king lear essay questions and answers

by William Shakespeare

King lear essay questions.

Who is the protagonist of King Lear ? How do you know?

Like many of Shakespeare's plays, the distinction between protagonists, antagonists, and neutral characters is often blurred in King Lear . In many ways, Lear himself can be considered an antagonist, as he catalyzes the dissolution of his own kingdom when he disinherits Cordelia. But Lear is also a type of protagonist, as his daughters Goneril and Regan in turn strip him of his power and make Lear a more sympathetic character. In this way, there is no clear protagonist in the play, and audiences are forced to reckon with the question of who, ultimately, is to blame for Lear's demise.

What role does age play in the development of the narrative?

Age is an important motif in King Lear , most notably because Lear is an older king who is attempting to safeguard his kingdom by leaving it in the hands of his three daughters. However, Lear's age is something that he does not necessarily take seriously until it is too late: he remains convinced that he is still an effective and powerful ruler even after disinheriting Cordelia, a sense of denial that makes him vulnerable to the greed of Goneril and Regan. Ironically, only after Lear has descended into a near-mad state and only after his demise is all but guaranteed does he come to recognize himself as a feeble and weak old man.

What significance does Lear's fool have in the play?

The fool in King Lear is, ironically, likely the wisest and most knowledgable character in the play. He is frequently warning Lear about the consequences of his decisions, and often speaks harsh truths masked as entertaining half-riddles so as not to overstep his social role. Furthermore, the fool serves as a type of foil for Lear himself, as Lear more often ignores or ridicules his fool instead of taking his cautions seriously, thereby highlighting Lear's own lack of self-knowledge and foresight.

How might you explain Cordelia's response to Lear's test of love at the beginning of the play?

Unlike Goneril and Regan, Cordelia refuses to appeal to Lear's vanity when expressing her love for him, even if it means losing her inheritance. Goneril and Regan both deliver hyperbolic but disingenuous speeches about their love for their father, and when Lear asks Coredlia to do the same, she remains silent. Cordelia's response is puzzling, but ultimately emphasizes her ability to distinguish between unconditional love and false love expressed for the sake of benefiting from it. Cordelia's silence is a testament to her love for her father over her desire for property, as she likely knows what the consequences of her actions will be.

Why does Cornwall blind Gloucester?

Though King Lear is not Shakespeare's bloodiest play (that title belongs to Titus Andronicus ), the blinding of Gloucester is one of the cruelest and most violent scenes the bard ever wrote. Technically, Cornwall blinds Gloucester because Gloucester may have committed treason by sending Lear to Cordelia (who, after her exile, is now considered a foreign invader). However, Cornwall's behavior is more intimately attached to his anger and penchant for violence than his commitment to justice. The act is a testament to the play's interest in portraying the world as a relentlessly cruel and endlessly bleak place.

King Lear Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for King Lear is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

"Themes of King Lear are skilfully presented through imagery and symbolism"

King Lear is rife with animal imagery, as the play is known for interrogating whether mankind is anything "more" than animal after all. Most often, animal imagery appears in the form of savage or carnivorous beasts, usually associated with Goneril...

A tragic hero moves the reader to pity,since his misfortune is greater than he deserves,and also creates fear,since his tragedy might easily befall one of us.To what extent does Lear fit the definition of a tragic hero?

Check this out:

http://bailieborocslibrary.weebly.com/blog/lear-develops-more-as-a-tragic-hero-than-gloucester-discuss

Edmund's "Up With Bastards" soliloquy in King Lear

The repetition makes Edmund sound harsh and angry.

Study Guide for King Lear

King Lear study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About King Lear
• King Lear Summary
• King Lear Video
• Character List

Essays for King Lear

King Lear literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of King Lear.

• The Heroines of Crime and Punishment, King Lear, and To the Lighthouse
• Folly of the Fool
• Sight and Consciousness: An Interpretive Study in King Lear
• An Examination of the Inverse Tropes of Sight and Blindness in King Lear
• Gender, Power, and Economics in King Lear

Lesson Plan for King Lear

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to King Lear
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• King Lear Bibliography

E-Text of King Lear

King Lear E-Text contains the full text of King Lear

• Persons Represented

Wikipedia Entries for King Lear

• Introduction
• Date and text

• Junior Cert
• Elizabeth Bishop
• Emily Dickinson
• Seamus Heaney
• Thomas Kinsella
• Derek Mahon
• All 2014 guides on CD
• Sylvia Plath
• Eavan Boland (LC 2012)
• Patrick Kavanagh (LC 2012)
• Adrienne Rich (LC 2013)
• Gerard Manley Hopkins (LC 2013)
• Cancelled Order
• Thank You for your order

King Lear questions

First of all let’s look at the broad categories questions usually fall into:

CHARACTER THEME OPEN STYLE

You may be asked to discuss the following when it comes to characters:

• a tragic hero? (does he recognise his flaws and gain self-knowledge?)
• his nobility (is he a good man? / strengths & weaknesses / virtues & flaws)
• his relationship with his daughters & treatment of / by them
• the extent to which he is responsible for the tragedy which occurs
• our level of sympathy for him

Gloucester:

• his nobility / is he a good man? / strengths and weaknesses / virtues and flaws
• his relationship with his sons & treatment of / by them
• his dramatic function in the play

Lear & Gloucester:

• how and why their stories mirror each other
• the extent to which they bring about their own downfall
• our level of sympathy for them
• too good to be true or a believable character?
• virtues and flaws / our level of sympathy for her
• dramatic function in the play?

