King Lear

by William Shakespeare

“King Lear,” wrote the early nineteenth-century Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in his Defence of Poetry, “may be judged to be the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world.”

John Keats wrote a sonnet “On sitting down to read King Lear once again”: having burned his way through the play, he would feel somehow purified and regenerated.

"On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again" by John Keats (1818): Golden-tongued Romance, with serene Lute! Fair plumed Syren, Queen of far-away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day Shut up thine olden Pages, and be mute. Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute, Betwixt Damnation and impassion'd clay Must I burn through; once more humbly assay The bitter-sweet of this Shaksperean fruit. Chief Poet! and ye Clouds of Albion, Begetters of our deep eternal theme! When through the old oak forest I am gone, Let me not wander in a barren dream: But, when I am consumed in the fire, Give me new Phoenix Wings to fly at my desire.

feeling which the acting of Lear ever produced in me. But the Lear of Shakspeare cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear:

The greatness of Lear is not in corporal dimension, but in intellectual: the explosions of his passion are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up and disclosing to the bottom that sea his mind, with all its vast riches.

while we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear,—we are in his mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms; in the aberrations of his reason, we discover a mighty irregular power of reasoning, immethodized from the ordinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth, at will upon the corruptions and abuses of mankind.

few would deny that the role of Lear presents perhaps the greatest of all challenges to the Shakespearean actor. There is a theater saying that by the time you’re old enough to play it, you are too old to play it.

“a play in which the wicked prosper, and the virtuous miscarry, may doubtless be good, because it is a just representation of the common events of human life:

any custom abhorred or outlawed by one nation is sure to be praised or practiced by another. But if you have nothing save custom, no divinely sanctioned hierarchy, then where does your value system come from? Montaigne’s answer is blind faith in God, whereas Edmund, like an apologist before the letter for the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, commits himself to “nature” as a principle of survival and self-seeking.

The final lines of the play—given to different speakers in the Quarto and Folio versions of the text—suggest that the lesson has been learned that Stoic comfort will not do, that it is better to speak what we feel than what we ought to say.

The Stoic philosopher tries to be ruled by reason rather than passion. But for the great sixteenth-century humanist Desiderius Erasmus in his Praise of Folly, there is inhumanity in the notion that to be wise you must suppress the emotions. The most important thing is to “feel”—as Gloucester has to learn, to see the world not rationally but “feelingly.”

We are ruled by our passions and our bodies; we go through life performing a series of different roles of which we are by no means in control. “All this life of mortal men, what is it else but a certain kind of stage play?” asks Erasmus’ Folly.

“a certain pleasant raving, or error of the mind, delivereth the heart of that man whom it possesseth from all wonted carefulness, and rendreth it divers ways much recreated with new delectation” (Praise of Folly, in the sixteenth-century English translation of Sir Thomas Chaloner).

Philosophers say that it is miserable to be deceived; Folly replies that it is most miserable “not to be deceived,” for nothing could be further from the truth than the notion that man’s happiness resides in things as they actually are.

Patience is the boast of the Stoic. It’s a retainer like the hundred knights. To achieve true wisdom, you must let it go. You must let even the wits, the sanity, go.

In uncertain times, we need images, games, and experiments as ways of trying to make sense of our world. We need plays. That is why, four centuries on, we keep going back to Shakespeare and his dazzling mirror world in which everyone is a player.

To be human is to see feelingly, not to fall back on easy moralizing, the “ought to say” that characterizes people like Albany. And seeing feelingly is to do with our sympathetic response to the images that confront us, both on the stage and in the great theater of the world.

In his original version of the play Albany speaks the final speech and thus rules the realm. But then Shakespeare changed his mind. In his revised version of the play Edgar speaks the final speech and thus rules the realm.

King Lear exists in two different texts, the Quarto and the Folio. The Quarto has nearly three hundred lines that are not in the Folio; the Folio has more than a hundred lines that are not in the Quarto; there are more than eight hundred verbal variants in the parts of the play that the two texts share.

LEAR Meantime we shall express our darker34 purpose. Give me the map there. Kent or an Attendant gives Lear a map Know that we have divided In three our kingdom, and ’tis our fast intent36 To shake all cares and business37 from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths while we Unburdened crawl toward death.

GONERIL Sir, I love you more than word can wield53 the matter, Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty, Beyond what can be valued rich or rare, No less than life, with grace56, health, beauty, honour: As much as child e’er loved or father found: A love that makes breath poor and speech unable58: Beyond all manner of so much59 I love you.

