King Lear
1608
An aging king makes a catastrophic misjudgment that unravels everything he holds dear. King Lear, weary of rule, decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, demanding they compete for his favor with public declarations of love. The two eldest, Goneril and Regan, deliver extravagant performances of devotion. Cordelia, the youngest and only one who truly loves him, refuses to play the game. Her honest silence enrages Lear, and he disinherits her on the spot, banishing the only faithful voice in his court. What follows is a merciless descent: the kingdom descends into civil war, Lear is driven out into a savage storm by the daughters he favored, and his mind cracks under the weight of his own catastrophic error. Parallel to this, the Earl of Gloucester suffers a parallel betrayal at the hands of his illegitimate son Edmund, creating a dark mirror of paternal blindness and filial ingratitude. The play ruthlessly examines what happens when pride meets truth, when power meets weakness, when the old must confront their own mortality. It is Shakespeare at his most brutal and most tender, a storm that rages both outside the characters and within them.
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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
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Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Lex, lex-books.com/book/king-lear-31d6076a-7b1b-4a67-985e-a32a5cf6365e.Shakespeare, W. (1608). King Lear. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/king-lear-31d6076a-7b1b-4a67-985e-a32a5cf6365eShakespeare, William. King Lear. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/king-lear-31d6076a-7b1b-4a67-985e-a32a5cf6365e.
