King Lear

Equalities… moiety (Gloucester)

The equal portions of a divided kingdom awarded by Lear to the dukes are so balanced that most minute examination of either can find no difference between their shares. Moiety: Share, portion. Lear is going to divide the kingdom.

Breeding… charge (Gloucester)

Upbringing has been at my expense; parentage has been imputed to me. Gloucester has been responsible for Edmund.

Brazed (Gloucester)

Hardened (like brass)

A son, sir; by order of law (Gloucester)

A legitimate son (Gloucester referring to Edgar).

Who yet is no dearer in my account

More loved by me; more valuable in my assessment (Gloucester doesn't love Edgar more because he's legitimate).

This knave

Edmund the illegitimate son (the word meant boy or fellow) but was also a term for a servant, a sense playfully continued by Gloucester in "came something saucily before he was sent for," as if he were an impudent servant who intrudes before he is summoned.

Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmund?

It is possible that Edmund does not hear the conversation until this point.

Study deserving

Strive to deserve your acquaintance (Edmund wants to deserve Kent's presence).

Sennet

Trumpets announcing an approach

We have this hour a constant will to publish

Firm intention; make public (Lear is going to publish his plans to divide the kingdoms).

Where nature doth with merit challenge

Where merit and natural affection lay claim to it (Lear is letting Goneril speak first and claim her bounty because she is the oldest).

Sir; I love you more than word can wield the matter

Express the substance of her love (Goneril expressing her love to Lear).

A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable

Voice unable to do the task (Goneril cannot express her love for Lear)

With shadowy forests and with champains riched and wide-skirted meads

Shady and rich plains, broad meadows (Lear giving Goneril land)

Square of sense

No satisfactory explanation of these words has been found. Among the possible meanings are area; measure; perfection (Regan confessing her love)

Feliciate

Made happy (Regan is made happy with her father's love)

Nothing will come of nothing

You will gain nothing if you invest nothing. (Lear warning Cordelia about losing her inheritance).

Must take my plight

Will receive my vow or pledge (Cordelia saying that she won't marry)

Hecate

Goddess of witchcraft and of the moon (Lear being mystified by what Cordelia is saying)

By all the operation of the orbs from whom we do exist and cease to be

The influence of the planets that govern human life and death

Propinquity, and property of blood

Kinship (still Lear complaining about Cordelia's lack of love)

As a strange to my heart and me hold thee from this forever.

Consider you a stranger from this moment (Lear banishing Cordelia)

Makes his generation messes

Eats his own offspring (still complaining)

Thought to set my rest on her kind nursery

Expected to commit myself entirely to her loving care. Set my rest: venture everything. Nursery: caretaking.

So be my grave my peace as

I hope to rest in peace in my grave (Lear being a miserable old man).

Digest the third

Absorb what was to be Cordelia's dowry

Large effects that troop with majesty.

Considerable signs (of power) or splendid shows that are associated with rulership.

Make from the shaft

Get out of the way of the arrow (Lear dismissing Kent's concerns)

To plainness honor's bound

Honor obliges one to speak bluntly (Kent telling Lear that he owes him honesty)

Answer my life my judgment

I will bet my life on the truth of my opinion that (Kent still telling Lear that he did wrong).

Those empty-hearted whose low sounds reverb no hollowness

Empty vessels have the loudest sounds. Proverbial reference

Blank

White bull's eye in the center of a target

O vassal! Miscreant!

Slave, misbeliever, villain! (Lear insulting Kent)

Recreant

Traitor

Nor our nature nor our place can bear

neither… nor. Place: position as king

Our potency made good

With my power put into effect (banishing Kent)

Your large speeches may your deeds approve

May your actions fulfill your grand expressions of love (Kent to Goneril and Regan)

In present dower with her

As her immediate dowry (Lear asking Burgundy about Cordelia's dowry)

Little seeming substance

This dismissive reference to Cordelia may allude to her stature, monetary worth, or her manners. (Lear INSULTING his daughter)

Election makes not up in such conditions

Choice is not possible on such terms (Burgundy protesting stripping of Cordelia's dowry)

To match you where I hate. Therefore beseech you

As to marry I beseech (Lear saying Burgundy to avert marrying Cordelia)

To dismantle so many folds of favor

As to strip away the mantle of your goodwill (France confused about Cordelia losing love)

Or your forevouched affection fall into taint

Or else your hitherto professed love must now appear tainted.

Speak and purpose not

Say things that I do not intend to do (Cordelia won't lie to her father)

Peace be with

Usually a hello, but in this context it's goodbye.

Respect and fortunes

Mercenary considerations (which also means considerations of wealth)

Wat'rish Burgundy

The river-filled duchy of Burgundy; the weak and vapid duke of Burgundy. (France insulting Burgundy for abandoning Cordelia)

At Fortune's alms

As a charity donation from Fortune (Goneril criticizing Cordelia for abandoning Lear)

Are worth the want that you have wanted

Cordelia deserves to be deprived as she deprived her father.

Who covers faults at last with shame derides

Perhaps, time, which covers faults eventually derides them. (Goneril saying that Lear is definitely declining in old age).

Of long engraffed condition

Firmly embedded in his character (Goneril continuing to plan to exploit Lear)

Last surrender of his

Recent surrender of the kingdom (Goneril wanting to take Lear's power with Regan)

Stand in the plague of custom

Be exposed to the evil of a social convention (by which the elder - and legitimate - son will inherit everything) (Edgar is going to get everything)

Curiosity of nations

Elaborate legal or social distinctions (Edmund lamenting about being a bastard)

Honest madam's issue?

