King Lear

 

Brief over View of The Plot :

• King Lear divides his kingdom into three parts for his three daughters and their husbands, but his youngest daughter Cordelia disappoints him and he therefore gives her share to the other two.

• The King of France agrees to marry Cordelia despite what has happened and she goes with him to France.

• The Earl of Gloucester’s youngest son Edmund fools his father into believing that his older son, Edmund’s half-brother Edgar, wants to kill Gloucester.

• Edmund tells Edgar to run away because his life is in danger and Edgar disguises himself as a ‘mad’ beggar called ‘Poor Tom’.

• King Lear goes to stay with his oldest daughter Goneril. She asks him to reduce the number of his followers because of their noise and behavior. He is deeply offended and goes to stay with his daughter Regan instead. Regan makes sure she is not at home and goes to Gloucester’s house.

• Outside Gloucester’s house, Goneril and Regan unite against their father. He refuses to give up his followers and instead walks off into a storm.

• Lear meets ‘Poor Tom’ in the storm. Gloucester then finds Lear, gives him food and shelter and sends him to Dover to meet up with Cordelia.

• Regan and her husband Cornwall torture Gloucester for helping Lear and gouge out his eyes. ‘Poor Tom’ then finds his blind father and helps him travel to Dover to meet the king.

• Goneril and Regan’s British armies, supported by Edmund, defeat Cordelia’s invading French forces. Lear and Cordelia are captured and she is later killed.

• Edgar kills Edmund in a duel. Goneril poisons Regan and kills herself. Lear dies mourning Cordelia.

Scene by Scene Summery of The Play :

ACT 1 SCENE 1

The play opens with the Earl of Kent and Earl of Gloucester talking about King Lear’s plans for ‘the division of the kingdom’. Kent meets Gloucester’s illegitimate son Edmund and learns he is a year younger than Edgar, Gloucester’s ‘son by order of law’. The King and all his court arrive and King Lear announces his plan to ‘shake all cares and business from our state, / Conferring them on younger years’ and calls on his three daughters to express their love for him before he rewards them with a share of his kingdom. His two older daughters, Goneril and Regan, offer poetic speeches but his youngest and favorite daughter Cordelia refuses, declaring ‘I love your majesty / According to my bond, no more nor less’. Lear is angry and disowns Cordelia, giving her share of the kingdom to her sisters’ husbands to divide between them. Kent, out of loyalty to both Lear and Cordelia, speaks up to tell Lear he is wrong, but Lear does not listen and banishes Kent from the kingdom.

The King of France and the Duke of Burgundy, rivals to marry Cordelia, are brought in and Lear tells them that she is ‘new adopted to our hate / covered with our curse and strangered with our oath’. Hearing what has happened, Burgundy is no longer interested in marrying her but France declares ‘Thy dowerless daughter, King, thrown to my chance, / Is queen of us, of ours, and our fair France.’ After Lear and his court have left, Cordelia says goodbye to her sisters and leaves for France. Left alone, Goneril and Regan discuss their father’s ‘poor judgement’ and ‘unconstant starts’.

ACT 1 SCENE 2

Edmund speaks to the audience about his ‘bastardy’, asking ‘Wherefore should I / Stand in the plague of custom’. He resents the fact that he is treated differently to his brother and declares ‘Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land’. He has forged a letter from Edgar that he hopes will make his ‘invention thrive’. Gloucester arrives and believes that Edmund is trying to hide the letter from him. Gloucester insists on reading the letter and finds a plot suggesting that Edmund work with Edgar to get rid of their father and share his wealth. Edmund tells his father ‘It is his hand, my lord, but I hope his heart is not in the contents.’ This helps to convince Gloucester that Edgar is plotting against him and that ‘These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us’. When Gloucester has gone, Edmund makes fun of his father’s superstition, telling the audience ‘we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity.’

Edgar then arrives and Edmund tells him that their father is very angry with him. Edgar believes ‘Some villain hath done me wrong’. When he is gone, Edmund turns once more to the audience to laugh at his ‘credulous father, and a brother noble, / Whose nature is so far from doing harms / That he suspects none’.

ACT 1 SCENE 3

King Lear, his hundred knights and their squires are all staying with Goneril. She complains to her servant Oswald about her father and his ‘riotous’ companions, saying ‘By day and night he wrongs me’. She tells Oswald to ‘Put on what weary negligence you please’ when called on to serve Lear and says her sister is also not prepared to tolerate them.