Goneril and Regan:

• treatment of their father
• extent to which they present a very negative view of women
• an admirable villain? or a sociopath?

Edmund and Edgar:

• contrast in their characters and personalities

Kent and The Fool

• dramatic function and believability

All characters:

• contrast the extremes of good and evil presented in the characters in the play
• the play is very pessimistic about human nature
• the play is very pessimistic about human relationships / family / parent – child dynamics

The major themes in the play are:

• Loyalty & Betrayal

Appearance vs Reality (Deception/Manipulation)

Good and Evil

Forgiveness

For each theme – no matter what the wording – ask yourself

WHO does this theme apply to? HOW / WHY does this character have to deal with this issue? Do they CHANGE over the course of the play? Are there any SCENES which highlight this theme specifically? What are our FINAL IMPRESSIONS of this issue?

OPEN QUESTIONS:

• Relevance to a modern audience
• Pessimistic play?

STYLE QUESTIONS:

• Language & Imagery
• Dramatic Irony
• Compelling Drama – scene or scenes

SAMPLE QUESTIONS

In each case you are given a statement which you can fully agree with, partially agree with or completely disagree with. In the most recent Chief Examiner’s Report, students were advised to avoid taking an overly simplistic approach (“I agree 100% that…”). It’s understandable that this would be your first instinct under exam conditions, but remember that a single sentence rarely sums up accurately the complexity and nuance of an entire play. Yes, you’ll look for evidence that supports the statement, but you’ll also need to display an awareness that different phases in the play contain different truths. Your attitude to a character, theme, relationship in the play will change and morph as the play unfolds and the plot develops…

“ King Lear is a man more sinned against than sinning ” – Discuss

“ Lear is a ‘foolish fond old man’ who deserves everything he gets ” – Discuss

“ Lear embarks on a harrowing journey through suffering to self-knowledge. At the end of the play he is a better and wiser man “

“ The play King Lear is a realistic tragedy that depicts the tragic consequences of one man’s folly “

“ King Lear is not a tragic hero, but rather a victim of circumstances “

“Gloucester is a weak and gullible man, but at heart, a decent one”

“Gloucester serves an important dramatic function in making Lear’s circumstances more credible”

“Discuss the dramatic significance of the Gloucester story in the play King Lear”

Lear and Gloucester

“Neither Lear nor Gloucester are deserving of the love and service they receive from their followers”

“Cordelia shares with her father the faults of pride and obstinacy”

“Cordelia’s dramatic function in the play is twofold: her wisdom highlights her father’s foolishness; her goodness  highlights her sisters’ malevolence” 

Goneril and Regan

“Lear’s evil daughters allow Shakespeare to present a very negative view of women in the play”

“Edmund is a sociopath: a charming liar, incapable of remorse, who views men and women merely as obstacles or aids to his ambition”

“Edmund is an admirable villain. At the beginning of the play he has nothing; by the end he is almost King”

Edmund and Edgar

“Gloucester’s sons represent the very best and the very worst in human nature”

Minor characters: Kent & The Fool

“The Fool serves as Lear’s conscience in the play. When he disappears, it is because Lear no longer needs him”

“The fool is an unnecessary distraction in the play King Lear”

“Kent is too loyal to be believable as a real human being”

General character questions

“The play King Lear offers characters who represent the very best and the very worst in human nature”

“Shakespeare’s King Lear presents a dark and pessimistic view of humanity”

“Cosmic justice is denied, yet human justice prevails in the play King Lear”

“The relationship between parents and children is unrealistically portrayed in the play King Lear”

Loyalty (&/or Betrayal)

“It is only the loyalty of loved ones that enables Lear and Gloucester to endure their sufferings”

“The theme of blindness – both physical and emotional – is dramatically presented in the play King Lear”

“In King Lear, whilst characters are initially fooled by appearances, they gradually come to see the truth”

“In King Lear, ‘sane’ characters frequently behave in a crazy manner, whilst ‘mad’ characters at times seem perfectly sane”

“Love as a redemptive force is a major theme in the play King Lear”

“ The play King Lear memorably explores the meaning of love “

“King Lear examines the nature of good and evil but neither force emerges triumphant”

“Learning through suffering is central to the play”

“ The importance of self-knowledge and forgiveness is strikingly evident in the play King Lear”

“The play King Lear explores what it means to be a good King”

OPEN QUESTIONS

“The play King Lear offers us one central experience: pessimism”

“Shakespeare’s vision of the world is not entirely pessimistic in the play King Lear”

“King Lear is one of the greatest tragedies ever written”

“Scenes of great suffering and of great tenderness help to make King Lear a very memorable play”

“The two plots of King Lear are closely paralleled in theme, character and action, to great dramatic effect”

“What, if any, relevance, does the play King Lear hold for today’s readers?”

