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KING LEAR CRITICAL QUOTES, PRODUCTIONS AND CONTEXT (AO3/AO4)

CRITICAL QUOTES
Edmond “combining perfidy with perfidy, and connecting the wicked son with the wicked daughters”, Dr
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C
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C
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“A play in which the wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry”, Samuel Jonson
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C
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Kirsch
“The consequence of a grave error and abuse of justice by the king” C
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Sisson
“King Lear is monstrously unjust
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C
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C
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“Lear is not ‘redeemed’ or ‘saved’”, too terrible and uncompensated in death to warrant Christianity being used in
the play in any more than a “watered-down and sentimental sense”, Reuben A
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“She, in essence, died for the sins of her father” J
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Vanden Berg
“that an innocent person should die for a guilty person is fundamentally unfair” J
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Vanden Berg
“Lear… has been redeemed… But what is that to the process he has set in motion?”, J
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“The world is as Lear made it: he opened the gate that let this folly in”, Lawler
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“Lear’s progress – dramatic and spiritual – lies through a dissipation of egoism”, Harley Granville-Barker
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“purgatorial process to self-knowledge”, G
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“The corruption of absolute authority”, Corin Redgrave - one of Lear’s realisations in his madness
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“Nihilistic”, Sam Mendes
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K
Hunter
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In the play there is a desire for God and
order, but there is none
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Gloucester and Lear
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“The idea of nothingness as negation is philosophically central to the play”, James Shapiro
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“The play is a commentary on fathers losing their power” - Rosalie J Cole
“The sanity of the mad is that they can understand eternal truths” - Robert Heilman
The fight between Edmond and Edgar as a “symbolic battle between good and evil” - A
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Bradley
“Vice is punished, but virtue is not rewarded” - Orwell
The Fool as an “inspired idiot” - Coleridge
“If Lear could laugh there would be no tragedy” - Wilson-Knight
“Lear has been mastered by passion” - Campbell
“Love is finite and inadequate” - Holloway
“An old tradition, that of the disguised protector” - Bradbrook, Elizabethan dramatical tool
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“Indictment of prosperity” - Bradley
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“If Goneril and Regan are all seeming, Cordelia is all being” - Maclean
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Coppelia Kahn:
“how this mother swells upward toward my heart!” - sorrow characterises it as female
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Hysteria = wandering womb
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Khan: “hysteria bespeaks the capricious nature of women”, and the remedy “declares the necessity for male
control of this volatile female element
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Mothers’ presences are felt everywhere, even if they’re not physically
present
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There are no mothers in Shakespeare’s version
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“fathers and their godlike capacity to make or mar their children”
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”
But the play shows the failure of this
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“A fall from the highest elevation into the deepest abyss of misery” - Shlegel

“To power in itself, without reference to any moral end, an inevitable admiration and complacency appertains” Coleridge, on the necessity of courage, intellect etc
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A
measured punishment, not rash
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Salvini: takes off his coat when as Lear caring for the fool in the cave
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1993 Adrian Nobel production: the map is papered onto the stage floor as Lear attempts to pit his daughters
against each other
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• Inclusion of vast armies, bowing subjects, and large castle gives further power and importance to King Lear as
King, rather than just offstage allusions
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Creates a less familial, more kingdombased stance
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They appear alone
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• Fool gripping onto Lear’s back in the storm
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• A youthful Lear, vain and childish
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pretending to be old with a cane in the
opening scene, then throws it away and cackles
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Trevor Nunn, RSC:
• Lear portrayed as ageing, slow
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powerful
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• Everyone ducks when Lear is enraged, indicative of him having a rash nature already
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Swinging women around, drinking etc
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• King Lear throws his royal jacket away at the beginning of the storm scene, symbolic of his reduction to the
elements
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• Lear and the Fool appear similar in appearance, both old, the Fool slightly smaller
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• Lear, gaunt, enters the cave in act 3 scene 4 with the fool in his arms
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Both
bring out paternal care in Lear eventually
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Lear’s conscience killed by society
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• Kisses Gonerill and Regan on the lips, and touches them inappropriately for pleasing him in praising him
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Similar to Macbeth witches
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Ambassador Theatre Group:
• Lear becomes reduced to his most base senses, portrayed as having a leaf crown covered in mud, he loses
everything and then finds clarity
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When he finds gold he sees the evil of it, and the debased flattery
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Removes any empathy for Lear
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• Fury, flipping tables and manhandling Cordelia when she says “nothing”
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• Lear clubs the Fool to death - he communicates with violence in anger, reflects the complete loss of his mind
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CONTEXT
17th Century primogeniture

