King Lear key quotations Acts 1-2

‘his breeding, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am brazened to it.’ Gloucester about Edmund

Gloucester conveys his embarrassment of Edmund through a condemning tone of voice for being an illegitimate son. It could be suggested that his tone is weary, as he has had to be financially responsible for Edmund and no longer wants to support him.

Edmund faces societal stigma and is denied inheritance, leading to resentment. Shakespeare uses illegitimacy to question the rigid social hierarchy and the percieved order of things.

‘Tell me, my daughters, […] which of you shall we say doth love us most that we our largest bounty may extend’ Lear to Gonerill and Regan

Lear encourages his daughters to be false and exaggerated through the imperative of ‘tell me’ in order to win the most land. Thus he encourages corruption in the court

Jonathan Dollimore suggests that King Lear emerges as ‘above all, a play about power, property and inheritance.’

‘I am sure my love’s more ponderous than my tongue’ Cordelia

Cordelia is characterised as perceptive as she is able to see through Gonerill and Regan’s hyperbolic claims of love to Lear in order to gain the most land. She suggests that if love is true it is exhibited in more than empty words

‘See better, Lear’ Kent, King Lear

An unmitigated imperative urging Lear to see the truth rather than be blinded by flattery

The courtier criticises the King to his face - this challenges the Chain of Being and codes of behaviour

‘He hath but ever slenderly known himself’ Gonerill, King Lear

In prose, the sisters speak privately about Lear’s erratic behaviour. Gonerill’s mocking tone of voice conveys her dislike of her father

The Divine Right of Kings The Chain of Being – but Lear’s fragility seems to challenge this.

‘This is the excellent foppery of the world’ Edmund, Gloucester

In using  pejorative language, heightened in the oxymoronic phrase ‘excellent foppery’, Edmund intensifies his disdain and mockery at G’s belief in fate.

Late Renaissance play – old absolutes are under scrutiny

‘These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us.’ Gloucester

The imagery of celestial omens characterises Gloucester as naive and symbolic of the old order. His tone of fear, however, reminds us he is a good man struggling to make sense of the chaos unleashed on the world.

Belief in astrology still associated to some extent with Christianity, reinforcing Gloucester’s morality.

‘The plague of custom’ Edmund

A tone of fury in the description of the conventions of society (‘custom’). The imagery of the ‘plague’ intensifies Edmund’s point about the damage done by the adherence to society’s expectations, leaving behind those who don’t fit in

Michel de Montaigne Plague outbreaks

‘What poor judgement he hath cast her off appears too grossly.’ Gonerill to King Lear

The premodifier 'poor' and the adverb 'grossly' draw attention to the king's unjust actions - emphasised by the fact that Gonerill says this of her father - she is critical of his behaviour towards Cordelia

Feminist criticism might feel sympathy for Gonerill - a woman who is given power in a patriarchal world when her only model of power is that demonstrated by the king.

‘But now her price is fallen’ King Lear to Cordelia

The motif of money and wealth is used to commodify and insult Cordelia

Dowries were paid on the daughter’s marriage – a reminder of the subordinate role of women

‘Here I disclaim all my paternal care, / Propinquity and property of blood’ 113-114

King Lear

Plosive alliteration draws attention to his impossible, irrational statement and his furious rage. It could also be interpreted as how hurt and bewildered he is by what he sees as her betrayal of him, so he lashes out, impulsively

The Jacobean audience might be shocked at the king's treatment of a loyal, loving daughter and his inability to see this in her. His rejection of her threatens the stability of the royal family - a cause for unease in the early 17th century.

‘We / unburdened crawl towards death.’ 40-41

King Lear

Use of the royal ‘we’ reminds us of Lear’s inability to understand that in abdicating, he is no longer king and therefore cannot expect the trappings of kingship. The diction choice of ‘unburdened’ reinforces the selfishness of his actions – both in terms of the family and the country. This is also a proleptic moment – ‘crawl towards death’ is what he will do as a result of this moment of hamartia.

Body politic/body natural

‘I love you more than word can wield the matter / Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty / Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare’  55-57

Gonerill to Lear

Use of lists/triple structure  – a rhetorical device which draws attention to her insincerity. Diction is all about quantity – sharply juxtaposes with Cordelia’s declaration of ‘nothing’. Irony – draws attention to her insincere flattery

Evil was persuasive in Medieval theatre

‘I am made of that self mettle as my sister / And price me at her worth.’ 69-70

Regan

Pun on ‘mettle’ and the motif of money depict Regan as willingly commodifying herself in order to benefit

The little power women had in an archaic patriarchal society might help us to feel more sympathetic to the sisters who seize the opportunity to take what they can get.

‘tis our fast intent / To shake all cares and business from our age’ King Lear

The diction choices of ’cares and business’ emphasise Lear’s understanding of the difficult responsibilities of monarchy, but the reference to his ‘age’ suggest his awareness of his mortality

Lear abdicates, subverting the Divine Right of Kings.

‘Love cools, friendships fall off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord’ 106-108 Gloucester

The use of oppositions between positive aspects of the human experience in love, brothers, friendship, etc., but paired with fall off, divide, mutinies, etc remind us about the fragility of the human experience and how quickly pain can come. The list has a tone of grief and it characterises Gloucester as humane – he sees and understands the worst that we can be

The Jacobeans believed in the family as a microcosm of the state – here we see how both aspects are affected by the chaos unleashed on the world.

I see the business; /Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit  178-179

Edmund

Diction choice ‘business’ – repeated by Edmund in other arts of the play draw a distinction between the privilege of the aristocracy and an emerging new social order. It conveys a cold, ambitious tone, heightened by the caesura which emphasises his sneering tone in ‘if not by birth’. The scene begins and ends with Edmund in soliloquy in blank verse as if he is the puppet master, controlling the events that will now unfold.

Challenge to primogeniture

'Edmund the base  / Shall top the legitimate. I grow. I prosper.' 21-21 Edmund

Antithetical imagery of ascent and descent draws attention to Edmund’s ambition to ‘top’ his brother. ‘Top’ also has animalistic connotations awarding him a brute animal state. The simple sentences, heightened by the caesura and endstopping have a tone of determination, whilst the present tense suggests the immediacy of his plans

New Man New individualism Nascent meritocracy Watershed period between feudal system and early modern England Overthrowing of the law of primogeniture

‘Why brand thy us / With ‘base’? with ‘baseness’? ‘bastardy’? 9-10 Edmund

The imagery of branding deepens Edmund’s sense of pain at being ‘othered’ in a world that despises the illegitimate. The speech marks around the derogatory terms suggest he is distancing himself form these insults, whilst the interrogative demands that the audience to this soliloquy in blank verse consider his questions seriously

Law of primogeniture Jacobean attitudes towards the illegitimate Bastards as villains

An admirable evasion of a whoremaster man  126

Edmund

Oxymoronic phrase once again intensifies Edmund’s disdain for the older order in the sneering tone evoked in ‘admirable evasion.’ Yet the analepsis to the start of the play in ‘whoremaster (‘whoreson’) characterises Edmund as deeply hurt by his father’s earlier callous treatment of him.

Challenges attitudes towards ‘bastards’ by pointing out the sinfulness of the parents.