LANGUAGE / STYLE

“King Lear is a play filled with striking images and symbols which heighten our experience of the play”

“Dramatic irony is used to tragic, and occasionally comic effect, in Shakespeare’s King Lear”

“The way characters speak accurately reflects their personality in Shakespeare’s King Lear”

“ King Lear contains many scenes of compelling drama, but the extremity of the cruelty and violence presented prevents the audience from achieving catharsis. Rather than a release, we feel haunted by what we have witnessed “

8 responses to “ King Lear questions ”

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Aspects of tragedy: sample question commentary

This resource explains how a question taken from the sample assessment material addresses the assessment objectives, with some suggestions of how the task might be approached. This explanation is not intended to be an exhaustive list of every point that could be made but the explanation will provide a workable way into the question and the intention is to offer some support for teachers preparing students for the exam.

Paper 1A, Section A

This type of question from Section A of Paper 1: Aspects of tragedy invites students to write about the significance of an extract from Othello or King Lear. One hour is recommended for this question. This is a Closed Book paper and so students will need to know their texts well and be able to refer to them in the examination.

Sample Question

Read the extract below and then answer the question.

Explore the significance of this extract in relation to the tragedy of the play as a whole.

Remember to include in your answer relevant analysis of Shakespeare's dramatic methods.

How the question meets the Assessment Objectives

In this question, as throughout the paper, the assessment objectives are all assessed. The key words and phrases in the question are: explore, significance, tragedy of the play as a whole, analysis and dramatic methods, and these are clearly connected to the assessment objectives. The key word here is 'significance' as it is an invitation to students to target AO2 , 3 , 4 and AO5 , to show what is signified in terms of contexts and interpretations and how those meanings are shaped. AO2 is also set up in the reminder to students to include relevant analysis of Shakespeare's dramatic methods to show how the methods open up meanings about tragedy. AO3 will be addressed through the ways the students show their understanding of both the dramatic and tragic contexts of King Lear, and in the way they will elicit from the extract contextual ideas about when the text was written and how it has been and is received. AO4 will be hit as students will be connecting with the concepts of the tragic genre (and therefore other texts) through the 'aspects' which they are exploring. AO5 will be addressed when students grapple with meanings that arise about tragedy in the extract and in relation to the whole play.   AO1 will be tested though the ways the students organise their writing and express their ideas as they are exploring significance and analysing dramatic methods.

Possible content

It may be helpful for students to begin by briefly establishing an overview of the passage and identifying where it occurs within the play. For example: 'At this stage of the play, Lear has journeyed to Regan and Cornwall's castle, after his acrimonious argument with Goneril. Regan has received news of this from Oswald, and has decided not to be at home when Lear arrives. Kent has been stocked by Regan and Cornwall partly as a snub to Lear. The fool has tried to warn Lear that Regan will be as like Goneril 'as a crab's like an apple'.

The possible content of the mark scheme provides some ideas that students might write about. However, there are clearly many others and if students are reading their texts through the lens of tragedy they will be able to identify many ideas themselves.

Students might explore the following aspects of tragedy:

• Lear's tragic stature
• his loss of control and restraint
• the representations of goodness on stage
• Lear's pride and outrage
• Lear's realisation that Regan and Cornwall have disrespected him in stocking his messenger
• the gloomy castle setting
• the visual sight of Kent in the stocks to show Lear's entrapment
• Lear's anger – his fatal flaw perhaps
• the Fool's cryptic commentary on Lear's decline
• the description of the behaviour of Regan, Cornwall and Goneril which places them as tragic villains
• the references to cruelty and unkindness
• the mention of Lear's future madness
• the Fool's jokes and song which heighten the tragic atmosphere.

Any of these ideas can be linked with other parts of the play, for example Lear's anger here might be connected with his anger in the banishing and disinheriting of Cordelia or of his grotesque curse of Goneril; the Fool's warning shots (a sign of his love for Lear) might be linked with his later attempts to save Lear from madness and his decision to tarry with him on the heath despite the violence of the storm

Significance

Students might develop any of the points mentioned above and suggest what meanings arise from the ideas they select. Comment might be on

• the tragic decline of Lear
• Lear's uncontrollable anger and how this can be interpreted
• the loyalty of Kent and the Fool and views about this
• the 17th-century contextual significance of the Fool to the court
• Lear's inadequacy
• how Lear elicits audience sympathy – or otherwise
• the significance of the location to the tragedy
• the significance of being a host in the 17th-century in relation to the tragedy
• the significance of the family relationships to the tragedy
• 'unkindness' – and the implications of this concept in the 17th-century and to the tragedy
• the treatment of old people from both a 17th-century and a 21st-century perspective
• notions of punishment in the 17th-century and how the stocking of Kent could be viewed now
• Kent as a tragic figure in his own right, his representing honesty (having more man than wit about him), his endorsing the play's pessimism etc

Dramatic methods

Any comment on dramatic method needs to be connected to the task about tragedy.