REGAN I am made of that self-mettle67 as my sister, And prize me at her worth68. In my true heart, I find she names my very deed69 of love: Only she comes too short, that70 I profess Myself an enemy to all other joys Which the most precious square of sense72 professes, And find I am alone felicitate73 In your dear highness’ love.

LEAR Nothing will come of nothing: speak again. CORDELIA Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond92, no more nor less. LEAR How, how, Cordelia? Mend93 your speech a little, Lest you may mar94 your fortunes. CORDELIA Good my lord, You have begot me, bred96 me, loved me: I return those duties back as are right fit, Obey you, love you and most honour you. Why have my sisters husbands if they say They love you all? Happily when I shall wed, That lord whose hand must take my plight101 shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and duty: Sure I shall never marry like my sisters.

FRANCE Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich being poor, Most choice forsaken266, and most loved despised, Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon267: Takes her hand Be it lawful268, I take up what’s cast away. Gods, gods! ’Tis strange that from their269 cold’st neglect My love should kindle to inflamed270 respect.— Thy dowerless daughter, king, thrown to my chance271, Is queen of us, of ours and our fair France: Not all the dukes of wat’rish273 Burgundy Can buy this unprized274 precious maid of me.— Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind275. Thou losest here, a better where276 to find.

EDMUND Thou, nature, art my goddess: to thy law My services are bound. Wherefore2 should I Stand in3 the plague of custom and permit The curiosity of nations4 to deprive me For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines5 Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base6? When my dimensions are as well compact7, My mind as generous, and my shape as true8, As honest madam’s issue9? Why brand they us With base? With baseness? Bastardy? Base, base? Who in the lusty stealth of nature take11 More composition and fierce quality12 Than doth within a dull, stale, tirèd bed, Go to th’creating a whole tribe of fops14 Got15 ’tween a sleep and wake? Well then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund As18 to th’legitimate — fine word, ‘legitimate’ — Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed19 And my invention20 thrive, Edmund the base Shall to th’legitimate21. I grow, I prosper: Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

GLOUCESTER These late94 eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature95 can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent96 effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction: there’s son against father. The king falls from bias of nature101: there’s father against child. We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves.

EDMUND This is the excellent foppery108 of the world, that when we are sick in fortune — often the surfeits109 of our own behaviour — we make guilty of our disasters110 the sun, the moon111 and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves and treachers112 by spherical predominance113, drunkards, liars and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion115 of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish116 disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded117 with my mother under the dragon’s tail and my nativity was under Ursa118 Major, so that it follows I am rough119 and lecherous. I should have been that I am had the maidenliest120 star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing121.

FOOL Truth’s a dog must to kennel: he must be whipped out when the Lady Brach106 may stand by th’fire and stink.

FOOL Mark110 it, nuncle: Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest113, Ride more than thou goest114, Learn more than thou trowest115, Set less than thou throwest116; Leave thy drink and thy whore, And keep in-a-door, And thou shalt have more119 Than two tens to a score120.

