King Lear Revision A2 exam. Quotes and helpful critic quotes and information about Sam Mendes production. Quotations from each act and scene of each characters

1. WHO’S IN WHAT ACT?
Kent

2. KING LEAR
Act 1, Scene 1
“We shall express our darker purpose”
“You shall we say doth love us most”
“Our joy”
“Nothing will come of nothing”
“Mend your speech a little”
“I disclaim all my paternal care”
“Come not between a dragon and his wrath”
“Her price is fall’n”
“Better thou/ Hadst not been born, than not t’have pleased me better”
Act 1, Scene 4
“my lord’s knave? You whoreson dog, you slave, you cur!”
“my boy”
“Take heed, sirrah- the whip”
“Are you our daughter?”
“Does anyone here know me? This is not Lear.”
“Where are his eyes?”
“Degenerate bastard”
“Detested kite”
“And from her derogate body never spring/A babe to honour her”
“Thankless child!”
“Old fond eyes/ Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out”
Act 1, Scene 5
“ Ha, ha, ha!”
“I did her wrong”
“O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!”

3. KING LEAR
Act 2, Scene 4
“tis worse than murder”
“Who put my man i' the stocks?”
“respect such violent outrange”
“Where is this daughter?”
“Fetch me a better answer”
“My rising heart! But down!”
“Sharp-toothed unkindness, like a vulture”
SD: “[He kneels]”
“scornful eyes! Infect her beauty”
“O heavens”
“do not make me mad… my child”
“my daughter - /Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh”
“wicked creatures”
“patience I need!”
“you unnatural hags”
“I will have such revenges on you both”
“the terrors of the earth”
“I shall go mad”
“this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws”

4. KING LEAR
Act 3, Scene 2
“Strike flat the thick rotundity o’th’ world”
“Here, I stand your slave/ A poor, infirm, weak and despise
old man”
“I’ll be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing”
“I am a man/ More sinned against than sinning”
“Art cold? I am cold myself”
“Poor fool and knave”
“True, boy”
Act 3, Scene 4
“Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all!-/ O, that
way madness lies; let me shun that!”
“Poor naked wretches”
“Pitiless storm”
“Those pelican daughters”
“is man no more than this”
Act 3, Scene 6
“let them anatomize Regan; see what breeds about her
heart”
“Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?”

5. KING LEAR
Act 4, Scene 6
“Ha! Goneril with a white beard? They flattered me like a dog”
“Ay, every inch a king!”
“Gloucester’s bastard son/ Was kinder to his father than my daughters”
“Down from the waist they are centaurs,/ Though women all above”
“smells of mortality” (L’s hand)
“I am even/ The natural fool of Fortune”
“kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill”
“I am a king, my masters”
Act 4, Scene 7
“You are a spirit”
“I am mightily abused”
“Pray do not mock me;/ I am a very foolish fond old man”
“I am mainly ignorant”
“If you have poison for me, I will drink it”
“I am old and foolish”
Act 5, Scene 3
[Enter LEAR with CORDELIA in his arms]
“She’s dead as earth”
“she lives… it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows”
“I killed the slave that was a- hanging thee”
“Mine eyes are not o’th’best, I’ll tell you straight”
“He’s a good fellow” (Caius/Kent)
“And my poor fool is hanged!”

6. GONERIL
Act 1, Scene 1
“Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty”
“ A love that makes breath poor”
“ You see how full of changes is age is”
Act 1, Scene 3
“By day and night he wrongs me”
“say I am sick”
“If you come slack of former services, /you shall do well”
“the fault of it I'll answer”
“Idle old man… those authorities/ That he hath given
away!”
“Old fools are babes again”
Act 2, Scene 4
“Tis his own blame: hath put himself from rest”
Act 3, Scene 7
“Pluck out his eyes”
“sweet lord, and sister”

7. GONERIL
Act 4, Scene 2
“Welcome, my lord (Edmund). I marvel our mild
husband”
“My most dear Gloucester” (Edmund)
“A fool usurps my bed”
“Fools do those villains pity who are punished”
“moral fool”
“Marry, your manhood!”
“O vain fool”
Act 5, Scene 1
“I had rather lose the battle than that sister/
Should loosen him and me”
“No.”
Act 5, Scene 3
“Mean you to enjoy him?”
“If not, I’ll ne’er trust medicine”