Students might explore the following dramatic methods:

• setting of the dark location outside the castle
• visual effect of Kent in the stocks and Lear and the Fool's reaction perhaps signifying Lear's entrapment
• irony of first words from Lear, given that the audience know how deliberate Regan's departure has been
• Kent's elevated salutation 'Hail to thee noble master' shows his respect and loyalty to Lear
• the Fool's comic insult reflecting the foolishness of Kent's earlier behaviour when he got himself stocked
• the use of stichomythia showing Kent's determination to tell the truth in comparison to Lear's denial
• the use of emotive language in Kent's long speech reflects his outrage at the treatment of Lear by Regan and Cornwall ('reeking post', Stew'd in his haste', 'poisoned', 'coward cries')
• the matter-of-factness of Kent's listing of the events that led to his being stocked reflects his plainness to which his honour is bound
• the Fool's cryptic lines which foreshadow later events
• the Fool's jokes and songs which heighten the tragic atmosphere, etc.

Students will also have to understand how to use their knowledge to relate to other parts of the play given that this is a Closed Book exam. Although it should be possible to refer to specific parts of the wider tragedy of King Lear and to quote, some comments might be more generalised.

This resource is part of the Aspects of tragedy resource package .

Document URL https://www.aqa.org.uk/resources/english/as-and-a-level/english-literature-b/teach/sample-question-commentary-paper-1a-section-a-king-lear

Last updated 16 Dec 2022

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King Lear Act 1-5: Questions and Answers

• King Lear Act 1-5: Questions…
• What did Lear decide to do?

He decided to give the country to his three daughters.

• Why does Lear ask how much his daughters love him?

In order to decide how to share the country between them.

• What will happen when he gives them the country?

His daughters will rule instead of him.

He will stay with each daughter in turn for a week.

• What did he do in order to decide?

He asked them to say how much they loved him

• What did Goneril say in reply to his question?

She said that she loved him as much as life, and more than anything else.

• How did Lear react toward her answer?

He was pleased and gave her one third of the land.

• What did Regan say in response? / How much did Regan say she loves her father?

She said that she loved her father more than Goneril

• How did Lear feel? What did he give Regan and her husband?

He was very pleased and gave her another third of land.

• What was Lear sure Cordelia would say?

He was sure she would say that she loved him more than her sisters.

• Why didn’t Cordelia say that she loves him more?

Because she didn’t want to compete with her sisters in boasting about her love for her father.

• How was Cordelia’s answer different from the answers her sisters give?

It is honest and realistic.

• What did Cordelia say about her love to her father?

She said that she loved him as much as a daughter should love her father.

• Why was Lear shocked of her answer?

Because he was sure she would say that she loved him more than her sisters.

• What did he ask her to do after her surprising reply?

To think more and give a better answer.

• How did Lear feel after she said that? What did he say?

He was shocked. He said that Cordelia was no longer his daughter.

• What does Lear do as a result of this answer; and why is his action so shocking?

He gives Cordelia’s share to her sisters and said she is no longer his daughter. People are shocked because they know Cordelia loved him.

• What terrible mistake does Lear make as a result of Cordelia’s words?

Saying that she was no longer his daughter. Giving his power to Goneril and Regan.

• Who is the only person who advised Lear?

The Earl of Kent

• What did the Earl of Kent tell Lear about Cordelia?

He told Lear that Cordelia was his favourite daughter and she loved him very much.

• Did Lear listen to Kent’ advise? If not, what did he do?

No, he sent Kent away.

• Why did the Duke of Burgundy refuse to marry Cordelia?

Because she has nothing.

• From what did the sisters warn each other?

They warned each other that there was something wrong with Lear’s mind, and in the future he might turn against them.

• What was Edmund – the illegitimate son of Gloucester- planning to do?

To take his legitimate brother’s place.

• What did Edmund show his father?

A letter which he said had been written by Edgar.

• What was written in the letter Edmund showed to his father?

The letter asked Edmund to help Edgar kill their father.

• What did Edmund tell his half brother Edgar, What did he advise him to do?

That their father was angry with him and advised him to hide from their father.

• How does Edmund turn his father against Edgar? And why?

He persuades his father that Edgar wants to kill him. He does this because he wants to take Edgar’s place and be Gloucester’s only son.

• How does Goneril ask her servant to treat Lear’s men?

Goneril told her servants to be rude and quarrel with them.

• Why did Kent hit Goneril’s servant?

Because he spoke disgracefully to Lear.

• By the end of Act 1 What does Lear realize about Goneril?

He realizes that she does not love him.

• After two weeks of staying with Goneril her servants began to be rude with Lear’s men.
• Kent disguised himself as a poor man.
• The fool joked that Lear had become a fool because he had given away all his power to his daughters.
• .Lear cursed Goneril and wished that if she had a child, that it would torment her.
• Why did Edmund tell Edgar to run away?

According to Edmund, because someone had told their father where he was hiding and that he would be killed. In fact, Edmund wanted Edgar to leave to take his place.

• Why did Edgar pretend to be a mad homeless person?

To hide from his father.

• Why did Edmund cut his arm?

He wanted his father to believe that Edgar has tried to kill him.

• On whom does Regan blame Edgar’s evil plan to kill his father?

