King Lear
William Shakespeare (1606)
“A king gives away everything and discovers, too late, that power was all he was — and that the children who flattered him were never his children at all.”
At a Glance
Aging King Lear divides his kingdom among his three daughters based on who can flatter him best. Cordelia, who loves him honestly, refuses to play along and is banished. Goneril and Regan, the flattering daughters, systematically strip Lear of his retinue and dignity until he is cast out onto a storm-swept heath, descending into madness. Meanwhile, the Earl of Gloucester is blinded by Lear's daughter's husband and his illegitimate son Edmund betrays him. Both old men are destroyed by children they trusted. Cordelia returns with a French army but is defeated. She and Lear are captured; Cordelia is hanged. Lear dies of grief over her body. The stage is left strewn with corpses.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Considered by many scholars — Harold Bloom prominent among them — to be Shakespeare's greatest play and possibly the greatest work in English literature. It is also the most debated: the Romantic poets (Keats, Lamb) felt it was too vast for the stage; the 20th century found in it a mirror for post-Holocaust meaninglessness; the 21st century reads it as a play about aging, care, and the failures of political systems.
Diction Profile
High formal verse for court and throne; prose for madness, low characters, and emotional extremity; Latinate vocabulary mixed with Old English and invented vocabulary in the mad scenes
Extremely high