8. REGAN
Act 1, Scene 1
“Only she comes to short”
“enemy to all other joys”
“Prescribe not us our duty”
“We shall further think of it”
Act 2, Scene 1
“What, did my father’s godson seek your
life?”
“dark-eyed knight”
Act 2, Scene 4
“O sir, you are old”
“Say you have wronged her sir”
“O the blest gods!”
“ weak” (to Lear)
“five-and-twenty: to no more”

9. REGAN
Act 3, Scene 7
“Hang him instantly”
“Ingrateful fox!”
“O filthy traitor!”
[Regan plucks Gloucester's beard] SD
“So white, and such a traitor”
“Be simple-answered, for we know the truth”
[She takes a sword and runs at him behind]
SD
“thrust him out the gates”
“let him smell/ His way to Dover”
Act 4, Scene 5
“I know your lady does not love her
husband”
“noble Edmund”
“ I know you are of her bosom” (to Oswald)

10. REGAN
Act 5, Scene 1
“speak the truth/ Do you not love my
sister?”
“I never shall endure her”
“ Be not familiar with her”
Act 5, Scene 3
“ full-flowing stomach”
“my lord and master” (to Edmund)
“Sick, O sick!... My sickness grows
upon me”

11. CORDELIA
Act 1, Scene 1
“Cordelia speak? Love and be silent”
“poor Cordelia!”
“Nothing, my lord”
“Half my love with him, half my care and duty.”
“Since… fortunes are his love, I shall not be his wife”
Act 4, Scene 4
“All blest secrets/ All you unpublished virtues of the earth”
“My mourning and important tears have pitied”
Act 4, Scene 7
“How shall I live and work to match thy goodness?” (to Kent)
“O you kind gods”
“O my dear father”
“child-changed father”
“Cure this great breach in his abused nature!”
“Thy medicine on my lips, and let this kiss/ Repair those violent
harms that my two sisters/ Have in thy reverence made”
“royal lord… your Majesty… your Highness”
Act 5, Scene 3
“We are not the first/ Who with best meaning have incurred the
worst”

12. THE FOOL
Act 1, Scene 4
“nuncle”
“did the third a blessing against his will”
“here’s my coxcomb”
“Can you make no use of nothing nuncle?”
“The sweet and bitter fool” (to Lear)
“thou mad’st thy daughters thy mothers”
“That such a king play bo-peep”
“I had rather be any kind o’ thing than a Fool”
[He points at Lear:] SD “That’s a shealed peascod”
“Lear’s shadow”
Act 1, Scene 5
“Thou would’st make a good fool”
“Thou should’st not have been old till thou hadst been wise”
Act 3, Scene 2
Towards the end of this act, Fool uses rhyming couplets 
suggesting order in verse – ironic – everything in scene’s
content = falling apart
Act 3, Scene 6
“I took you for a joint-stool”
“tell me whether a madman be a gentle-man or yeoman”
“I’ll go to bed at noon” (Fool’s last words)

13. GLOUCESTER
Act 1, Scene 1
“often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am brazed to’t”
“the whoreson must be acknowledged”
No dearer in my account” (reference Edgar)
Act 1, Scene 2
“if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles”
“age makes the world bitter to the best of our times”
“our oldness cannot relish them”
“oppression of aged tyranny”
“O villain, villain”
“Unnatural, detested, brutish villain; worse than brutish”
“He cannot be such a monster”
“These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us”
“there’s father against child”
“This villain of mine”
Act 2, Scene 1
“murderous coward” (to Edgar)
“Loyal and natural boy” (to Edmund)
“I serve you, madam” (to Regan)

14. GLOUCESTER
Act 3, Scene 3
“I like not this unnatural dealing”
“the King is my old master”
“There is strange things toward, Edmund; pray you, be careful”
Act 3, Scene 4
“I am almost mad myself. I had a son/ Now outlawed from my
blood: he sought my life”
“I loved him”(Edgar)
Act 3, Scene 7
[Regan plucks Gloucester’s beard] SD
“Naughty lady”
“Unmerciful lady” (to Regan)
“kind gods”
“O cruel! O you gods!”
“All dark and comfortless! Where’s my son Edmund?... Enkindle all
the sparks of nature/ To quit this horrid act”
“Edgar was abused… forgive me that, and prosper him”
Act 4, Scene 1
“I have no way, and therefore want no eyes”
“ O dear son Edgar/ The food of thy abused father’s wrath”
“Might I but live to see thee in my touch, I’d say I had eyes again”
“As flies to wanton boys are we to gods:/ they kill us for their sport”

