King Lear

• the love test: "what shall Cordelia speak" - "Nothing, my lord"
• "I lov'd her most, and thought to set my rest" - Cordelia was his favourite and he wanted to stay with her in his old age
• "duty shall have dread to speak" - calling him out on his flattery competition
• "thy banish'd trunk be found in our dominions" - lear banishing Kent after he spoke out against lear in front of the royal court
• "will you, with those infirmities she owes" - lear telling burgundy that Cordelia is undesirable as a bride because he won't give her anything
• "it is no vicious blot, murther, or foulness" - Cordelia didn't commit a crime to lose Lear's love, she has lost his love through her integrity
• "She is herself a dowry" - King of France recognising Cordelia's true value even without money
• "Stand in the plague of custom" - Edmund's soliloquy
• "base? with baseness? bastardy? base" - Edmund has been told he is not good enough all his life due to his lack of legitimacy
• "O villain!" - Gloucester fails to see through Edmund's scheme and believes that Edgar wrote this
• "some villain hath done me wrong" - Edmund fakes innocence to gain Edgar's trust
• "let him to my sister, whose mind and mine I know in that are one, not to be overruled" - Goneril conspiring for her and Regan to take over Lear's power
• "if thou canst serve where thou dost stand condemn'd" - Kent will serve Lear from afar
• "the hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, that it had its head bit off by the young" - compares Goneril to a baby cuckoo bird which eventually takes over its host's nest
• "I have a daughter left" - Lear believes he still has Goneril on his side
• "how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child" - lear recognising that Goneril and Regan are ungrateful
• " of my land, i'll work the means to make thee capable" - Gloucester will find a way to give Edmund his lands and wealth instead of Edgar
• "for you Edmind, whose virtue and obedience doth this instant so much commend itself, you shall be ours" - Cornwall giving Edmund power after foiling the plan to kill Gloucester - IRONY
• "with presented nakedness outface, the winds and persecutions of the sky" - Edgar becomes one with nature
• "Winter's not gone yet" - the worst is yet to come
• "Say you have wrong'd her" - Regan asks Lear to apologise to Goneril and they are teaming to get his power from him
• "you unnatural hags" - Lear cursing Goneril and Regan for being ungrateful
• "from France there comes a power" - France is invading England (Cordelia wants to overthrow Regan and Goneril to restore power to her father)
• "I am a man more sinned against than sinning" - won't take any responsibility which is what leads to his downfall
• "I might pity him" - Gloucester says he is in favour of Lear and not Regan and Goneril - trusts Edmund with this knowledge (naive)
• "the tempest in my mind" - Lear revealing that he's going a little insane to Kent
• "pelican daughters" - Lear comparison to his daughters, baby pelicans were thought to drink their parents blood
• "tis the time's plague, when madmen lead the blind" - Gloucester talking about Edgar saying it must be bad if we have blind men being led around by crazy people
• "I must change names at home" - Goneril saying it's up to her to be the man of the house to keep her power (reversing gender roles)
• "I did her wrong" - Lear realising the wrong he has done to Cordelia
• "I pray you father, being weak, seem so" - Regan tells Lear he is going mentally weak and senile
• "I have no way, and therefore want no eyes" - Gloucester depressed says he has no where to go ad it doesn't matter if he has no eyes
• "they told me I was everything!" - Lear saying his daughters praised him with lies
• "I might have saved her" - Lear grieving over Cordelia's body, feeling responsible for her death
• "the oldest hath borne most" - one of the final lines of the play - Edgar saying that it is the old who suffer the most
• Male primogeniture: first born male is the heir and is entitled to the most
• the great chain of being: order of hierarchy of everything on earth, with humans in the middle but monarchs at the top
• the divine right of kings: monarchy is appointed by god and have an obligation to run the country
• king leir: first version by Monmouth and retold by Holinshed - ends with a happy ending and has no sub-plot
• Shakespeare's company became 'the kings players' to play for King James I