The document discusses the historical context and themes associated with Shakespeare's 'King Lear', noting its origins, changes in character arcs, and social dynamics of the time, such as gender expectations and patriarchal structures. It features critical quotes that highlight the play's exploration of authority, familial relationships, and the moral complexities of justice. Additionally, it examines the absent mother trope and its implications on gender identity and power dynamics within the narrative.

1. KIng Lear Easter Work
AO4 Facts
● Stories of 'King Lear' existed for over four hundred years before Shakespeare's time
● In all of the previous versions of 'King Lear', Cordelia commits suicide, but Shakespeare
replaces her suicide with execution (more injustice, a palpable sense of needlessness)
● Elizabethan England an extremely patriarchal society, and respect was demanded not
only to the wealthy and powerful, but parents and elders.
● The Jacobean age was a time of social and religious change, wherefore assumptions
about gender and class were being questioned.
● Elizabethan women had to be subservient and were expected to obey men,
disobedience was seen as a crime against their religion.
● King Lear was written during a time of uncertainty. London had been decimated by the
Plague which shut the theatres and Guy Fawkes struck in 1605.
● In 1603 Crowns of England and Scotland shared the kingship of James I but not united,
a milestone nonetheless.
● James I attempted to unite England and Scotland properly with an Act of Union 1606, 2
months before King Lear was performed at Court, but he was unsuccessful as
parliament repeatedly thwarted his plans.
AO3 Critical Quotes
● "A play in which the wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry" - Johnson
● “Cordelia is an opposition to Lear's authority. She uses Silence, the only possible
way of subversion for women of the middle ages” - Rubio
● "King Lear is a play about the disintegration of the world" - Jan Kott
● “A play in which the wicked prosper and the virtuous miscarry" - Johnson
● “We rejoice at the death of the Bastard and the two sisters, as of monsters in
nature under whom the very Earth must groan…” - Charles Gildon
● “Family relations in King Lear are seen as fixed and determined, any movement
within them is portrayed as a destructive reversal of natural order.” - Kathleen
McLuskie
● C. L. Barber, calls psychoanalysis “a sociology of love and worship within the
family.”
● “Inhuman sisters” (In reference to Goneril and Regan) - Thorndike
● “Lear’s words are monstrously unjust” - A. C. Bradley
● “We see a religion born of disillusionment, suffering and sympathy” - G Wilson
Knight
The Absent Mother in King Lear - Coppelia Kahn Quotes
● “Hysteria is a vivid metaphor of woman in general.”
● “From being mothered and fathered, we learn to be ourselves as men and women.”
● “The play depicts the failure of a father’s power to command love in a patriarchal world
and the emotional penalty he pays for wielding power.”

2. ● “The mother’s role in procreation is eclipsed by the father’s, which is used to affirm male
prerogative and power.”
● “A girl’s gender identity is reinforced but a boy’s is threatened by union and identification
with the same powerful female being.”
● “Lear tries to manipulate the wedding ritual so as to keep his hold on Cordelia at the
same time that he is ostensibly giving her away, we might suppose that the emotional
crisis precipitating the tragic action is Lear’s frustrated incestuous desire for his
daughter.”
● “As man, father, and ruler, Lear has habitually suppressed any needs for love, which in
his patriarchal world would normally be satisfied by a mother or mothering woman.”
● “Cordelia’s goodness is as absolute and inexplicable as her sisters’ reprovable badness,
as much an archetype of infantile fantasy as they are.”
● “Like the Virgin Mary, Cordelia intercedes magically, her empathy and pity coaxing
mercy from nature.”
● “Parent and child are equal, the gestures of deference that ordinarily denote patriarchal
authority now transformed into signs of reciprocal love.”