Fairytale Archetype: nepotism, marrying off daughters, favouritism, parental misjudgement, betrayal of
parents, incest, competition over patronage
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Biblical
• Pieta
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• Job 5
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Timon of Athens
• Timon flattered with gold until he has nothing, gives everything away for nothing
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• Only when out of Athens does he realise the evil of gold
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Trope of final battle, good triumphing
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Arcadia, Sydney
• Blind, suicidal old man led to a cliff edge by his good son
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• Old man was once a King, stripped of it by his bad son, who saw his downfall and blinded him
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• Reconciliation wooden between father and daughter
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“but the shadow of myself”
• Cordella and France and Lear’s army emerge victorious - the Gods defend Cordella
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• Cordella speaks a lot, and the other sisters’ jealousy is based in their fear that she will marry first
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Montaigne

Written at time on Union of crowns, between James VI of Scotland who was also James I of England
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Lear violates this by abdicating, therefore disrespecting his
God-given right
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Ben Jonson, The Alchemist
Prologue:
• “Whose manners, now called humours”
• “The vices that she breeds above their cure”
• “Each for a share, and all begin to act”
Argument:
• “The sickness hot”
• “Ease him corrupted, and gave means to know a Cheater, and his punk”
• “Till it, and they, and all in fume are gone”, trick everyone until there is nothing left
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• “Men do harm either because of fear or because of hatred”

• “He should be slow to believe what he hears and slow to react”
• “Avoiding carelessness born of overconfidence and considerable harshness”
• “Friendships that are gained by money, not by the greatness and nobility of spirit, may well be earned but
cannot be kept; and in time of need, they will have fled your purse” cf
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• “Men are less concerned about offending someone if they have cause to love than someone they have course
to fear”
• “Anyone who begins to live by plunder will always find pretexts for taking over what belongs to someone else”,
Mosca does this to Volpone
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Similar to how Mosca and Volpone run uninterrupted fooling everyone until
their luck turns and Volpone is caught
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Then they will always be loyal to him
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• “Cordeill said she lou’d him, as behoou’d”
• “in his crowne he counted her no heir”
• “when the oyle is spent the light goes out”, Rigan and Gonorill can no longer use him as he loses his power,
and raises an army when he “resignd his regiment”
• “Loue is not, where most it is profest”
• But in this story Lear dies before Cordeill hangs herself, she is imprisoned by her sisters’ children and armies
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• Nobles “hire some flattering orator or lying poet from whose mouth they may hear their praises, that is to say,
mere lies” , “swells a gnat to an elephant” - reference the fool, and his resounding honesty
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• “He may lawfully praise himself that lives far from his neighbours” - other people telling someone who they are,
ought to be etc
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• “I ever liked it best to speak what first came out” - Folly saying she likes rashness
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Lear’s speech to his
daughter, not measured at all and shortsighted
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Volpone does this to seduce Celia, and Lady Would-Be and Politic
Would-Be do too
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• Folly was born on “Fortune Islands” - where there is no hardship people persist in Folly, they don’t think
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Similarly, Volpone quote “What
vile wretch was I that could not bear my fortune soberly?”, he kept going trying to gain more until he ran short
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• “Anoia, madness” - Lear’s madness
• “Tryphe, Wantonness” - Volpone, “wanton gamester”

• “Komos, Intemperance” - ref
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• “Old age, by so much they grow backward into the likeness of children”, “weakness of body, love of mild,
broken speech, chatting, toying, forgetfulness, inadvertancy” - Like Lear, reduced to a childlike state
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g Gloucester, Kent, the Fool
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“That age, which is wont to render other men wise, makes them the greater fools”
“It doubles the crime if anyone should put a disguise upon Nature”
“What appears beautiful may chance to be deformed; … what noble, base”

“What is this life but a kind of comedy, wherein men walk up and down in one another’s disguises and act their
respective parts”
• “all things represented by counterfeit”
• “Nothing is more foolish than preposterous wisdom” - pretending to know everything
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’'
• “every rich man is a miser
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Downfall
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Also, beneficial? Without the preconceived
perception of self, e
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e
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