King Lear Quotes Act 2

Front 1

Gloucester 84

Back 1

‘Loyal and natural boy, I’ll work the means to make thee capable.’ Edmund has now gained power.

Front 2

Regan 91

Back 2

‘Did my father’s godson seek your life? He whom my father named, your Edgar?...Was he no companion with the riotous knights That tended upon my father?’ This seems to put both on the same side, as well as suggesting Regan isn’t related to Lear. Christian nature revealed.

Front 3

Cornwall 116

Back 3

‘You, Edmund, who virtues so much commend itself, shall be ours. Natures of such deep trust we shall much need.’ Ironic, compared to 1.1.254 where France seizes on Cordelia’s virtues

Front 4

Kent 72

Back 4

‘Such smiling rogues as these like rats oft bite the holy cords atwain which are too intrince t’unloose.’ They break bonds (Cordelia 1.1.93, Edmund 1.2.108) elaborate bond,

Front 5

Kent in the stocks becomes emblematic of ‘Virtue locked out’ In the stocks he becomes an emblem of of confusion of social and moral values Lear has brought about.

Back 5

That.

Front 6

Edgar 177

Back 6

‘I will preserve myself, with the basest and most poorest shape… Blanked my loins, elf all my hair in knots and with presented nakedness outface the winds and persecutions of the sky… Edgar I nothing am.’

Front 7

Fool 243

Back 7

‘Fortune, that arrant whore, Ne’er turns the key to the poor.’

Front 8

Fool 261

Back 8

‘Let go thy hold when a wheel runs down a hill.’

Front 9

Fool 271

Back 9

‘I will tarry, the fool will stay, and let the wise man fly: The knave turns fool that runs away, the fool no knave perdy.’

Front 10

Lear 324

Back 10

‘O Regan, she hath tied sharp-toothed unkindness, like a vulture, here.’ Linked to Prometheus, who stole fire from the God’s and was punished by vultures, so too has Lear gone above his station, he wishes Godly dominance without their power.

Front 11

Lear 344

Back 11

‘On my knees I beg that you’ll vouchsafe me raiment,’ Regan ‘Good Sir no more’ Inversion of order, Regan rejects her father, the restoration of order is marked by Cordelia kneeling to Lear.

Front 12

Lear 448 (To goneril)

Back 12

‘I’ll go with thee; thy fifty yet doth double five and twenty, and thou art twice her love.’

Front 13

Lear 467

Back 13

'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!’ Lear has finally run out of things to say.