15. GLOUCESTER
Act 4, Scene 6
“O you mighty gods!”
“If Edgar live, O bless him!”
“Away, and let me die”
“I know that voice” (Lear’s)
“You ever-gentle gods”
“Let not my worser spirit tempt me again”
“The King is mad; how stiff is my vild sense”
Act 5, Scene 2
“a man may rot even here”
“And that’s true too” (Last words of
Gloucester)

16. EDMUND
Act 1, Scene 1
“My services to your lordship” (to Kent)
Act 1, Scene 2
“Thou, Nature, art my goddess”
“Why bastard?”
“More… fierce quality/ Than doth, within a dull, stale,
tired bed”
“Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.”
“Fine word ‘legitimate’!”
“Now, gods, stand up for bastards”
“Nothing, my lord” (‘hiding’ letter from Glo’ster)
“my brother”
“This is the excellent foppery of the world “
“whoremaster man”
“goatish disposition on the charge of a star!”
“I am rough and lecherous”
“I am no honest man”
“A credulous father and a brother noble”
“foolish honesty”
“if not by birth, have lands by wit”

17. EDMUND
Act 2, Scene 1
“In cunning I must draw my sword upon you”
“seem to defend yourself” (to Edgar)
[He cuts his arm] SD
“wicked charms”
“I shall serve you, sir” (to Cornwall)
Act 3, Scene 3
“Most savage and unnatural!”
“The younger rises when the old doth fall”
Act 5, Scene 1
“Fear me not”
“To both this sisters have I sworn my love/ Each jealous of the
other?”
“Both? One? Or neither?” (Regan and Goneril)
Act 5, Scene 3
“Take them away”
“old and miserable King”
“[ They fight. Edmund falls] SD
“Yet Edmund was beloved”

18. EDGAR
Act 1, Scene 2
“brother Edmund?”
“Some villain hath done me wrong”
Act 2 Scene 3
“ My face I will grime with filth”
“To take the basest and most poorest shape”
“I nothing am”
Act 3, Scene 4
“ The foul fiend follows me”
“Tom’s a-cold. O, do de, do de, do de”
“Flibbertigibbet”
Act 3 Scene 6
“My tears begin to take his part so much/ They mar my
counterfeiting”
“He childed as I fathered!”
Act 4 Scene 1
“I am worse than e’er I was”
“My father, poorly led!”
[Aside] “I cannot daub it further - ”
“Give me thy arm”

19. EDGAR
Act 4, Scene 6
“do you hear the sea?”
“conceit may rob/ The treasury of life”
“Reason in madness”
“Well pray you, father”
“serviceable villain”(to Oswald)
Act 5, Scene 2
“father”(reconcile with Gloucester)
“I’ll bring you comfort”
“old man”(to Gloucester)
Act, 5 Scene 3
“Draw thy sword”
“My name is Edgar, and thy father’s son”
“The dark and vicious place where thee he got/ Cost him his
eyes”
“Led him, begged for him, saved him from despair”
“Haste thee, for thy life!” (to gentleman)
“Tis noble friend Kent, your friend”
“The oldest hath borne most; we that are young/ Shall never see
so much, nor live so long”

20. ALBANY
Act 1, Scene 4
“Pray, sir, be patient” (to Lear)
“I am guiltless as I am ignorant”
“I cannot be so partial, Goneril/ To the great love I bear you”
“How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell” (to Goneril)
Act 4, Scene 2
“You are not worth the dust which the rude wind/ Blows in your face!” (to Goneril)
“I fear your disposition” (to Goneril)
“Tigers, not daughters, what have you performed?”
“Like monsters of the deep”
“devil!”
“So horrid as a woman”
“Proper deformity shows not in the fiend”
“Be-monster not”
Act 5, Scene 3
“I hold you but a subject of this war/ Not as a brother”
“Half-blooded fellow” (to Edmund)
“This glided serpent” (to Regan)
“Save him, save him!” (Edmund)
“Shut your mouth, dame”
“Most monstrous! O!”
“Let sorrow split my heart if ever I/ Did hate thee or thy father”
“Speak, man! (to Edgar and Gent)
“Produce the bodies, be they alive or dead”
“The gods defend her!”
“For us, we will resign, / During the life of this old Majesty/ To him our absolute power”
“Friends of my soul, you twain/ Rule in this realm, and the gored state sustain” (last words)

