King Lear
Lecture Notes

A note on the text: Recent scholarship demonstrates that the two printed versions of Shakespeare's play -- The History of King Lear (1608 Quarto) and The Tragedy of King Lear (1623 Folio) -- are significantly different. Briefly, the 1608 Quarto is likely Shakespeare's first version, and the 1623 Folio includes several revisions by the author. The Norton Shakespeare prints both versions side by side, plus a "conflated text." If you have the Norton edition, read the "Conflated Text" (pp. 2479-2553). If you have another edition, you probably have the Folio text. You may read either version of the play. The introduction to your edition will have more details. (Line references below are to the Norton conflated text.)

Quarto 1 (1608)

Click here for general background

King Lear

1.1.7-16 ("Is not this your son ...?")
issue of issue: "breeding" (ambiguity) & "charge"
"good sport at his making ..."
- assumptions about father (Gloucester), wife, son (Edmund), & sexual ethics
question of parent acknowledging child => following scene of Lear & Cordelia
- Edmund's presumed reaction ("... and away he shall again" [1.1.29])

1.1.34-266 ("Meantime we shall express ...")
Question: What does "darker purpose" mean?
- elemental folk-tale structure of story:
-- father + 3 daughters ("... love you more than salt ...")
-- click here for folktale source
-- blend of folktale & psychology / game + intent / wish

Question: What does Lear want from Cordelia? Why is he so enraged that she apparently does not provide it?

1.2.1-22 (Edmund's soliloquy)
goddess Nature as law
- natural procreation ("bastard") vs. social legitimacy ("plague of custom")
- maternal vs. paternal principles ["Nature" vs. "Culture"?]
- individual will vs. social design
Question: Is Edmund villainous or victimized? (Are his arguments wrong?)
- early-modern (European) vs. contemporary (American) responses

1.2.109-122 ("This is the excellent foppery ...")
- challenge to conventional beliefs: fate, astrology
-- Shakespeare's advanced skepticism, or Edmund's diseased thought?
-- compare Cassius in Julius Caesar: "The fault, dear Brutus ..."(1.2.140-142)
- natural drive ("goatish disposition") vs. cosmic design ("heavenly compulsion")

1.4.129-157 ("Dost thou call me fool ...?")
pun on crowns => analogy of state & head (psyche)
=> political + self division / splitting
daughters = mothers / Lear as child / game of "bo-peep"
Fool fated to speak a kind of truth ("I would fain learn to lie")
- Fool as companion, judge, therapist to Lear
--- see 1.5

1.4.205-206("Who is it that can tell me who I am?")
question = core issue of identity
answer = "Lear's shadow." / meaning ...?
See 4.6.80ff ("They flattered me ..."; "They told me ...")
all-powerful monarch dependent on perceptions of subjects
Question: What is the source of power?
royal / infantile fantasy of "omnipotence of thought"

1.4.252-266 ("Hear, Nature, hear!...")
Nature as goddess (Edmund)
Lear's curse against daughter's maternity
-- insight into Goneril's wickedness & Lear's paternal style

1.5.11-39 ("Shalt see thy other daughter ...")
complex relation of Lear & Fool (Study Question #6)
Lear's struggle with incipient madness

2.3 ("I heard myself proclaim'd ...")
motives & elements of Edgar's disguise
- beast + Bedlam beggar

2.4.54-56 ("O, how this mother ...")
early-modern physio-psychology
Lear's internal "mother" / "hysterica passio"

2.4.232-304 ("I dare avouch it ...")
Lear's economy of soldiers: 100 / 50 / 25 / 10 / 5 / 0
- practical & political problem for daughters
- emotional problem for Lear
Question of how to value or measure affection: "thou art twice her love."
"O reason not the need!..." (259ff)
- collision of reason (practicality) & need (emotion, will)
Lear's grief: wish for masculine "noble anger" rather than feminine tears
Lear's revenge: beyond words
weeping (acknowledged grief) vs. breaking up ("omnipotence of madness")
- refusal to accept loss + acceptance of madness
storm = external manifestation of internal condition (pun on "flaws")

3.2.1-24 ("Blow, winds, ...)
Lear's storming / curses / argument with nature's elements / madness
Lear = agent + victim of storm

3.4.13-22 ("The tempest in my mind ...")
storm outside & inside
primitive confusion of self + child: "Is it not as this mouth ...?" (see 1.1.114-118, "The barbarous Scythian ...")
- Lear subject to his own appetite = nurturing + destructive

3.4.45-50 ("Enter Edgar ... [S.D.]")
Edgar's disguise as "natural" madman
- London's "Bedlam" (Bethlehem Hospital)
Lear's egotistic empathy: "Hast thou given all to thy two daughters? ..."