Overall metre: Iambic trimeter Iambic Trimeter: Iamb; Stress on the second syllable (da-DUM), Trimeter; 3 feet per line (6 syllables) Variations: Occasional trochaic substitutions or irregular feet, especially for emphasis or comic effect. Trochee: Street on the first syllable (DUM-da) Contains Feminine Endings: Lines that end on an extra, unstressed syllable Style: Rhymed, proverbial, sing-song — designed to sound like folk wisdom, not polished poetry. Analysis (ChatGPT): 1. Have MORE / than THOU / SHOW-est Feet: iamb / iamb / trochee Ending: Feminine Notes: Core iambic trimeter, final trochee adds variety. --- 2. Speak LESS / than THOU / KNOW-est Feet: iamb / iamb / trochee Ending: Feminine --- 3. Lend LESS / than THOU / OW-est Feet: iamb / iamb / trochee Ending: Feminine Notes: Same pattern again—Shakespeare loves the triplet sound here. --- 4. Ride MORE / than THOU / GO-est Feet: iamb / iamb / trochee Ending: Feminine --- 5. Learn MORE / than THOU / TROW-est Feet: iamb / iamb / trochee Ending: Feminine Notes: "Trow" = to believe (archaic), preserves the rhyme scheme. --- 6. Set LESS / than THOU / THROW-est Feet: iamb / iamb / trochee Ending: Feminine --- 7. Leave THY / DRINK and / THY WHORE Feet: trochee / iamb / iamb Ending: Masculine Notes: Stronger, punchier rhythm. Opening with a trochee gives it weight. --- 8. And KEEP / in-a- / DOOR Feet: iamb / anapest / stress Ending: Masculine, irregular Notes: An anapestic substitution in the second foot (in-a-), followed by a stressed final syllable. This line trips the metre a bit—perhaps intentionally. --- 9. And THOU / shalt HAVE / MORE Feet: iamb / iamb / stress Ending: Masculine, short final line Notes: Seems compressed—a dimeter + stress, or you might see the last foot as a catalectic iamb. Dimeter: 2 feet per line (4 syllables) Catalectic Iamb: Metrically incomplete iambic line of verse; Lacks a syllable at the end. --- 10. Than TWO / TENS to / a SCORE Feet: iamb / iamb / iamb Ending: Masculine Notes: A return to regular iambic trimeter --- Summary: Lines 1–6: Iambic trimeter with feminine endings (trochee at the end) Lines 7–10: Meter becomes looser, more irregular and punchy: Line 7 opens with a trochee Line 8 includes an anapest Line 9 is short and almost feels like a refrain Line 10 returns to regular iambic trimeter --- Why it matters: This movement from regular to irregular metre mirrors the Fool’s craft: he begins with balanced, proverbial wisdom, then shifts into more earthy, energetic language. It shows the Fool’s dual role—sage and jester.

Can you make no use123 of nothing, nuncle? LEAR Why, no, boy: nothing can be made out of nothing.

Who is it that can tell me who I am? FOOL Lear’s shadow204.

LEAR It may be so, my lord.— Hear, nature, hear, dear goddess, hear! Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend To make this creature fruitful: Into her womb convey sterility, Dry up in her the organs of increase252, And from her derogate253 body never spring A babe to honour her: if she must teem254, Create her child of spleen255, that it may live And be a thwart disnatured256 torment to her: Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth, With cadent tears fret258 channels in her cheeks, Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits259 To laughter and contempt, that she may feel How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child!— Away, away!

A fox, when one has caught her, And such a daughter Should sure to the slaughter, If my cap would buy a halter295: So the fool follows after.

FOOL Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.

The duke be here tonight? The better — best! This weaves itself perforce15 into my business. My father hath set guard to take16 my brother, And I have one thing, of a queasy question17, Which I must act. Briefness and fortune, work!—

KENT Fellow, I know thee. OSWALD What dost thou know me for12? KENT A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats13, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound14, filthy, worsted-stocking knave, a lily-livered, action-taking15, whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical16 rogue: one-trunk-inheriting slave: one that wouldst be a bawd17 in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition18 of a knave, beggar, coward, pander19, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deny’st the least syllable of thy addition21. OSWALD Why, what a monstrous fellow art thou thus to rail22 on one that is neither known of thee nor knows thee! KENT What a brazen-faced varlet24 art thou to deny thou knowest me! Is it two days since I tripped up thy heels and beat thee before the king? Draw26, you rogue, for though it be night, yet the moon shines: I’ll make a sop o’th’moonshine27 of you, you whoreson cullionly barber-monger28. Draw. Draws his sword OSWALD Away! I have nothing to do with thee. KENT Draw, you rascal: you come with letters against the king, and take vanity the puppet31’s part against the royalty of her father: draw, you rogue, or I’ll so carbonado32 your shanks: draw, you rascal, come your ways33. OSWALD Help, ho! Murder! Help! KENT Strike, you slave! Stand, rogue, stand, you neat35 slave, strike!

KENT That such a slave as this should wear a sword, Who wears no honesty65. Such smiling rogues as these, Like rats, oft bite the holy cords a-twain66 Which are too intrinse t’unloose, smooth67 every passion That in the natures of their lords rebel68, Being oil to fire69, snow to the colder moods, Revenge, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks70 With every gall and vary71 of their masters, Knowing naught, like dogs, but following.— To Oswald A plague upon your epileptic visage73! Smile you my speeches, as74 I were a fool? Goose, if I had you upon Sarum75 plain, I’d drive ye cackling home to Camelot76.

That sir264 which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form265, Will pack266 when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm. But I will tarry, the fool will stay, And let the wise man fly: The knave turns fool that runs away, The fool no knave, perdy271.