21. CORNWALL
Act 2, Scene 1
“Edmund, I hear that you have shown your father/ A child-like office”
“you shall be ours” (to Edmund)
“Natures of such deep trust we shall much need”
Act 2, Scene 2
“Peace sirrah” (to Kent)
“What, art thou mad, old fellow?”
“An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth!” (to Kent)
“Fetch forth the stocks!”
Act 2, Scene 4
“Hail to your Grace!” (to Lear)
“I set him there, sir”
“Let us withdraw; ‘twill be a storm”
“’tis a wild night”
Act 3, Scene 5
“I will have my revenge” (to Edmund)
“thou shalt find a dearer father in my love”
Act 3, Scene 7
“Seek out the traitor Gloucester!”
“Leave him to my displeasure” (to Regan)
“Cunning” (Gloucester)
[Cornwall gouges one eye] SD
“My villain?” (to Servant 1)
“I bleed… Give me your arm”

22. KENT
Act 1, Scene 1
“I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than
Cornwall”
“I must love you, and sue to know you better” (to Edmund)
“Loved as my father, as my master followed” (to Lear)
“When Lear is mad. What wouldst thou do, old man?”
“See better, Lear”
Act 1, Scene 4
“my good intent”
“I do profess to be no less than I seem”
“A very honest-hearted fellow”
“I can keep honest council… and deliver a plain message bluntly”
“you base football player” (to Oswald)
Act 1, Scene 5
“I will not sleep, my lord, till I have delivered your letter”
Act 2, Scene 2
“I love thee not”
“A knave… whoreson…heir of a mongrel bitch” (to Oswald)
“Draw, you rascal!”
“You come with letters against the King, and take Vanity the
puppet’s part against the royalty of her father”
“Strike, you slave!”

23. KENT
Act 2, Scene 4
“It is both he and she/ Your son and daughter” (regan and Cornwall)
Act 3, Scene 1
“Who’s there, besides foul weather?”
“I am a gentleman of blood and breeding”
Act 3, Scene 4
“Wilt break my heart?/ I had rather break mine own” (to Lear)
Act 3, Scene 6
“O pity! Sir, where is the patience now/ That you so oft have boasted to
retain”
“Opressed nature sleeps. –” (Lear)
Act 4, Scene 3
“dog-hearted daughters”
“Of Albany’s and Cornwall’s powers you heard not?” (to Gent)
Act 4, Scene 7
“Kind and dear princess!”(to Cordelia)
“In your own kingdom, sir”
“the bastard son of Gloucester”
“Is this the promised end?”
“my good master”
“All’s cheerless, dark, and deadly/ Your eldest daughters… desperately
are dead”
“Break, heart; I prithee break”
“I have a journey, sir, shortly to go”

24. OSWALD
Act 1, Scene 3
“Very well, madam”
Act 1, Scene 4
“[crossing the hall without pausing:] So please you – “
“My lady’s father”
Act 2, Scene 2
“monstrous fellow” (to Kent)
“Away! I have nothing to do with thee”
“Help! Ho! Murder! Help!”
Act 4, Scene 2
“Madam, here comes my lord” (Albany)
Act 4, Scene 5
“Your sister is the better soldier” (to Regan)
“Madam I had rather –”
“Would I could meet him, madam: I should show/ What party I do follow”
Act 4, Scene 6
“old unhappy traitor” (Gloucester)
“bold peasant… thou support a published traitor?” (To Edgar)
“Let go his arm” (to Edgar)
“Let go, slave, or thou diest” (to Edgar)
[Oswald falls] SD
“give the letters which thou find’st about me/ To Edmund, Earl of Gloucester;
seek him out/ Upon the British party”
“O, untimely death, Death …” (last words)

25. BURGANDY & FRANCE
Act 1, Scene 1
Burgundy France
“Most royal Majesty”
“Give but that portion which
yourself proposed/ And here I take
Cordelia by the hand”
“I am sorry then you have so lost a
father/ That you must lose a
husband”
“This is most strange”
“best object” (Cordelia)
“The best, the dearest” (Cordelia)
“Commit a thing so monstrous”
(questioning Cordelia’s intentions)
“She is herself a dowry”