She blamed the terrible influence of Lear and his Knights.

• What is Edmund’s evil plan?

To make his father and his brother hate each other.

To make Edgar leave.

To make his father give him what he wanted to give Edgar.

• Why did Lear send a letter to Regan? What did he tell her in that letter?

He wanted her to get ready because he was coming to stay at her house with all his knights.

• What did Goneril complain about in her letter to Regan?

She complained about their father and warned her sister that his men were noisy and expensive.

• Why did Regan order her men to make Kent a prisoner?

Because he hit Goneril’s servant Oswald.

• Why did Goneril come to Regan?

To tell her sister not to look after Lear.

• What did Regan tell ask father to do?

Go home with Goneril.

Send away fifty of his men.

Ask Goneril to forgive him for being angry and thinking too much of himself.

• What did Lear remind Regan and Goneril of?

He reminded her that he had given her half of his land.

• Why did Lear say Goneril loves him twice as much as Regan?

Because she will allow him to keep twice as many men.

• What did Lear come to realize?

His two elder daughters felt no love or kindness to him.

Giving everything had been a terrible mistake.

He had lost all his power

• Why did Lear go out in the storm? / Why didn’t Lear accept his daughters offer of shelter?

Because he felt he couldn’t stay with either daughters.

• Who went out in the storm with Lear?

Kent and the Fool

• Why does the Earl of Gloucester feel sorry for king Lear?

Because he is out in the storm with no shelter and nowhere to go.

• Edgar planned his Escape by pretending to be mad and homeless
• Regan blames Lear and his knights for Edgar’s evil to kill his father
• Goneril warned her sister that Lear’s men are noisy and expensive
• Lear wanted to see his daughter and her husband to ask about Kent but he was told that they were too tired to see him.
• Lear felt that he could not stay with either daughter so he went out into the storm
• Lear rejected the shelter of his two daughters and went out into a storm
• Goneril and Regan said that if their father was suffering , he himself was the one to blame.

” O madam, my old heart is cracked, it’s cracked”

• Who said this? To whom? Gloucester to Regan
• What does the speaker mean / Why is the speaker’s heart cracked?

His heart is cracked because his son wants to kill him.

• Whom does the person spoken to blame? / How does the person spoken to respond?

She blames Lear and his knights

• Cracked means: a- happy b- broken c- angry
• What did Kent do when he found out that Cordelia and the king of France come to England?
• He sent Cordelia a letter to explain what had happened.
• He went looking for Lear.
• Why was Cordelia and her husband coming to England? /What was their plan?

To rescue Lear from his cruel daughters.

• Why do you think Lear went mad?

Because his daughters have treated him badly that his mind can not bear his feelings

of anger and sorrow.

• Where did Kent and Lear take shelter? Who did they find there?

They took shelter in a small dirty hut. They found Edgar.

• What did Lear feel for the first time?

He felt sorry for people who had no houses and only old, thin clothes to wear.

• What did Lear believe the reason for Tom’s madness?

He believed that Tom became mad because he had given everything to his daughters.

• What did Gloucester tell Edmund about Albany and Cornwall?

That they were quarrelling with each other.

• Why did Gloucester feel upset and take Lear’s side against Regan, Goneril and

their husbands?

Because Regan and Cornwall had stopped him from helping Lear or even talking about him.

• What did Gloucester do when he heard about Regan and Cornwall’s plan to kill Lear?

He warned Kent to take the king to Dover.

• Why did Gloucester warn Kent to take the king to Dover?

Because the king would be safe with Cordelia and France.

• How does Edmund betray his father?

He told Cornwall that his father took Lear’s side.

• What happened when one of the servants attacked Cornwall?

Cornwall killed the servant and he himself was hurt.

• Why did Cornwall blind the Earl of Gloucester?

Because Gloucester took Lear’s side.

• What did Regan order to do with Gloucester after blinding him?

She ordered him to be thrown out of his own castle into the storm.

• Lear refuses to go back to the castle with Gloucester because he doesn’t want to leave ‘Poor Tom’
• Edmund quickly leaves his father castle after betraying him to Cornwall because he doesn’t want to be blamed for not protecting his father.
• Regan and her husband decide to blind the Earl of Gloucester because he tried to help Lear against their order.
• The Duke of Cornwall’s servant suddenly attacks him because he cannot bear the Duke’s cruelty to Gloucester.
• Lear’s sorrow and anger had become too great for him to bear so he went mad.
• Gloucester decided to take Lear’s side because he feels sorry for him because he is out in the storm with no shelter.

D- Quotation: Read the following quotation then answer the questions:

” Blow winds and crack your cheeks”

• When did Lear say this?

When he was in the storm

• Why did he go out in the storm?

Because his daughters refused to give shelter to him and his knights

• Why does he say this?

He feels that the violence of the wind and the rain all around him was like the violence of his own feelings.

• Why did Gloucester decide to jump off the cliff?

Because he is so deeply unhappy at what he has done to Edgar and what he has suffered at

the hands of Cornwall.

• Why did Gloucester ask Edgar to take him to Dover?

Because he wanted to throw himself from high cliffs and end his unhappy life.