ACT 1 SCENE 4

The Earl of Kent tells the audience that he has disguised himself in order to return and serve King Lear. He introduces himself to Lear as ‘A very honest-hearted fellow.’ Lear is impressed and tells him ‘Follow me, thou shalt serve me: if I like thee no worse after dinner.’ When Oswald does not behave as Lear expects him to, Kent helps Lear to punish Oswald and Lear thanks him. Lear’s Fool then arrives and offers Kent his coxcomb ‘for taking one’s part that’s out of favour’. Through his word play and songs, the Fool suggests that Lear has been a fool to give his kingdom away, saying ‘thou hast pared thy wit o’both sides and left nothing i’th’middle.’

Goneril enters and complains to Lear about his ‘all licensed fool’ and his ‘insolent retinue’ who do ‘hourly carp and quarrel, breaking forth / In rank and not-to-be endured riots.’ She asks him ‘a little to disquantify your train’. He grows angry and curses her, saying ‘Into her womb convey sterility’, and hopes that if she does have a child it teaches her ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child.’ He sets off to stay with Regan, believing she will be ‘kind and comfortable’. When Lear has gone, Goneril calls Oswald and sends him with a letter to Regan.

ACT 1 SCENE 5

Lear sends his new servant, the disguised Kent, on ahead to take letters to Regan and let her know he is coming to stay. Kent promises ‘I will not sleep, my lord, till I have delivered your letter.’ Lear is left with his Fool who tells him that a snail has a shell ‘to put’s head in, not to give it away to his daughters and leave his horns without a case.’ Lear confesses ‘I did her wrong’ and worries that he may be going ‘mad’.

ACT 2 SCENE 1

Edmund learns from a servant that Regan and Cornwall are on their way to Gloucester’s house and that there are rumours of ‘likely wars toward ’twixt the dukes of Cornwall and Albany.’ Edmund hopes Cornwall’s arrival will help his plans. He calls for his brother Edgar who has been in hiding and advises him to ‘fly this place’. He sees their father Gloucester approaching and tells Edgar ‘pardon me / In cunning I must draw my sword upon you’. As Edgar runs off, Edmund gives himself a wound to make his story about Edgar’s treachery more convincing. He then tells his father that Edgar tried to ‘Persuade me to the murder of your lordship’. Gloucester is convinced that Edgar is a ‘murderous caitiff’.

Regan and her husband arrive and sympathise with Gloucester over Edgar’s betrayal. Cornwall tells Edmund ‘For you, Edmund, / Whose virtue and obedience doth this instant / So much commend itself, you he news received from her father and her sister.

ACT 2 SCENE 2

Oswald has arrived at Gloucester’s house and meets Kent, still disguised as ‘Caius’. Oswald does not recognise him as a follower of Lear and the two men argue. Kent hurls insults and draws his sword against Oswald for bringing ‘letters against the king’ and taking ‘vanity the puppet’s part against the royalty of her father’.

Regan, Cornwall, Gloucester and Edmund arrive and stop the fight but Kent refuses to back down saying ‘anger hath a privilege’. Cornwall calls for the stocks to punish Kent who appeals to Regan saying ‘Why, madam, if I were your father’s dog / You should not use me so’. Gloucester speaks up that ‘The king his master needs must take it ill’ but Regan and Cornwall are unconcerned. Left alone, Kent shows the audience a letter he has received from Cordelia ‘Who hath most fortunately been informed / Of my obscured course’.

Edgar tells the audience that he plans to disguise himself as a ‘Bedlam beggar’ called ‘Poor Tom’ and run away. Lear then arrives and wakes up Kent who is still sleeping in the stocks. Lear is shocked at Kent’s treatment, complaining ’tis worse than murder / To do upon respect such violent outrage’. He is further outraged when Gloucester tells him that Regan and Cornwall will not see him. They finally appear and Lear complains to Regan that Goneril ‘hath tied / Sharp-toothed unkindness, like a vulture, here’. Regan tells her father to return to Goneril and ‘Say you have wronged her’. When Goneril herself arrives, Regan takes her hand and together they tell Lear they will look after him in their homes, but not his knights. Goneril asks ‘What need you five-and-twenty, ten, or five, / To follow in a house where twice so many / Have a command to tend you?’ Lear calls his daughters ‘unnatural hags’ and walks away from the castle as a storm is brewing.

