1. King Lear King Lear Author: Shakespeare Culture: English
Time: 1608 CE (early 17th century)
Genre: drama (tragedy)
Names to know: Lear, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, Edmund, Kent, Gloucester, Cornwall

2. KING LEAR King Lear explores the issues of:
Egotism (need for flattery is a tragic flaw)
Madness (leads to the insight which he lacks)
Love & Loyalty (exposes the Kent, Cordelia and Edgar as those who have insight and are true)
The influence of Modernity (division of land causes division amongst Lear’s daughters)
Unnatural – Lear’s abdication of the throne and division of land, Gloucester choosing illegitimate over legitimate son creates chaos in a society that regards natural order.

3. Issue: Unnatural behaviour
Animal imagery reinforces unnatural behaviour. Lear’s reference to cannibals, pelicans and predatory animals serve as illustrations of the unnatural behaviour of Goneril & Regan as well as that of Gloucester’s son - Edmund.

4. Issue: Loyalty
Lear’s question “Do you love me?” effectively turns daughter on daughter in a betrayal of loyalty and trust.
Cordelia remains true even though she is banished for her truthful love
Her response of “Nothing” introduces a main theme that is present in the double plot line. Gloucester believes the contents of a letter outlining betrayal which was actually “nothing” as Edmund ironically answered him upon request to read it.

5. Issue: Love & Loyalty
Like Edgar, Cordelia remains true to her father and holds the ideal love - one that suffers in patience, is sacrificed for truth and honour to restore order to a chaotic world.

6. Loyalty
Kent is a remains a servant although banished from Lear’s sight.
Kent begs Lear “to see better” when pleading with him to reconsider his decision to disown Cordelia.
Kent remains loyal, but due to Lear’s blindness he must do this in disguise because he must remain out of Lear’s sight.

7. Justice How does this image link to Lear?
An image often used in the play… the wheel of fortune and a wheel of torture and suffering.

8. Issue: Justice & Fate
Fortune can tie you to the wheel so as to turn you through fortune to poverty and back on a whim. Fortune is often pictured as a whore granting or refusing favours as the mood takes her.

9. Parallel Plots Parallel Plots
Each family centers on an aging father (patriarch)
Lear: imperious tyrant
Gloucester: gullible
Each sees his children through a distorted lens,
turning against the child who truly loves him,
unleashing in the other children greed, lust,
ambition.

10. Issue: Modernity
The MAP is the symbol of the modern world imposed on a world without measurable boundaries.
Lear’s “constitutional monarch” conflicts with the Elizabethan world scene.

11. King Lear Themes
Sight-Insight/Blindness-lack of insight
Nothing
Natural/Unnatural
Flattery
Madness
Judgment
Appearance vs. reality
world view of Renaissance Christian Humanist and Machiavellian

12. Kent to serve Lear as Caius
Act 1
Scene 1
Lear divides
country,
Disowns Cordelia
Cordelia bids
farewell to
sisters
Scene 3
Goneril and Oswald
Scene 2
Edmund soliloquy
Conspiracy theory
Advice to Edgar
Scene 5
Lear sends Kent
to Regan
Lear and Fool
Scene 4
Kent to serve Lear as Caius
Lear and Fool
Lear and Goneril

13. Act 1, Scene 1
Act 1, Scene 1
Shakespeare sets out the premise for the play (the crazy idea out of which all follows):
King Lear, intending to divide his power and kingdom among
his three daughters, demands they publicly profess their love
for him. Cordelia refuses to put on that show.
In revenge, Lear strips her of her dowry, divides the kingdom
between the other two, then banishes the Earl of Kent, who
dares to protest Lear’s rash and unfair actions toward Cordelia.

14. Insight/Seeing Imagery
Act 1
“Hence and avoid my sight” “Out of my sight!”
“See better, Lear”
“If it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles”

15. Complications Complications
The king of France marries Cordelia despite
her lack of dowry.
Lear tells Goneril and Regan that they and
their husbands should divide his powers and
revenues; he will keep 100 knights and will
live with them each by turns.

16. Act 1, Scene 2 Introduction of the Sub-plot
Gloucester’s two sons – Edmund & Edgar
Gloucester’s relationship with them
Sub-plot amplifies & reverberates themes and issues explored in the main plot
Ordinary jealousies, demands, and desires begin to be taken to extremes.
Edmund plots to displace Edgar as Gloucester’s heir.
What does he tell his father about Edgar?
Is it true?

17. King Lear: Act 1 Scene 2 Edmund’s Speech in the beginning
The Issue of Nature
The Elements
Natural Order of Things
Nature , Natural & Unnatural

18. King Lear: Act 1 Scene 3 What did we expect?
Is Goneril unreasonable if she is irritated by her father’s antics?
Are our suspicions confirmed by Goneril’s actions?

20. Act 1, Scene 3 Act 1, Scene 3 Lear has gone to live with Goneril.
Why does Goneril become so angry with her
father?
What does she tell her steward, Oswald, to tell
Lear?

21. King Lear: Act 1 Scene 4 Kent Disguised
Disguise as an important feature of Shakespearean plays
Appearances vs Reality (able to be pulled off because of a lack of insight in characters such as Lear and Gloucester)

22. Act 1, Scene 4
Act 1, Scene 4
The Earl of Kent returns in disguise, offers his services to Lear, and is accepted.
Goneril and Lear confront each other - what does Goneril demand, and how does Lear react?

23. King Lear: Act 1 Scene 4 Purpose of Disguise
Dramatic irony, where the audience is aware of something (in this case the true identity of characters) that characters in the play are not. This creates tension in a play and excites the audience; actions take place on the stage, of which the audience knows the import, but characters on the stage do not.
It also creates a setting for a great deal of irony where characters make comments that take on a double meaning.

24. King Lear: Act 1 Scene 4 Development of Features of Act 1 Scene 3
Lear starting to lose grip
Goneril shows her true colours
Lear begins to regret

25. King Lear: Act 1 Scene 4 Entrance of the Fool
Traditional role of the fool
‘Magic’ status of the fool
Ability to see & say what others can’t

26. King Lear: Act 1 Scene 4 Entrance of the Fool The ‘Wise’ fool
Effect of the fool on Lear
The Fool’s Advice
Song 1 Line 120
Song 2 Line 145

27. Act 1, Scene 5 Act 1, Scene 5 Lear sets out for Regan’s with his Fool.
The disguised Kent goes ahead with a letter
for Regan.

28. Issue: Madness
Lear’s realisation of the betrayal of professed love leads him to madness and the insights necessary for him, and the audience, to recognise the need to know and see reality.

29. King Lear & Suffering King Lear & Suffering (the sadness of old age)
Lear makes a big mistake - he gives up his basis for power, but still expects to be treated as powerful.
He rages against his own pain until his sanity cracks.
He dies without being able to profit from his learning through suffering. In King Lear, most of the characters suffer. They react to suffering in different ways:
Some harden their hearts
Some indulge in violence
Some try to alleviate others’ suffering

30. The promised end
When order is restored there can be no life for Lear. Cordelia’s death and the knowledge of his own weakness - as a man and as a Monarch means that he, too, must die.
“Is this the promised end? Or image of that horror?