• What news about Cornwall did the messenger bring?

That the Duke of Cornwall had died after the servant’s attack during the blinding of

Gloucester.

• Why did the Duke of Cornwall die?

Because one of his servants attacked him during the blinding of Gloucester.

• Why was Goneril worried about the news of Cornwall’s death?

Because it meant that her sister Regan became a widow and might marry Edmund.

• Why didn’t Lear go to see Cordelia in Dover?

Because he felt ashamed of the way he had behaved towards her.

• How did Lear explain his own bad luck?

He said that the poor and powerless are always the ones who are punished for their crimes,

while the rich and powerful do the same things and not punished.

• What was the first sign that Lear’s madness was beginning to disappear?

He recognized Gloucester.

• Why did Goneril write a letter to Edmund? What did Goneril ask Edgar to do?

She told him to kill her husband Albany so that he could marry her.

• How does Lear’s life change for the better in Act 4?

He is helped to reach safety with the King of France’s army. He meets Cordelia again, and realises that she has forgiven him. He begins to recover from his madness.

• While Gloucester was talking about ‘ poor Tom” Edgar could hardly speak because of his sorrow of seeing his father blinded.
• After falling in love with Edmund, Goneril now despised her husband as a weak person.
• The Duke of Albany feels his wife Goneril is evil because she has helped Regan and Cornwall to make Lear go mad and to blind Gloucester.
• Albany decided to punish Edmund because he betrayed his father to Cornwall’s cruelty.
• When Gloucester and Edgar met Lear in Dover he was covered in wild flowers and out of his mind.
• Edgar leads his father to the middle of a field and not to the high cliff as his father wants / requests / believes / thinks.
• King Lear expects Cordelia to be angry with him because he has behaved very badly towards her.
• Goneril had written a letter to Edmund telling him to kill her husband because her husband, Albany, has turned against her, and she wants to marry Edmund.
• Goneril learned that The Duke of Cornwall died as a result of his servant’s attack during the blinding of Gloucester.

A- ”You are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face.”

– Why did the Duke of Albany say this to his wife Goneril?

because she has helped Regan and Cornwall to make Lear go mad and to blind Gloucester.

B- ” He reminded me of my poor son Edgar”

– Who said this? When did he say that?

Gloucester. When he met Edgar

C- ” How I wish I could hold him in my arms again”

1- Who is he talking to? Gloucester is talking to himself

2- To whom does ” him” refer? Edgar

Who might have said or thought the following? Explain each situation in turn.

• “I can’t bear to see my poor father like this. How could anyone have hurt him like this and

treated him so cruelly?”

Edgar or Cordelia. Edgar found his father, Gloucester, blinded by Cornwall.

Later, Cordelia found her father driven mad by his daughters’ cruelty.

• “Am I finally going mad or am I just confused? How could I have fallen so far and still be alive?”

Gloucester. He thought he had jumped off a cliff and should be dead. In fact, he had fallen only a short distance.

• ” I’ve got to think quickly. How am I going to stop her from getting him now that her husband is dead?”

Answer :- Goneril. She wanted Edmund. When Regan’s husband died, Goneril worried that Regan might get Edmund.

• “What? I don’t believe this! It means that that terrible woman is trying to get my brother to kill her husband. This is really, really bad!”

Answer :- Edgar. Edgar found a letter in which Goneril told Edmund to kill Goneril’s husband, Albany.

• ” At last! My father! But has he really gone completely mad? I’ll ask my doctor to give him some medicine that may perhaps help him.”

Answer:- Cordelia. When Cordelia found Lear, her doctor gave him some medicine.

Because she has helped Regan and Cornwall to make Lear go mad and to blind Gloucester.

** Who might have said or thought the following? Explain each situation in turn.

• “I can’t bear to see my poor father like this. How could anyone have hurt him like this and treated him so cruelly?”
• Why were Goneril and Regan jealous of each other?

Because each knew that the other wanted to marry Edmund, and each wanted to make sure that she herself would win him.

• How did Albany know about Goneril’s plan to kill him?

Edgar gave a letter to Albany. The letter is from Goneril to Edmund.

• What did Edgar do revenge for his father?

By giving Goneril’s message where she asks Edmund to kill Albany and marry her, to her husband Albany.

• Why and where did Edgar hide his father?

Edgar hid his father for safety under a tree.

• Who lead the English army? Who won the battle?

Edmund led the English army and he won.

• What happened to Lear and Cordelia after the battle?

They were captured and put in prison.

• What did Edmund order his soldiers to do with Cordelia and Lear in the letter?

To kill them secretly.

• Why did Albany ask Edmund to let him look after Lear and Cordelia?

Because he understood the danger that Lear and Cordelia may be killed.

• What did the two sisters, Regan and Goneril, quarrel about?

They quarreled about Edmund.

• Why did Regan collapse?

Because Goneril had poisoned her.

• Why did Goneril poison Regan?

She is jealous and she is afraid that Edmund will marry Regan.

• How did Gloucester die? By a heart attack.
• What makes Goneril desperate?

Her husband knew about Edmund and her.

