Das Leben Und Der Tod Des Königs Lear
Das Leben Und Der Tod Des Königs Lear
Translated by Christoph Martin Wieland
One of Shakespeare's most devastating tragedies begins with a single question: who loves me most? An aging king, desperate for reassurance, demands his daughters profess their devotion in exchange for their inheritance. Two offer flattery and receive crowns. One offers only truth and is cast out into the storm. What follows is a shattering portrait of pride meeting its consequences. Lear wanders the countryside accompanied only by his Fool, his mind fracturing as he discovers what it means to be stripped of everything he gave away. Meanwhile, his kingdom devolves into violence and betrayal, as the daughters who promised everything deliver nothing. The play builds toward an ending of unbearable weight, where recognition comes too late and love cannot save what pride has destroyed. King Lear endures because it shows us the precise moment when we see clearly and cannot bear what we see.
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“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.””
— William Shakespeare
“Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.””
— William Shakespeare
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.They kill us for their sport.””
— William Shakespeare
“This is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits of our own behavior) we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; 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 evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.””
— William Shakespeare
“Many a true word hath been spoken in jest.””
— William Shakespeare
“The prince of darkness is a gentleman!””
— William Shakespeare
“Who is it that can tell me who I am?””
— William Shakespeare
“The weight of this sad time we must obey,Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.The oldest hath borne most: we that are youngShall never see so much, nor live so long.””
— William Shakespeare
“Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.””
— William Shakespeare
