King Lear Quotes And Critical Comments

Front 1

“I am a man more sinned against than sinning”

Back 1

Lear, (Act III Scene II, Lines 57-58)

Front 2

“The first sentence of the play suggests Lear is guilty of bias… His suffering is provisionally seen to be related to injustice of his own.”

Back 2

LC Knights (CC)

Front 3

“Dearer than eyesight”

Back 3

Gonerill, (Act I Scene I, Line 51)

Front 4

“Of that self-mettle as my sister…on she comes too short”

Back 4

Regan, (Act I Scene I, Lines 65-67)

Front 5

“Nothing, my lord”

Back 5

Cordelia, (Act I Scene I, Line 82)

Front 6

“See better, Lear, and let me still remain the true blank of thine eye”

Back 6

Kent, (Act I Scene I, Lines 152-153)

Front 7

“The rage of the King confirms that he cannot be temperate in the absence of ceremony; the love he seeks is not the sort that can be offered in formal or subservient expressions, and he therefore rejects the love of Cordelia and Kent.”

Back 7

Frank Kermode (CC)

Front 8

“’Tis the infirmity of his age… such unconstant starts are we like to have from him as this of Kent’s banishment.”

Back 8

Regan, (Act I Scene I, Lines 284-291)

Front 9

“What need you five and twenty? Ten? or five?”

Back 9

Gonerill, (Act II Scene IV, Lines 253-254)

Front 10

“What need one?”

Back 10

Regan, (Act II Scene IV, Line 256)

Front 11

“This heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad.”

Back 11

Lear, (Act II Scene IV, Lines 276-278)

Front 12

“What, has his daughters brought him to this pass?”

Back 12

Lear, (Act III Scene IV, Line 59)

Front 13

“Gonerill with a white beard”

Back 13

Lear, (Act IV Scene V, Line 94)

Front 14

“To say ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to everything that I said ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to was no good divinity.”

Back 14

Lear, (Act IV Scene V, Lines 96-97)

Front 15

“Shakespeare concerns himself with the contrast between the two bodies of the king; one lives by ceremony, administers justice in a furred gown, distinguished by regalia which set him above nature. The other is born naked, subject to disease and pain… Lear is stripped.”

Back 15

Frank Kermode (CC)

Front 16

“Contending with the fretful elements”

Back 16

The Gentlemen, (Act III Scene I, Line 4)

Front 17

“Crowned with rank fumitory and furrow weeds”

Back 17

Cordelia, (Act IV Scene III, Line 3)

Front 18

“We two alone will sing like birds i’th’cage.”

Back 18

Lear, (Act V Scene III, Line 9)

Front 19

“Lend me a looking-glass; If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, why then she lives”

Back 19

Lear, (Act V Scene III, Lines 235-237)

Front 20

“Fortune, good night, smile once more: turn thy wheel.”

Back 20

Kent, (Act II Scene III, Lines 155-156)

Front 21

“The wheel is come full circle: I am here.”

Back 21

Edmond, (Act V Scene III, Line 164)

Front 22

"The play is a microcosm of the human race"

Back 22

LC Knights (CC)

Front 23

“As mad as the vexed sea.. bring him to our eye”

Back 23

Cordelia, (Act 4, Scene 3, Lines 2-8)

Front 24

“Hang him instantly"

Back 24

Regan, (Act III Scene VII, Line 4)

Front 25

“Pluck out his eyes”

Back 25

Gonerill, (Act III Scene VII, Line 5)

Front 26

“Thou call’st on him that hates thee. It was he that made the overture of thy treason to us,”

Back 26

Regan, (Act III Scene VII, Line 87-88)

Front 27

“Because I would not see thy cruel nails pluck out his poor old eyes,”

Back 27

Gloucester, (Act III Scene VII, Line 55-56)

Front 28

“Drive towards Dover, friend, where thou shalt meet both welcome and protection”

Back 28

Gloucester, (Act III, Scene VI, Lines 47-48)

Front 29

“The extrusion of Gloucester’s eyes… seems an act too horrid to be endured in dramatic exhibition, and such as must always compel the mind to relieve it’s distress by incredulity.”

Back 29

Dr Johnson (CC)

Front 30

“(The gouging of Gloucester's eyes) restores the mood of despair and horror. There is something appalling about the thought of an author who will submit his characters and his audiences to such a test”

Back 30

Frank Kermode (CC)

Front 31

“These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects”

Back 31

Gloucester, (Act I, Scene II, Lines 91-93)

Front 32

“Struck by the lack of justice in the play. For him, Gloucester’s remark "As flies to wanton boys are we to th’gods; / They kill us for their sport” is the keynote of the play.”

Back 32

Richard Swinburne (CC)

Front 33

"Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound."

Back 33

Edmond (Act I Scene II, Lines 1-2)

Front 34

"I grow; I prosper. Now, gods, stand up for bastards!"

Back 34

Edmond, (Act I Scene II, Lines 21-22)

Front 35

"Let not women’s weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags!"

Back 35

Lear, (Act 2 Scene IV, Lines 270-271)

Front 36

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport."

Back 36

Gloucester, (Act IV Scene I, Lines 36-37)

Front 37

"Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever! I know when one is dead, and when one lives; She’s dead as earth."

Back 37

Lear (Act V Scene III, Lines 231-234)

Front 38

"When the mind's free, the body's delicate: the tempest in my mind doth from my senses take all feeling else save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!"

Back 38

Lear, (Act III Scene IV, Lines 11-14)

Front 39

"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 young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long."

Back 39

Edmond, (Act V Scene III, Lines 297-300)

Front 40

"Exposure is the very essence of King Lear."

Back 40

LC Knights (CC)

Front 41

"(The last act) shatters the foundations of faith itself... the play is not 'a drama of meaningful suffering and redemption, within a just universe ruled by providential higher powers' and that its ironical structure is just calculated to destroy faith in both poetic justice and divine justice."

Back 41

William R Elton (CC)

Front 42

"The subject of the play is renunciation... only the wilfully blind can fail to understand what Shakespeare is saying."

Back 42

Leo Tolstoy (CC)

Front 43

"Suffering has to be protracted and intensified, as it were, without end."

Back 43

Frank Kermode (CC)

Front 44

"This is the craftiest as well as the most tremendous of Shakespeare's tragedies."

Back 44

Frank Kermode (CC)

Front 45

"Lear's final discovery is of his need for Cordelia's love."

Back 45

LC Knights