• Why did Albany arrest Edmund?

He wants to bring Edmund to justice for his treason.

• Who offered to prove Edmund was a traitor and fight him?
• What did Goneril do when she realized her husband knew about Edmund and her?

She ran away and killed herself with a knife in the heart.

• Why was Lear not afraid of imprisonment? What makes Lear happy to go to prison?

He will be with Cordelia.

• What do you think makes Edmund try to save the lives of Lear and Cordelia at the last minute?

He wants to do something good before he dies.

• How many of the main characters die by the end, and how does each one die?

Seven. Cordelia is killed in prison and Lear dies of a broken heart. Regan is poisoned by Goneril, and Goneril kills herself. Regan’s husband, Cornwall, dies from the servant’s sword attack. Gloucester has a heart attack, and Edmund is killed by his brother.

• How are we given hope of a happy ending towards the end of Act 5?

Edmund tells Albany that there may be time to save Lear and Cordelia from death.

• How is that hope destroyed at the end?

It is too late to save Cordelia. She is killed, and Lear died of a broken heart.

• Albany knew that his wife planned to kill him and marry his killer .
• The Duke of Albany feel that his wife is evil as she wanted to kill him
• Goneril wants Edmund to murder her husband because she cannot marry Edmund while her husband is still alive.
• Lear was not afraid of imprisonment as he will be with Cordelia.
• Before his father’s death, Edgar told him that he was his son
• Edmund must face trial by combat.
• The Duke of Albany arrests Edmund because he wants to bring Edmund to justice for his treason.
• The two brothers fought and Edgar won
• Edmund told Albany that he had ordered the soldiers to kill Lear and Cordelia
• Edgar left the castle as fast as possible in order to save Lear and Cordelia.

Related Posts

• King Lear Plot Summary (Act I-III)
• Blindness And Insight In King Lear
• King Lear: Character Analysis Act 1 and 2
• King Lear Summary
• Madness in King Lear: Act 4

Author:  William Anderson (Schoolworkhelper Editorial Team)

Tutor and Freelance Writer. Science Teacher and Lover of Essays. Article last reviewed: 2022 | St. Rosemary Institution © 2010-2024 | Creative Commons 4.0

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King Lear Questions & Answers

Hi Everyone!! This article will share King Lear Questions & Answers. In my previous posts, I have shared the questions and answers of Michelangelo , The New House and The Enchanted Pool so, you can check these posts as well.

King Lear Questions & Answers

Question 1: choose the correct option:, (a) king lear wanted to divide his kingdom into ________parts..

i. two ii. three iii. four

(b) Who was the youngest daughter of King Lear?

i. Cordelia ii. Regan iii. Goneril

(c) Who requested the King to change his mind?

i. the Duke of Alban ii. the Earl of Kent iii. the Duke of Burgundy

(d) Why did the King declare that Cordelia is no longer her daughter?

i. because she never obeyed her father ii. because the King thought that she didn’t love him enough iii. because she was greedy and wanted to have the entire property of her father.

Question 2: Read and answer the questions:

(a) who said these words and to whom.

Answer: Cordelia said these words to King Lear.

(b) Explain the meaning of ‘bond’ in this line.

Answer: Bond means the relationship between the father and daughter.

(c) What does the King advise her after listening to these words?

Answer: The King advised her to speak more.

Question 3: Read and answer the questions:

(a) who says this and to whom.

Answer: Goneril says this to her father, King Lear.

(b) Why does the speaker say this?

Answer: Goneril decides to use these flattering words because Lear asked her how much she loves him and the portion of the kingdom that she was to get from Lear depended on whether he liked her reply or not.

(c) What does the speaker mean by ‘a love that makes breath poor’?

Answer: ‘A love that makes breath poor’ refers to Goneril’s love for her father which is so great that it makes it difficult for her to breathe.

Question 4: Read and answer the questions:

(a) who speaks the first line.

Answer: Cordelia speaks the first line.

(b) Why does she respond that way?

Answer: Cordelia responded that way because her love for her father was greater than the love of her two elder sisters which could not be explained through words.

(c) What happens as a result of this response?

Answer: As a result of this response, Lear gets disappointed and denounces her and gives no portion of his kingdom to her.

Question 5: Read and answer the questions:

(a) who is referred to as a ‘dragon’ and why is he called that.

Answer: King Lear is referred to as a ‘dragon’ here. Lear is called that because he is upset with Cordelia’s reply and is angry much like a dragon that breathes fire when it is angry.

(b) Why is the ‘dragon’ angry?

Answer: The ‘dragon’ is angry because he had expected to hear better words from his most favourite daughter, Cordelia.

(c) What does the speaker finally declare about the person spoken to?

Answer: Lear finally declares that he denounces Cordelia as his daughter and gives the remaining portion of his kingdom to his two daughters.

Question 6: Read and answer the questions:

(a) who said these words.

Answer: The Earl of Kent said these words.

(b) How much time did he get to leave the Kingdom?

Answer: He got ten days to leave the kingdom.

(c) What advice did he give to the King’s daughters?

Answer: He advised the King’s daughters to act according to what they had said.

