Act 1 Scene 1

• 'The king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall' -Kent
• 'The whoreson must be acknowledged' - Gloucester
• 'Meantime we shall express our darker purpose' -Lear
• 'We unburdened crawl towards death.'


  Use of the royal ‘we’ reminds us of Lear’s inability to understand that in abdicating, he is no longer king and therefore cannot expect the trappings of kingship. The diction choice of ‘unburdened’ reinforces the selfishness of his actions – both in terms of the family and the country. This is also a proleptic moment – ‘crawl towards death’ is indeed what he will do as a result of this moment of hamartia.
• 'I love you more than word can wield the matter' - Gonerill
• 'A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable' -Gonerill
• 'There was good sport at his making' - Gloucester
• 'I shall study deserving' - Edmund
• 'Which of you shall we say doth love us most?' - Lear
• 'Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty / Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare' - Gonerill
• 'What shall Cordelia speak? Love and be silent.' -Cordelia
• 'I am made of that self-same mettle as my sister / And price me at her worth' - Regan
• 'You have begot me, bred me, loved me' -Cordelia

  'Obey you, love you, and most honour you' -Cordelia
• 'Come not between the dragon and his wrath' -Lear
• 'Be Kent unmannerly / When Lear is mad' -Kent
• 'Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich being poor' -France
• 'A wretch whom nature is ashamed / Almost t’acknowledge hers.' - Lear to France about Cordelia
• 'With washed eyes, / Cordelia leaves you'
• 'I love your majesty / According to my bond' - Cordelia
• 'Here I disclaim all my paternal care, Propinquity and property of blood' - Lear
• 'I loved her most and thought to set my rest / On her kind nursery.' -Lear
• 'But now her price is fallen' - Lear
• 'That glib and oily art' - Cordelia about flattery
• 'Love well our father!' -Cordelia
• 'Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides' - Cordelia
• 'His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge.' -Gloucester
• 'Do you smell a fault?' - Gloucester
• 'To shake all cares and business from our age' - Lear
• Lear gives Gonerill 'shadowy forests and with champains riched' 


  Darkness connotations & proleptic imagery of fertility
• 'I profess myself an enemy to all other joys' - Regan
• 'A third more opulent than your sisters' - Lear
• 'Nothing will come of nothing' -Lear
• 'I cannot heave my heart into my mouth' - Cordelia
• 'So young and so untender?' -Lear

  'So young, my lord, and true' -Cordelia
• 'My sometime daughter' -Lear to Cordelia
• 'Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her' -Lear
• 'Royal Lear whom I have ever honoured as my king, loved as my father, as my master followed' -Kent
• 'Hideous rashness' - Kent

  'See better, Lear' -Kent
• 'My life I never held but as a pawn to wage against thine enemies' -Kent
• 'Justly think'st and hast most rightly said' -Kent about Cordelia