ACT 3 SCENE 1

Kent is looking for the king and a gentleman tells him that Lear is ‘Contending with the fretful elements’, accompanied by ‘None but the fool’. Kent tells the gentleman of difficulty ‘’twixt Albany and Cornwall’ and that spies in their courts are reporting back to Cordelia’s husband the King of France. Kent sends the gentleman with a ring to find Cordelia.

ACT 3 SCENE 2

Lear shouts at the stormy skies ‘Blow winds and crack your cheeks!’ The Fool tries to calm him down but Lear continues to complain to the elements that they are taking his daughters’ side ‘gainst a head / So old and white as this’. Kent finds them and persuades Lear to head towards the shelter of ‘a hovel’ and the king finally agrees, showing sympathy for the Fool, ‘Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart / That’s sorry yet for thee.’

ACT 3 SCENE 3

Gloucester confides in Edmund his concerns about how Regan, Goneril and Cornwall have forbidden him to help Lear. He tells Edmund of a letter locked in his closet that is ‘dangerous to be spoken’ and that ‘there is part of a power already footed’ to revenge ‘these injuries the king now bears’. As soon as Gloucester leaves, Edmund tells the audience that he will immediately report all of this to Cornwall.

ACT 3 SCENE 4

Kent has led Lear to the hovel and urges him to go in. Before he enters, Lear thinks about the ‘Poor naked wretches’ in his kingdom who have no shelter and confesses ‘I have ta’en / Too little care of this’. Just then the Fool comes back out of the hovel, scared of ‘a spirit’ inside it called ‘Poor Tom’. Edgar emerges disguised as Poor Tom, behaving and speaking like a ‘Bedlam beggar’. Lear is intrigued by Poor Tom and considers how ‘unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal’. He begins to take off his own clothes to be more like ‘Poor Tom’. At this moment, Gloucester finds them. He tells Lear ‘my duty cannot suffer / T’obey in all your daughters’ hard commands’ and says he will take them to where ‘both fire and food is ready.’ Lear agrees to follow but not without his ‘Noble philosopher’ ‘Poor Tom’.

ACT 3 SCENE 5

Edmund tells Cornwall what his father told him and shows Cornwall Gloucester’s letter which ‘approves him an intelligent party to the advantages of France’ and therefore a traitor to his own country. Cornwall praises his action, telling him ‘it hath made thee Earl of Gloucester.’

ACT 3 SCENE 6

Gloucester brings Lear, Kent, ‘Poor Tom’ and the Fool to a place of shelter near his house. Lear continues to complain about how his daughters have treated him, and sets up a mock trial of Regan and Goneril. Kent eventually persuades him to rest but then Gloucester returns and tells Kent they must leave immediately and ‘drive toward Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet / Both welcome and protection.’ The Fool speaks his last lines in the play.

ACT 3 SCENE 7

Regan and Goneril are angry to hear of Gloucester’s betrayal, Regan says ‘Hang him instantly’ and Goneril adds ‘Pluck out his eyes.’ Oswald arrives with news that Lear and ‘Some five- or six-and-thirty of his knights’ have gone toward Dover, where they boast / To have well-arme`d friends.’ Goneril sets off back to her house, accompanied by Edmund, while Cornwall sends servants to bring in ‘the traitor Gloucester’.

Gloucester is brought in and protests ‘Good my friends, consider you are my guests / Do me no foul play, friends’ but he is tied to a chair and interrogated. He tells Regan he has sent Lear to Dover ‘because I would not see thy cruel nails / Pluck out his poor old eyes’. In response, Cornwall gouges out one of Gloucester’s eyes but before he can take out the other eye a servant calls ‘Hold your hand, my lord’. Cornwall fights with the servant and kills him then returns to pluck out Gloucester’s remaining eye, saying ‘Out vile jelly’. Gloucester calls out for Edmund but Regan tells him it was Edmund ‘That made the overture of thy treasons to us’.

Gloucester finally realises he has trusted the wrong son. Cornwall has been hurt in the fight with his servant. Regan orders the remaining servants to ‘Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell / His way to Dover’ and then helps her bleeding husband.

