King Lear
The most devastating of Shakespeare's tragedies. An old king, desperate to hear how much he's loved, demands his daughters declare their devotion. Two offer extravagant flattery. One, Cordelia, speaks only truth. Her reward: disinheritance and exile. What follows is a cascading nightmare of betrayal, madness, and violence that strips away every comfort power, sanity, family, dignity. Yet somehow this unflinching portrait of old age in all its vulnerability and pride keeps drawing us back. The language crushes. The story haunts. Not because it offers comfort, but because it tells the truth about what we do to the people closest to us, and what we lose when we cannot hear honest love. For readers who want literature that mirrors the full catastrophe of being human.
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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-fec4cdfc-eb09-4a5e-85bb-33f59b0a9a4a.Shakespeare, W. (n.d.). King Lear. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/king-lear-fec4cdfc-eb09-4a5e-85bb-33f59b0a9a4aShakespeare, William. King Lear. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/king-lear-fec4cdfc-eb09-4a5e-85bb-33f59b0a9a4a.















































