King Lear critics

Kibin quote about deception

‘Deception and lies are what make ‘King Lear’ a tragedy’

Quote from ‘Filthy Shakespeare’ By Pauline Keirnan (Oxford Professor)

‘We don’t realise that harmless sounding words are actually displays of sparkling coded sexy dialogue’

Aja Romano on Lear and Trump

‘Donald Trump has drawn comparisons to Shakespeare’s famous madman, King Lear… tendencies to be brash, full of rage and bellows’

Bartelby Research on the wise fool

‘King Lear's fool is undoubtedly one of the wisest characters in the play.’

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John Danby on Edmund’s illegitimate soliloquy

    ‘No medieval devil ever bounced on to the stage with a more scandalous self-announcement.’

Jan Knott on the theme of King Lear

‘The theme of King Lear is the decay and fall of the world’

AC Bradley on the plays poetry

‘One of the world’s greatest poems’

Jordan Peterson on archetypes

‘Shakespeare is a master of exploring the contours of the architypes’

Kathleen McCluskie on misogyny

‘Lear is a misogynist’

Critic on the Fools truths

They become ‘inescapably urgent during this age of fake news and self-deluding echo chambers’

E.M Forster on characters

E M Forster ‘Aspects of the Novel’ (1927) famously divided characters into ‘flat’ and ‘round’.

Jan Knott on Lear’s character

‘Lear is ridiculous, naive and stupid’

Helen Norris on Gonerill and Rhegan’s sins

‘these are not only personal sins, but an upsetting of civilised values’

Lamar on the principal theme in the play

‘The education and purification of Lear’

John Danby on nature

‘King Lear can be regarded as a play dramatising the meaning of the single word ‘nature’’

Critic Woods on Edgar’s disguise

‘If madness involves a loss of self as identity becomes incoherent, Edgar’s disguise is a form of madness’

Critic King on violence and morality

Shakespeare’s aim is to convert the stuff of violent entertainment into a shocking moral ordeal for its witnesses’

O’Toole on the ending

‘we are brought back from the brink of a comfortable conclusion, forced to remember Lear and his suffering'