ACT 4 SCENE 1

Still disguised as ‘Poor Tom’, Edgar comes across his blinded father being led away from his house by an old man who lived on Gloucester’s land and is horrified to see his father in this state. He hears Gloucester tell the old man ‘I have no way and therefore want no eyes / I stumbled when I saw’, and confessing that he was unfair to his son Edgar. On hearing that ‘Poor Tom’ is there, Gloucester asks the ‘naked fellow’ to lead him to the cliffs at Dover. The old man is not convinced this is a good idea but Gloucester tells him ‘Tis the time’s plague, when madmen lead the blind.’

ACT 4 SCENE 2

Goneril arrives home with Edmund and Oswald tells her that Albany is behaving oddly and smiled at the news of the French invasion. Goneril sends Edmund back to Cornwall but kisses him first and tells him ‘To thee a woman’s services are due’. Albany says the sisters’ treatment of Lear makes them ‘Tigers, not daughters’. Goneril calls her husband ‘Milk-livered man’ and ‘a moral fool’ and they continue to argue until a messenger arrives with news that Cornwall has died from the wound he got fighting his servant. Albany is shocked to hear what Cornwall did to Gloucester and that it was Edmund who betrayed his father. Goneril is concerned that Regan will make a move on Edmund now she is a widow. After Goneril has left, Albany declares ‘Gloucester, I live / To thank thee for the love thou showed’st the king / And to revenge thine eyes.’

ACT 4 SCENE 3

Kent talks to a gentleman in Dover about the letters he sent to Cordelia about her father. The gentleman tells him that Cordelia was very emotional reading the letters so that her ‘tears and smiles’ were like ‘Sunshine and rain at once’. Kent tells the gentleman that Lear is nearby but that ‘burning shame / Detains him from Cordelia’.

ACT 4 SCENE 4

Cordelia is concerned about her father who has been seen ‘As mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud’ and wearing a crown of ‘furrow weeds’. She sends people to ‘Search every acre in the high-grown field / And bring him to our eye’. A messenger comes in to tell her ‘The British powers are marching hitherward’ and she gets ready for battle saying ‘O dear father, / It is thy business that I go about’.

ACT 4 SCENE 5

Regan talks about the impending battle with Oswald who has just brought messages to her from Goneril. She tries to get him to reveal what is in the messages he carries from Goneril to Edmund, saying ‘I know you are of her bosom’ but Oswald remains loyal to Goneril and tells Regan ‘My lady charged my duty in this business.’ Regan gives him her own message to take to Edmund and tells him that if he meets ‘that blind traitor’ Gloucester, ‘Preferment falls on him that cuts him off.’

ACT 4 SCENE 6

Edgar has led his blinded father to Dover, still pretending to be ‘Poor Tom’ although Gloucester recognizes that his guide’s ‘voice is altered’. Despite Gloucester also recognizing that ‘the ground is even’, Edgar convinces him that they are at the top of a high cliff from which ‘The fishermen that walk upon the beach /Appear like mice’. Gloucester sends his guide away with ‘another purse’.

When Gloucester falls forward, believing he is throwing himself from the cliff top, Edgar confesses that his plan may ‘may rob / The treasury of life’ and rushes to his father to check if he is still alive. He now pretends to be a passer by on the beach who saw the old man fall and declares ‘Thy life’s a miracle’. Gloucester agrees to ‘bear / Affliction till it do cry out itself /‘Enough, enough’ and die.’

At that moment King Lear joins them, behaving very oddly and ranting about his daughters. Gloucester recognizes the king’s voice. Lear comments on Gloucester’s lack of eyes and tells him ‘A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. / Look with thine ears’.

Lear finally admits, ‘I know thee well enough: thy name is Gloucester’ before running off, chased by three gentlemen sent to calm him down and take him to Cordelia. Edgar learns from one of the gentleman that the opposing army are ‘Near and on speedy foot’.

Edgar tells Gloucester he is ‘A most poor man, made tame to fortune’s blows’ and begins to lead him to shelter when Oswald appears, ready to kill Gloucester. Edgar defends Gloucester and kills Oswald who dies believing Edgar is a ‘bold peasant’. He gives Edgar his purse and tells him to ‘bury my body / And give the letters which thou find’st about me / To Edmund, Earl of Gloucester’.