The child of a legally married woman (Edmund still lamenting)

Confined to exhibition

Restricted to an allowance (Gloucester processing Lear's new plans)

Upon the gad

On a sudden impulse. Gad: goad, spur. How now: An interjection, here used as a greeting meaning "how are you now" (Gloucester greeting Edmund).

Auricular, have your satisfaction

Perceived by the earl convince yourself (Edmund saying to trust his judgment)

I would unstate myself to be in a due resolution

Give up my rank and fortune if only I could resolve my doubts (Gloucester dying to know the truth about his son)

Foppery

Foolishness

Surfeits

Sicknesses caused by intemperance

We make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars

Edmund here places his father;s talk about omens within the larger context of belief in astrology, where the position of the stars, moon, and planets at the moment of one's birth are thought to control one's life (Gloucester blaming astrology for his and Edgar's fallout)

By spherical predominance

Through the influence of the celestial spheres (According to Ptolemaic astronomy heavenly bodies were carried around the Earth in crystalline spheres)

Divine thrusting on

Supernatural incitement

to lay his goatish evasion on the charge of a star!

Blame his lecherousness on a star

Under the Dragon's tail

Perhaps, when the constellation Draco was in the ascendant; or, perhaps, while the moon was at the southward node of its orbit.

Fut

'sfoot or Christ's foot (a strong oath)

Maidenliest

Chastest

Twinkled on my bastardizing

In astrological terms, "been in the ascendant at moment I was conceived (as a bastard)"

Tom O' Bedlam

A beggar who has escaped or been discharged from Bedlam (London's Bethlehem Hospital for the insane) or who pretends to be so in order to make people give him money.

Dissipation of cohorts

Disbanding of troops of soldiers

Sectary astronomical

Believer in astrology

With the mischief of your person

Even physical harm to you

Practices ride easy

Plots easily succeed

Checks as flatteries, when they are seen abused

Reprimands in place of flattering words, when they (old men) are seen to be misguided

If but as well I other accents borrow that can my speech diffuse, my good intent may carry through itself to that full issue for which I razed my likeness

If I can disguise my way of speaking as well as I have my appearance, then I may be able fully to carry out my plan. Diffuse: disorder and thereby disguise. Razed: erased; shaved off. Likewise: Outward appearance. (Kent plotting to still work for Lear by concealing his appearance).

Where thou dost stand condemned

In Lear's presence (Kent respecting Lear)

Eat no fish

This seems to be a joke, though its meaning is unclear: It may mean "I am a Protestant" or "I eat meat and am therefore manly" (Kent making a joke?)

Clotpole

Blockhead

The general dependents

All the servants

Blamed as mine own jealous curiosity

Charged to my own oversensitivity (Lear learning that Gonderil was not listening to him)

Measure your lubber's length

Be tripped. Lubber's: Clumsy oafs. (Kent after tripping Oswald)

An thou canst not smile as the wind sits

If you cannot adjust to shifts in power. An: if. As the wind sits: In the direction the wind blows. (The Fool telling Lear he is losing power).

Nuncle

My uncle; the Fool's way of addressing Lear.

Truth's a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when the Lady Brach may stand by th' fire and stink

Perhaps, truth-telling is whipped out of the house while flattery is rewarded (This meaning depends on the traditional symbolic link between flattery and dogs). Brach: bitch-hound (Food to Lear)

Set less than thou throwest

Bet less than you win throwing dice.

Altogether fool

Just fooling (The Fool's reply assumes that altogether fool means all the folly there is)

Clovest

Split

Put'st down thine own breeches

Volunteered to be whipped

An O without a figure

A zero with no number before it (to give it a numerical value)

A safe redress

A sure remedy (Goneril talking to Lear, saying that this new treatment will be a remedy)

Which else were shame that then necessity will call discreet proceeding

Goneril's speech becomes much less intelligible as she begins to threaten Lear, but her general sense is clear: if you continue to encourage your knights' riotous behavior, I will move against them for the general good even if I offend and embarrass you; and I will be thought right to do so.

Tender of a wholesome weal

Regard for the general good (Goneril's speech)

The hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, that it's had it head bit off by it young.

This couplet offers a nature story: The cuckoo lays its egg in the sparrow's nest, and the sparrow feeds the young cuckoo until it gets so big it kills the sparrow. (The Fool contrasting Goneril and Lear's situation with this)

The marks of sovereignty, knowledge, and reason.

By the tokens that designate kingship and by knowledge and reason.

Epicurism

Sensuality; or, gluttony

Which, like an engine, wrenched my frame of nature from the fixed place

Which distorted, twisted, me away from what I should be (the image of these lines may be of a building dislodged from its foundation). (Lear realizing he made a mistake giving Goneril land).

Untented woundlings

Perhaps, wounds too deep to be probed (a tent was a probe used to cleanse a wound) (Lear still realizing his mistake).

Should sure to the slaughter

Would certainly be sent to execution (Fool reciting about Lear's situation)

Well well, th' event

Perhaps a version of a proverb such as "time will tell" or "the end crowns all" (Albany thinking that things will pan out after his disapproval of how Goneril is treating her father.