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.”
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King Lear
William Shakespeare (1606) · 100pages · Renaissance / Jacobean · 18 AP appearances
Summary
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.
Why It 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 pos...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: 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
Narrator: No narrator — Shakespeare uses soliloquy as direct address. Edmund's soliloquies court audience complicity; Lear's he...
Figurative Language: Extremely high
Historical Context
Jacobean England (1603-1625) — early reign of James I, post-Elizabethan transition: Lear's division of his kingdom would have been politically alarming to Jacobean audiences who had just seen Scotland and England united under one king. The Gunpowder Plot (1605) had made the specte...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- Lear stages a love contest. Why does he need his daughters to tell him they love him? What does this need reveal about what he has confused about power and love?
- Cordelia says 'Nothing' when asked to declare her love. Is she being principled or stubborn? Could she have found a way to honor her father and her honesty simultaneously?
- Edmund's grievance against primogeniture and illegitimacy law is legitimate. Does the play acknowledge this? Does it matter that his grievance is real if his response is monstrous?
- The Fool disappears without explanation after Act III. Where does he go? Why might Shakespeare have removed him at the exact point Lear loses his sanity?
- For 150 years, audiences watched a version of King Lear where Cordelia survives. Why was Shakespeare's ending so unendurable? What does the happy ending change — and what does restoring the original restore?
Notable Quotes
“Nothing, my lord.”
“Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law / My services are bound.”
“I want that glib and oily art / To speak and purpose not.”
Why Read This
Because it's the play that asks the hardest questions: Is the universe just? Does suffering mean anything? What do children owe parents, and parents children? It's also the most structurally ambitious thing Shakespeare wrote — two tragedies runnin...