had to be both. |
| “And my poor fool is hanged […] never, never, never, never, never” | 5.3.304; can be Cordelia or the Fool. Some may read it as the fool’s death, however possibly same actor. Repetition highlights the pain. |
| “I stumbled when I saw” | 4.1.21; a paradox, as he sees more now that he is blind. G acknowledges his own sin and spiritual blindness. |
| “Dispose of them, of me, the walls is thins. Witness the world, that I create thee here my lord and master” | 5.3.77; the apparent devotion or obsession of R to Edmund. Display of how skilled Edmund was in manipulation. Self-sexism. |
| “Why dost thou lash that *****? Strip thine own back, thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind for which thou whipp’st her” | 4.6.156; displays the hypocritical nature of society. all men sin, power does not exempt you. |
| “Art thou not ashamed to look upon this beard? O, Regan, will you take her by the hand?” | 2.2.382; juxtaposition of emotion in the two questions. Apostrophe connotes pleading. |
| “That all the world shall- I will do such things- […] {storm and tempest}” | 2.2.469; the fragmented syntax reflects Lear’s mind breaking down. Pathetic fallacy. |
King Lear Quotes
July 9, 2019