King Lear 3.6 Quotes

‘tell me whether a madman be a gentleman or a yeoman?’ ‘A king, a king’

Lear is self-identifying as a madman

‘she-foxes’

Lear— describing Regan and Goneril as cunning, like foxes

‘jolly shepherd’

Edgar— links to how kings are meant to be shepherds of their people

‘kicked the poor king her father’

Lear— he is talking about Goneril as if she were being tried, and this quote shows his self-pity

‘Bless thy five wits’

Edgar— Lear is clearly mad, evoking pity for him

‘My tears begin to take his part so much They mar my counterfeiting’

Edgar— he is so upset by how mad Lear is that it is affecting his disguise

‘Trey, Blanch and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me’

Lear— ‘Trey, Blanch and Sweetheart’ represent his daughters, and because they ‘bark’ at him they have turned against him.

‘I have o’erheard a plot of death upon him’

Gloucester— he is making a conscious decision to go against authority and to do the right thing

‘How light and portable my pain seems now’

Edgar— he is saying that compared to Lear’s suffering, his pain is ‘light and portable’