King Lear King Lear Quotes

When Lear's daughters betray him, he's outraged and full of grief. Here, he says he suffers from "Hysterica passio," a medical condition that was thought to afflict women. 

Fun facts: literary critic Coppélia Kahn explains that "From ancient times through the nineteenth century, women suffering variously from choking, feelings of suffocation, partial paralysis, convulsions similar to those of epilepsy, aphasia, numbness, and lethargy were said to be ill of hysteria, caused by a wandering womb." In other words, because Lear is so upset or "hysterical," he compares his excessive emotions to that of an ailing woman. (The implication is that Lear is not acting like a "man" and that women have no control over their feelings.)

When Lear goes off on Goneril, he insists she's more like a "disease that's in [his] flesh" than a daughter (his "flesh and blood"). Goneril, he says, is "a boil, a plague-sore," a nasty little "carbuncle" and so on. In other words, Goneril, whose name sounds a lot like "gonorrhea," is kind of like a venereal disease. In this way, Lear associates Goneril's disloyalty with the unfortunate consequences of sexual promiscuity.

After King Lear gives his kingdom away to his daughters, the Fool chastises him for giving away all his land and power. (After all, Goneril has just kicked Lear out of her palace and Lear is about to become homeless.) Here, the Fool cracks a joke, comparing Lear to a snail that has given away his shell and has no home.

What's most interesting to us about this passage, however, is the Fool's suggestion that Lear is a cuckold. A "cuckold" is a common Elizabethan term for a man who has been cheated on by his wife and, in Shakespeare's plays, horns are a pretty common sign that a man has been cuckolded. So, why does the Fool imply that Lear has "horns"? (Lear's wife is dead.) The Fool seems to equate the betrayal by Lear's daughters with like sexual infidelity—it's as though Lear's daughters, Goneril and Regan, are no better than a cheating wife. That's a pretty odd thing to imply, don't you think?

When Lear encounters Poor Tom (Edgar disguised as a poor, naked, beggar), he concludes that Poor Tom's terrible state must have been caused by Tom's "daughters." When the Fool points out that "Poor Tom" has no children, Lear insists that there's nothing in the world that could have reduced a man to such a lowly state… except "his unkind daughters." For Lear, it seems that all the problems of the world are caused by women.

Women, Lear claims, seem pretty normal from the "waist" up but, down below there's "hell" and "darkness" like a "sulphurous pit." Lear's sexist description of female anatomy calls to mind the symptoms of a very unpleasant venereal disease—"burning, scalding, stench," and so on. It seems that King Lear associates all women with a very unpleasant STD, especially his daughter, Goneril, whose name, as you may have guessed, sounds a whole lot like "gonorrhea."

After Lear banishes his loyal servant Kent, Kent manages to find a way to serve his beloved master. Here, he appears on the heath, disguised as "Caius" in order to join Lear's retinue. But why? Lear's kind of a lousy master, after all. 

Some literary critics see Kent as upholding an old and dying model of service, where servants put their master's needs above all else. Kent's loyalty, say some, is pitted against Shakespeare's representation of Oswald, a disloyal servant who only ever looks out for himself. So, what do you think? Is the play nostalgic for the days when servants were loyal enough to follow their master's into their graves? Before you decide, you might want to check out the end, where Kent says he's going to follow his (dead) master on a "journey."

This is an important moment for King Lear because he not only recognizes the homeless problem in his kingdom, he also realizes that something must be done about it. Here, Lear acknowledges that, as king, he had the power and authority to make some social changes. Lear also seems to propose a redistribution of wealth, which is a pretty radical and astonishing thing for a king to do.

When Goneril and Regan strip Lear of all his knights and say he has no "need" for so many men, Lear proclaims that "need" is not the point. Lear acknowledges he doesn't "need" a retinue of knights but, he says, even the lowliest "beggars / are in the poorest thing superfluous." 

Translation: even beggars have something more than the bare minimum, so Lear should be able to keep his retinue of knights. If all men were allowed only to have the bare essentials, he would be no better than an animal or, "beast." As an example, Lear points out that Goneril and Regan wear gorgeous clothes that can hardly be said to keep them warm—Goneril and Regan wear such outfits not because they need them for warmth but because they're fashionable. So, is Lear right? When man only has the bare essentials, is he no better than an animal?

Loyalty? It's not rewarded in King Lear. When Kent finally reveals his true identity to Lear, it's too late.

Even while Lear teeters on the brink of insanity, he feels pity for the Fool. Mr. T would be proud.

This is, maybe, the most tender of moments in the play. When Lear awakens and finds his daughter at his bedside, he acknowledges the way he's hurt Cordelia and admits that she has "some cause" to wish him harm. Yet, despite everything, Cordelia finds it within herself to utter "no cause, no cause."