King Lear

• King Lear


  The aging king of Britain and the protagonist of the play. Lear is used to enjoying absolute power and to being flattered, and he does not respond well to being contradicted or challenged. At the beginning of the play, his values are notably hollow—he prioritizes the appearance of love over actual devotion and wishes to maintain the power of a king while unburdening himself of the responsibility. Nevertheless, he inspires loyalty in subjects such as Gloucester, Kent, Cordelia, and Edgar, all of whom risk their lives for him.
• Cordelia


  Lear's youngest daughter, disowned by her father for refusing to flatter him. Cordelia is held in extremely high regard by all of the good characters in the play—the king of France marries her for her virtue alone, overlooking her lack of dowry. She remains loyal to Lear despite his cruelty toward her, forgives him, and displays a mild and forbearing temperament even toward her evil sisters, Goneril and Regan. Despite her obvious virtues, Cordelia's reticence makes her motivations difficult to read, as in her refusal to declare her love for her father at the beginning of the play.
• Goneril


  Lear's ruthless oldest daughter and the wife of the duke of Albany. Goneril is jealous, treacherous, and amoral. Shakespeare's audience would have been particularly shocked at Goneril's aggressiveness, a quality that it would not have expected in a female character. She challenges Lear's authority, boldly initiates an affair with Edmund, and wrests military power away from her husband.
• Regan


  Lear's middle daughter and the wife of the duke of Cornwall. Regan is as ruthless as Goneril and as aggressive in all the same ways. In fact, it is difficult to think of any quality that distinguishes her from her sister. When they are not egging each other on to further acts of cruelty, they jealously compete for the same man, Edmund.
• Gloucester


  A nobleman loyal to King Lear whose rank, earl, is below that of duke. The first thing we learn about Gloucester is that he is an adulterer, having fathered a bastard son, Edmund. His fate is in many ways parallel to that of Lear: he misjudges which of his children to trust. He appears weak and ineffectual in the early acts, when he is unable to prevent Lear from being turned out of his own house, but he later demonstrates that he is also capable of great bravery.
• Edgar


  Gloucester's older, legitimate son. Edgar plays many different roles, starting out as a gullible fool easily tricked by his brother, then assuming a disguise as a mad beggar to evade his father's men, then carrying his impersonation further to aid Lear and Gloucester, and finally appearing as an armored champion to avenge his brother's treason. Edgar's propensity for disguises and impersonations makes it difficult to characterize him effectively.
• Edmund


  Gloucester's younger, illegitimate son. Edmund resents his status as a bastard and schemes to usurp Gloucester's title and possessions from Edgar. He is a formidable character, succeeding in almost all of his schemes and wreaking destruction upon virtually all of the other characters.
• Kent


  A nobleman of the same rank as Gloucester who is loyal to King Lear. Kent spends most of the play disguised as a peasant, calling himself "Caius," so that he can continue to serve Lear even after Lear banishes him. He is extremely loyal, but he gets himself into trouble throughout the play by being extremely blunt and outspoken.
• Albany


  The husband of Lear's daughter Goneril. Albany is good at heart, and he eventually denounces and opposes the cruelty of Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall. Yet he is indecisive and lacks foresight, realizing the evil of his allies quite late in the play.
• Cornwall


  The husband of Lear's daughter Regan. Unlike Albany, Cornwall is domineering, cruel, and violent, and he works with his wife and sister-in-law Goneril to persecute Lear and Gloucester.
• Goneril to father


  A love that makes . . . speech unable / Beyond all manner of so much I love you" (1.1.59
• Regan to father


  "I find she names my very deed of love; Only she comes too short" (1.1.70-71)
• Lear Quote


  Driven to despair at the end of Act 1, scene 5, he says, "O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!"—a foreshadowing of his eventual insanity (1.5.38).
• Cordelia


  Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave

  My heart into my mouth. I love your majesty

  According to my bond; no more nor less. - Cordelia speaks these words when she address her father, King Lear, who has demanded that his daughters tell him how much they love him before he divides his kingdom among them (1.1.90-92).
• Edmund


  Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law

  My services are bound. Wherefore should I

  Stand in the plague of custom, and permit

  The curiosity of nations to deprive me,

  For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines

  Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?

  ...

  Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land.

  Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund

  As to the legitimate. Fine word—"legitimate"!

  Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,

  And my invention thrive, Edmund the base

  Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper.

  Now, gods, stand up for bastards! 1.2
• Lear Quote


  O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars

  Are in the poorest thing superfluous.