3.4.95-101 ("Is man no more ...?")
image of natural, "unaccommodated" man
"the thing itself" = Nature // Edgar's disguise = Art

3.6.77-78 ("We'll go to supper ...")
Fool's last words: See Study Question #7

3.7 ("Enter Cornwall, Regan ...[S.D.]")
violation of guest-host / child-father / young-old relations
Gloucester's tirade (3.7.56 ff)
-- answered by Cornwall's attack
cruel irony of actual assault imitating Gloucester's words ("tear out his eyes")
blindness as torture & as metaphor
-- apply to Lear
Question: This brutal act could have been done off-stage and reported. Why does Shakespeare stage it?

4.1.1-37 ("Yet better thus, ...")
economy of extremes in emotion & fate
- sudden change / acceptance of condition / limits of suffering & saying
men as playthings to the "wanton" gods
(Christian) theological terms:
- deus absconditus
- theodicy

4.2 & 4.3
Albany recoils against Goneril (his wife) & Cornwall
Cordelia comes from France with an army
- "forces of good" are rallying

4.6.1-204 ("Enter Gloucester and Edgar ... [S.D.]")
scene at Dover cliffs
Question: Why doesn't Edgar reveal himself? (Study Question #8)
- 3-D poetry (4.6.11-24)
Gloucester's suicide as delusion / possession
4.6.80-181 ("Enter Lear [S.D.]"
- confrontation of two "blind" old fathers
- "They flattered me ...": Lear as king & as natural man
- "They told me I was everything ...": fragile fantasy of omnipotence / dependence on outside
- "Ay, every inch a king ...": Lear as mad monarch
- focus on sexual violations & female monstrosity ("Down from the waist ...")
--- Click here for strange sub-cultural mythology
"Thou rascal beadle ...": Shakespeare's insight into wish behind punishment
- see Malvolio in Twelfth Night or Angelo in Measure for Measure
life = initial cry
"... stage of fools" (compare Macbeth, 5.5.15-28)
"Then kill, kill, kill...!" = impotent rage

4.7 ("Enter Cordelia, Kent ... [S.D.]")
reunion of Lear & Cordelia
- "this child-chang'd father"
- healing power of music [S.D.]
Cordelia speaks much of her father (as he sleeps), but little to her father (when he wakes)
- stages of Lear's awakening:
    (1) from the grave
    (2) in hell
    (3) alive & abused
    (4) self-test by pain
    (5) old man (exact age) in imperfect mind
    (6) dawning recognition of Cordelia & Kent
    (7) no "short-term memory"
    (8) Cordelia's wet tears (touched by Lear) = sign of her reality & caring
"If you have poison ..."
- deep fantasy of punishment / betrayal
- another version of villainous daughter = residue of Act One

5.2 ("Alarum within. ...[S.D.]")
sudden change of fortune
"... Ripeness is all."
- Compare Hamlet's "readiness" (Hamlet, 5.2.222): What is the difference?
-- or Touchstone's "ripe and ripe, and ... rot and rot" (As You Like It, 2.7.26-28)

5.3.1.26 ("Enter, in conquest... [S.D.]")
Cordelia asks reasonable question; Lear denies & retreats to fantasy
= another version of "her kind nursery" (1.1.123)
= private, regressive union

5.3.169-173 ("The gods are just ...")
- compare Gloucester's view at 4.1.37-38)
- "the dark and vicious place ...": Question: What is this?

5.3.235 ("Great thing of us forgot!")
extensive dramaturgic delay (tying up plot elements)
- Shakespeare's merciless manipulation of his audience
- impotent expectation of the inevitable = tragic position

5.3.256 ff ("Re-enter Lear ... [S.D.]")
"Howl ...": Question: How would you say this line?
absolute extremes: Cordelia is "dead as earth" yet possibly breathing
"... her voice ...": see Act One, Scene One
conventional resolution of dramatic plot elements
- while main character is distracted
conventional ending of good & evil (5.3.302-303)
- broken & transcended by continuing events: "O see, see!"
- Shakespeare stretching limits
"Never, never, ...": Question: How would you say this line?
"Do you see ...?" Question: What does Lear see? [See Study Question #9]

5.3.322-325 ("The weight ...")
conventional concluding couplets to moralistic tragedy
"Say what we feel ..."
Question: How fitting is this conclusion?

Click here for link to an excellent brief essay on the play.
(Click here for pdf file.)

Page last updated: November 14, 2005
Send comments to: Professor David Willbern