lear key moments

Edmund’s villainous introduction (5)

“Nature,art my goddess; to thy law my services are bound”

“why brand they us with base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?”

“a dull, stale, tired bed, go to creating a whole tribe of fops”

“edmund the base shall top the legitimate”

“now gods stand up for bastards”

Gloucesters monologue after being fooled (4)

“these late eclipses in the sun and moon”

“brothers divide; in cities, mutinies… and the bond cracked twixt son and father”

“Machinations, hollowness, treachery and all ruinous disorders”

“the nobel and true-hearted kent banished! and his offence honesty!”

“my old heart is cracked; its cracked” (2.1)

edmund’s soliloquy in response to father’s superstition (4)

“we make guilty of our disasters the sun the moon and the stars”

“a divine thrusting on”

“I am rough and lecherous” (paapa essiedu’s performance of this line)

“the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing”

the love test - inciting incident (9)

“we shall express our darker purpose” - Lear

“unburdened crawl towards death” - Lear

“beyond what can be valued rich or rare” “a love that makes breath poor and speech unable” - Gonerill

“champains riched” “plenteous rivers” “wide-skirted meads” - Lear

“price me at her worth” - Regan

“what shall cordelia speak? love, and be silent” “I cannot heave my heart into my mouth” - Cordelia

“nothing” “nothing will come of nothing”

“I disclaim all my paternal care, // propinquity and property of blood”

“with my two daughter dowers digest the third”

Lear ‘convey sterility’ monologue (7)

“hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!”

“creature fruitful” “marble-hearted fiend” “detested kite” “wolvish visage”

“into her womb convey sterility!”

“how sharper than a serpents tooth it is to have a thankless child!”

“I am ashamed That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus”

“old fond eyes, be weep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out”

“hot tears” “break” “blasts” “woundings”

edgar’s transformation to poor tom (5)

“and by the happy hollow of a tree escaped the hunt”

“to take the basest and most poorest shape”

“blanket my loins” “nakedness” “bare arms”

“bedlam beggars” “pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary”

“that’s something yet: Edgar i nothing am”

Lear stripped of knights (7)

“i abjure all roofs””to be comrade with the wolf and owl”

“I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad”

“thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter - // or, rather, a disease that’s in my flesh”

“I and my hundred knights”

“no more with me” “what need one”

“thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty, and thou art twice her love”

“what need you five and twenty, ten, or five”

Lear’s ‘reason not the need’ monologue (8)

“O, reason not the need!”

“basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous”

“allow not nature more than nature needs, man’s life is cheap as beast’s”

“a poor old man as full of grief as age, wretched in both”

“touch me with noble anger, and let not women’s weapons, water drops, stain my man’s cheeks” “unnatural hags”

“you think ill weep. no ill not weep. I have full cause of weeping, but this heart” “[storm and tempest]”

“O Fool, i shall go mad!”

the storm

“[storm and tempest]”

“blow winds and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!”

“you cataracts and hurricanoes spout”

“this tempest in my mind”

lear’s political anagnorisis

“poor naked wretches” “pelting of this pitiless storm” “houseless heads” “I have taken too little care of this” “shake the superflux”

lear & poor tom

“hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness”

“unaccommodated man is no more but such a bare forked animal” “off, off, you lendings” “he tears off his clothes”

“first let me talk with this philosopher”

gloucesters blinding

“hang him instantly!” “pluck out his eyes!”

“regan plucks gloucesters beard”

“pluck out his poor old eyes” “all dark and comfortless” “where is my son edmund”

“one side will mock another. the other too”

edgar finding blinded gloucester

“my father, parti eyed! world, world, o world!”

“to be worst the lowest and most dejected thing of fortune, stands still in esperance”

“I stumbled when I saw”

“the worst is not so long as we can say ‘this is the worst’”

“as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport”

“tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind”

mock suicide, dover cliffs

“you do climb up it now. look how we labour”

“the fishermen that walk upon the beach appear no bigger than mice”

“gloucester throws himself forward”

“think that the clearest gods… has preserved thee”

lears madness

“enter lear fantastically dressed with wild flowers” “he gives flowers”

“natures above art in that respect”

“they flatter me like a dog and told me i had white hairs” “they told me i was everything”

“handy-dandy which is the justice which is the thief”

“a dogs obeyed in office”

“reason in madness!”

“he throws down his flowers and stamps on them”

momentary hope

“child changed father”

“kneeling by the chair and kissing his hand” “lear falls to his knees” “no you must not kneel”

“thy medicine on my lips and let this kiss repair”

“thou art a soul in bliss; but i am bound upon a wheel of fire”

“no cause no cause”

edmund’s growth of power

“which of them shall i take? both? one? or neither?”

“for my state stands on me to defend, not to debate”

“men are as the time is”

death of cordelia

“we two alone will sing like birds in the cage” “laugh at gilded butterflies”

“enter lear with cordelia in his arms” - piéta

“howl, howl, howl!”

“lend me a looking glass”

“she’s as dead as earth”

“is this the promised end”

ending

“alls cheerless dark and deadly”

“all friends shall taste the wages of their virtue, and all foes the cup of their deserving”

“my poor fool is hanged!”

“why should a dog, a horse, a rat have a life”

edgar confronts edmund

“draw thy sword”

“thy arm may do thee justice”

“false to thy gods, thy brother and thy father”

“dust below thy foot” “most toad spotted traitor”