Edgar reads aloud the letter from Goneril to Edmund which asks Edmund to take one of the ‘many opportunities’ he will have to kill Albany so that he can marry Goneril. Edgar disposes of Oswald’s body and then leads his father away.

ACT 4 SCENE 7

Cordelia asks Kent ‘how shall I live and work / To match thy goodness?’ and he asks her not to reveal his identity until he is ready. A doctor tells Cordelia that the king ‘sleeps still’ and asks if they can wake him. Lear is brought in and Cordelia kisses him, judging her sisters by saying ‘Had you not been their father, these white flakes / Did challenge pity of them.’ Lear is confused when he wakes up but seems more calm and rational. He calls himself ‘a very foolish fond old man.’ He recognizes Cordelia and tells her ‘your sisters / Have, as I do remember, done me wrong: / You have some cause, they have not.’ The doctor reassures Cordelia saying, ‘Be comforted, good madam: the great rage, / You see, is killed in him.’

ACT 5 SCENE 1

Edmund has command of Regan’s troops now that Cornwall is dead. Regan questions him about his relationship with her sister and Edmund insists his only love for Goneril is ‘In honoured love.’ Goneril and Albany arrive and Goneril convinces everyone to ‘Combine together gainst the enemy, / For these domestic and particular broils / Are not the question here.’ As the others leave, Edgar stops Albany and gives him a letter, saying ‘If you have victory, let the trumpet sound’ and ‘a champion’ will step forward to prove the truth of the letter. In a soliloquy, Edmund then tells the audience that he has sworn his love to both Goneril and Regan and asks ‘Which of them shall I take?’ He also says that he intends to stop the pardon which Albany intends to give to Lear and Cordelia for siding with the French.

ACT 5 SCENE 2

As the battle rages, Edgar lets Gloucester rest. He soon returns with the news that ‘King Lear hath lost, he and his daughter ta’en’. Gloucester wants to stay where he is, saying ‘a man may rot even here’, but Edgar leads him away.

ACT 5 SCENE 3

Edmund calls for his officers to lock up Lear and Cordelia. She tells her father ‘We are not the first / Who with best meaning have incurred the worst’ and he tells her they will live together in prison ‘As if we were God’s spies’ hearing ‘poor rogues / Talk of court news’. Edmund secretly sends his captain after them with a note to ensure that they are both put to death, telling the captain ‘to be tender-minded / Does not become a sword.’

Albany enters followed by Regan and Goneril who argue over Edmund’s position. Regan announces her intention to make Edmund her ‘lord and master’. Regan also begins to feel very ill and Goneril admits to the audience she has poisoned her sister.

Albany has Edmund arrested for ‘capital treason’, and calls Goneril a ‘gilded serpent’ for her betrayal in promising to marry Edmund if he kills her husband. A trumpet sounds and Edgar steps forward, in armour which hides his face. Edgar publicly accuses Edmund of being a traitor. Edmund and Edgar fight and Edmund is defeated. Edmund admits ‘What you have charged me with, that have I done, / And more, much more’.

Edgar reveals who he is really is and how he disguised himself as ‘Poor Tom’ and looked after his blinded father. Edgar describes how he finally told his father everything and ‘asked his blessing’ to fight this duel with Edmund but that ‘’Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief’ Gloucester’s heart ‘Burst smilingly’ and he died. Listening to this as he dies, Edmund says ‘This speech of yours hath moved me, / And shall perchance do good’ but they are interrupted by a gentleman who runs on with a bloody knife taken from Goneril’s heart and tells Albany that Goneril died after confessing that ‘her sister / By her is poisoned’.

Kent arrives dressed as himself again. Albany order the bodies to be brought in and Edmund says ‘Yet Edmund was beloved: / The one the other poisoned for my sake / And after slew herself.’ Edmund then confesses that the Captain ‘hath commission from thy wife and me / To hang Cordelia in the prison’ and Albany quickly dispatches men to try and save her.

Lear then enters carrying the dead body of Cordelia, crying ‘Howl, howl, howl’. Kent tries to tell Lear who he is and that his older daughters ‘have fordone themselves, / And desperately are dead’, but Albany tells him that Lear ‘knows not what he says, and vain is it / That we present us to him.’ Lear dies and Kent wonders how ‘he hath endured so long’.

Albany and Edgar are left with a kingdom to rule and to consider how they can ‘Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say’.

Characters of The Play King Lear

Themes

Quotes