26. SERVANT 1 & 3
Servant 1:
“I have served you ever since I
was a child/ But better service
have I never done you/ Than
now to bid you hold”
Servant 3:
“Women will all turn monsters”
“Now heaven help him!”
(Gloucester)

27. SAM MENDES PRODUCTION 2014
• Long pauses in Act 1, Scene 1 = building tension
• Microphones are pulled towards the daughters whilst
Albany and Cornwall sit silently like dutiful wives
• Edmund appearance like a disguise of his evil treachery
= smart and presentable in contrast to Edgar = slob,
naked & dirty
• Goneril slaps Lear, Regan = Seductive sits on Lear’s lap
• Oswald = small petite, in contrast to Kent = Big & Macho
• Lear kills the Fool = repeatedly hits him with a bat
• “my poor fool is hanged” – Lear carries Cordelia on
stage
• Deaths in ‘King Lear’ were not satisfyingly gory enough
to modern day audience, Gloucester’s “suicide jump” =
pathetic

28. CRITICS AO4
A.C. Bradley
“ ‘King Lear’ is too huge for the stage”
Jan Kott
“King Lear is a play about the disintegration of the world”
Coppelia Kahn
“… it is interesting that there is no literal mother in King Lear”
“Lear goes mad because he is unable to accept his dependence on the
feminine, his daughters.”
Charles Gildon
“We rejoice at the death of the Bastard and the two Sisters, as of Monsters in
Nature under whom the very Earth must groan…”
Samuel Johnson
“[on the gouging out of Gloucester’s eyes)… an act too horrid to endured in
dramatic exhibition”
Charles Lamb
“… we see not Lear, but we are Lear, we are in his mind…”
“Lear is essentially impossible to be represented on a stage”

29. CRITICS AO4
Kathleen McLuskie
“Women are made either to submit- Cordelia - or must be destroyed-
Goneril and Regan.”
“Cordelia’s return is a restoration of patriarchy, of the old order. But this
cannot be wholly reduced to male power”
“Family relations in this play are seen as fixed and determined, and any
movement within them is portrayed as a destructive reversal of natural
order”
Robert West
“[Edmund] has still a share in being; his most destructive actions do not
entirely snuff it out”
Thorndike
“Inhuman sisters” –(Goneril & Regan)
Hudson
“Personifications of ingratitude” - (Goneril & Regan)
Granville Barker
“The intellectual denial of humanity to Goneril and Regan is instrumental to
the psychological denial that they really are Lear's daughters.”

30. CRITICS AO4
S. L. Goldberg
'There is no supernatural justice- only human natural justice'
A. C. Bradley
'Lear's words are monstrously unjust'
Helen Norris
'The horror of Lear's story is the unnatural behavior of Goneril and Regan...
not only personal sins but an upsetting of civilised values'
Charles Lamb
'To see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a
walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has
nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting.'
G. Wilson Knight
'Slowly, painfully...we see a religion born of disillusionment, suffering and
sympathy, a purely spontaneous, natural growth of the human spirit,
developing from nature magic to God.'

31. CRITICS AO4
Hal Holbrook
“Boisterous, demanding, arrogant. He expects absolute obediance”
“Lear slips into madness… direct result of Lear’s refusal to face the awful truth that has
exploded in his mind”
“the coils of Evil spread and fester in the subplot of the play”
“The paranoia of age is stalking him”
“Lear is not a man of conscious intellect”
“Clear that he has no attention of giving his powers to anyone”
“He has clung steadfastly to the conviction that he is a loving father, despite all
evidence of the contrary”
“Star of his hear, refuses to play the game” (Cordelia)
“Gloucester has been a blind fool”
“The Fool is and intellectual… the teacher trying to make the adult student (Lear)
understand what is happening, what is being done to him and what he is doing himself”

32. CONTEXT AO3
Romeo and Juliet- Linking Kent and Benovolio
The Tempest- Linking King Lear and Prospero
Macbeth- Lady Macbeth and Regan & Goneril
Richard III links to Edmund
PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF KING LEAR
• Holinshed’s Chronicles
• The True Chronicle History of King Lear
• Love Like Salt
Japanese version of ‘King Lear’ (film) Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
• Division between sons, not 3 daughters
• Fool present with Lear throughout film
• Lear dies of heart attack when reunited with his good son
• Fool remains alive and was a comic and wise fool!