  Allow not nature more than nature needs,

  Man's life's as cheap as beast's . . .

  ...

  You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!

  ...

  If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts

  Against their father, fool me not so much

  To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,

  And let not women's weapons, water-drops,

  Stain my man's cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,

  ...

  No, I'll not weep.

  I have full cause of weeping, but this heart

  Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,

  Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

  
  

  - Lear delivers these lines after he has been driven to the end of his rope by the cruelties of Goneril and Regan (2.4.259-281)
• Gloucester Quote


  As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;

  They kill us for their sport.

  Gloucester speaks these words as he wanders on the heath after being blinded by Cornwall and Regan (4.1.37-38).
• Lear Quote


  Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:

  Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so

  That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone forever!

  I know when one is dead, and when one lives;

  She's dead as earth.

  Lear utters these words as he emerges from prison carrying Cordelia's body in his arms (5.3.256-260).
• Gloucester Quote


  Said before Jumping 4.6 - GLOUCESTER

  [Kneeling] O you mighty gods!

  This world I do renounce, and, in your sights,

  Shake patiently my great affliction off:

  If I could bear it longer, and not fall

  To quarrel with your great opposeless wills,

  My snuff and loathed part of nature should

  Burn itself out. If Edgar live, O, bless him!

  Now, fellow, fare thee well.
• Edgar Quote


  Speech at the end. After Gloucester has died - EDGAR

  By nursing them, my lord. List a brief tale;

  And when 'tis told, O, that my heart would burst!

  The bloody proclamation to escape,

  That follow'd me so near,--O, our lives' sweetness!

  That we the pain of death would hourly die

  Rather than die at once!--taught me to shift

  Into a madman's rags; to assume a semblance

  That very dogs disdain'd: and in this habit

  Met I my father with his bleeding rings,

  Their precious stones new lost: became his guide,

  Led him, begg'd for him, saved him from despair;

  Never,--O fault!--reveal'd myself unto him,

  Until some half-hour past, when I was arm'd:

  Not sure, though hoping, of this good success,

  I ask'd his blessing, and from first to last

  Told him my pilgrimage: but his flaw'd heart,

  Alack, too weak the conflict to support!

  'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief,

  Burst smilingly.
• Lear Quote


  "nothing will come from nothing"—in reply to Cordelia. Early
• Kent


  Kent attempts to protect Cordelia after Lear refuses to offer her a dowry. "Thy youngest daughter does love thee least; nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound reverbs no hollowness"—Trying to explain to the King that he misunderstood his daughters words, that she does indeed love him but wanted to point out how empty and worthless her sisters words were as they attempted to grab as much land as they could, but in the end he gets himself banished. (Opening scene and we already have two misunderstandings)
• Lear


  Let it be so. Thy truth then be thy dower.

  For by the sacred radiance of the sun,

  The mysteries of Hecate and the night,

  By all the operation of the orbs

  From whom we do exist and cease to be—

  Here I disclaim all my paternal care,

  Propinquity, and property of blood,

  And as a stranger to my heart and me

  Hold thee from this for ever. The barbarous Scythian,

  Or he that makes his generation messes

  To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom

  Be as well neighbored, pitied, and relieved

  As thou my sometime daughter. Act 1. To cordelia By turning her in to 'stranger' and 'monster' (Shakespeare created verbs out of these words)

  After having this done to her the story becomes these strangered and monstered
• Edmund Soliloquy


  "Gods stand up for bastards!" 1.2 - Edmund is the child of Richard III, here he sees nature as something that isn't made up of strict written laws and relays that he feels he is able to rewrite reality and take the legitimate and turn it on its head. "than doth, within a dull, stale, tired, bed"—relaying that his father had more fun creating him as a bastard than he did creating his true children. By deconstructing this soliloquy we can interpret more about Edmund:

  he is questioning why a bastard is a bastard, he was created in passion and pleasure where his brother was created in boring monotony, so shouldn't he be the truly legitimate son? He has hopes of rewriting the entire system and turning the
• Edmund Quote


  "We make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, the starts.." Edmund is sharing his disbelief in blaming events on the doings of Gods. 1.2 - "I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing"—even if the best omens existed during his conception he would still be the man that he is today.
• Lear Quote


  In Shakespeare's plays putting on a costume to change your appearance is often how our characters learn something important about themselves. During this scene Lear makes the comment that "this is the tempest in my mind" making it easy to believe that the two storms are related, or that the storm might

  only be taking place in Lear's mind, but we have to be careful because Lear has so often been wrong in this play.
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