REGAN O, sir, you are old: Nature in you stands on the very verge336 Of her confine: you should be ruled and led By some discretion that discerns your state338 Better than you yourself. Therefore, I pray you, That to our sister you do make return: Say you have wronged her.

LEAR O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars468 Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not470 nature more than nature needs, Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady; If only to go warm were gorgeous472, Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st473, Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But for true need — You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need! You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age, wretched in both. If it be you that stirs these daughters’ hearts Against their father, fool me not so much479 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, I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shall — I will do such things — What they are yet I know not, but they shall be The terrors of the earth! You think I’ll weep: No, I’ll not weep: I have full cause of weeping, Storm and tempest But this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws488, Or ere489 I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

GENTLEMAN Contending4 with the fretful elements; Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea Or swell the curlèd waters ’bove the main6, That things might change or cease.

GENTLEMAN [Folio] Contending with the fretful elements; Bids the wind blow the earth into the sea Or swell the curlèd waters ’bove the main, That things might change or cease. [Cont. in Quarto] Tears his white hair, Which the impetuous blasts with eyeless rage Catch in their fury, and make nothing of, Strives in his little world of man to out-scorn, The to-and-fro-conflicting wind and rain: This night — wherein the cubdrawn bear would couch, The lion and the belly-pinchèd wolf Keep their fur dry, — unbonneted he runs, And bids what will take all.

LEAR Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow, You cataracts and hurricanoes2, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drown the cocks3! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires4, Vaunt-couriers5 of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o’th’world! Crack nature’s moulds, all germens8 spill at once That makes ingrateful man!

LEAR Rumble thy bellyful! Spit fire! Spout rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters. I tax not you, you elements, with16 unkindness: I never gave you kingdom, called you children; You owe me no subscription18. Then let fall Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak and despised old man: But yet I call you servile ministers21, That will with two pernicious22 daughters join Your high-engendered battles gainst a head23 So old and white as this. O, ho, ’tis foul24!

FOOL He that has and a little tiny wit77, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, Must make content with his fortunes fit79, Though the rain it raineth every day.

EDMUND This courtesy forbid thee18 shall the duke Instantly know, and of that letter too: This seems a fair deserving20 and must draw me That which my father loses: no less than all. The younger rises when the old doth fall.

LEAR Thou think’st ’tis much that this contentious storm Invades us to the skin so: ’tis to thee, But where the greater malady10 is fixed The lesser is scarce felt. Thou’dst shun a bear, But if thy flight lay toward the roaring sea Thou’dst meet the bear i’th’mouth. When the mind’s free13, The body’s delicate14: the tempest in my mind Doth from my senses take all feeling else Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude! Is it not as17 this mouth should tear this hand For lifting food to’t? But I will punish home18. No, I will weep no more. In such a night To shut me out? Pour on, I will endure. In such a night as this? O Regan, Goneril, Your old kind father, whose frank22 heart gave all — O, that way madness lies: let me shun that: No more of that.

Swithold footed thrice the old112, He met the nightmare and her nine-fold113; Bid her alight, And her troth plight115, And, aroint116 thee, witch, aroint thee!

EDGAR Child Rowland to the dark tower came176, His word was still: fie, foh and fum,177 I smell the blood of a British man.

GLOUCESTER Because I would not see thy cruel nails Pluck out his poor old eyes, nor thy fierce sister In his anointed65 flesh stick boarish fangs. The sea, with such a storm as his bare head In hell-black night endured, would have buoyed67 up And quenched the stellèd68 fires: Yet, poor old heart, he holp the heavens to rain69. If wolves had at thy gate howled that stern70 time, Thou shouldst have said ‘Good porter, turn the key71.’ All cruels else subscribe72: but I shall see The wingèd vengeance73 overtake such children.

CORNWALL Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly!

GLOUCESTER I have no way and therefore want no eyes: I stumbled when I saw. Full oft ’tis seen Our means secure us, and our mere defects22 Prove our commodities23. O dear son Edgar, The food of thy abusèd24 father’s wrath! Might I but live to see thee in my touch, I’d say I had eyes again! OLD MAN How now? Who’s there? Aside EDGAR O gods! Who is’t can say, ‘I am at the worst’? I am worse than e’er I was. OLD MAN ’Tis poor mad Tom. Aside EDGAR And worse I may be yet: the worst is not31 So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.’