Question 7: Read and answer the questions:

(a) who does the word, ‘they’ refer to.

Answer: ‘They’ refer to the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy.

(b) When did the King call ‘them’?

Answer: After Kent was banished, the King called them.

(c) Who agreed to marry Cordelia?

Answer: The King of France agreed to marry Cordelia.

Question 8: Explain briefly why King Lear had called family together in the first scene?

Answer: King Lear had called his family together in the first scene to aware them that he had divided his kingdom into three parts and wanted to give them to his daughters to avoid quarrel among them.

Question 9: How did Goneril describe her love for her father?

Answer: Goneril told her father that she loved him as much as any daughter loved her father. She told her love for her father was so great that it made her breathless and unable to speak.

Question 10: Explain the line, “Come not between the dragon and his wrath.”

Answer: Kent was defending Cordelia. King Lear advised him not to come between him and his daughter. Here, the King was compared with dragon.

Question 11: What arguments did Kent give to try and convince the King about his mistake?

Answer: The Earl of Kent tried to explain Cordelia’s love to King Lear. Kent asked Lear to change his decision, declaring that Cordelia loved him the most.

Question 12: What did Kent tell the King in anger?

Answer: Kent declared that Lear must have gone mad to believe in the flattering words of his other two daughters. So, these were King Lear Questions & Answers.

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Thesis Theater: Trevor Brierly, "Tolkien's Vision of Faërie in 'Smith of Wooton Major'‪"‬ Signum Symposia

This recording from May 7, 2024. Signum University Graduate School presents Thesis Theater with Trevor Brierly on Tuesday, May 7, 2024 at 2pm ET, on the subject of Tolkien's "Vision of Faërie" in "Smith of Wootton Major." Tolkien's story "Smith of Wootton Major", written in 1965, and an accompanying essay written at the same time, provide a rich understanding of Tolkien's "Vision of Faërie" that goes significantly beyond earlier critical works such "On Fairy-stories" and "Mythopoeia". A close reading and analysis approach to "Smith" and the essay indicate that Tolkien saw Faërie as necessary, universal, beneficent and transformative to humanity. In order to fully appreciate what "Smith" has to say about Faërie, it must be understood that "Smith" is neither an allegory nor primarily autobiographical and should be seen as a "fairy-story", a story about a human journeying in the Faërie realm. The essay adds to our understanding of Faërie as it tells a parallel story concerning Faërie intervening in Wootton Major, to restore contact with the enchantment of Faërie that is being lost. "Smith" and the essay together are important for understanding Tolkien's increasingly sophisticated and elevated view of Faërie, which he claimed was "as necessary for the health and complete functioning of the Human as is sunlight for physical life." About the Presenter: N. Trevor Brierly is a software engineer with more than 25 years of experience in the industry. He has a background in literature with an MLIS from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in English from George Mason University. His research interests include worldbuilding in speculative fiction, Tolkien, Frank Herbert, Le Guin, Shakespeare, and the Renaissance. He has presented working papers on “Lord of the Rings”, “Dune”, “King Lear”, worldbuilding, and other topics. He has published an essay “Worldbuilding Design Patterns in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien” in “Sub-creating Arda” (Walking Tree Publishers, 2019) and is co-editor of “Discovering Dune” from McFarland Books (2022). He lives in Northern Virginia and enjoys books, jazz, tea and cats. About Signum Thesis Theaters Each of our master’s students writes a thesis at the end of their degree program, exploring a topic of their choice. The Thesis Theater is their opportunity to present their research to a general audience, and answer questions. All are welcome to attend! Registration is open for the Summer 2024 semester until May 10th! To view our upcoming courses: https://signumuniversity.org/degree-p.... Learn about Signum University’s mission, leadership and more: https://signumuniversity.org/about/. Want to enjoy Signum’s educational offerings? Start here! https://signumuniversity.org/non-degr.... Support Signum Symposia

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June 6, 2024

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June 6, 2024 issue

William Shakespeare with characters from his tragedies; illustration by John Broadley

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This essay appears, in somewhat different form, as the introduction to Shakespeare Is Hard, But So Is Life (Head of Zeus, 2024).

In his best-selling biography of Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson tries to explain how a man who attempts such “epic feats” can also be “an asshole.” He finds himself seeking help from William Shakespeare: “As Shakespeare teaches us, all heroes have flaws, some tragic, some conquered, and those we cast as villains can be complex.” How better to fill the gap between epic and asshole than with the lesson Shakespeare was apparently trying to teach us when he wrote Hamlet and King Lear ? The only other time the word “tragic” appears in Isaacson’s book is when Musk is regretting his choice of outfit for an audience with the pope: “My suit is tragic.” When tragedy encompasses such trivialities, it’s not so hard to believe that those great plays really are trying to teach us something as trite as the possibility that humans are complex or that powerful people may have some serious defects. Who knew?

Isaacson is not unusual in making such statements about what Shakespeare’s tragedies mean: they exist to instruct us, and their main lesson is that everything would be OK if only we could “conquer” our shortcomings. We can read in The Guardian , of the Harry Potter novels, that “some of the most admirable adult characters, as in Shakespeare, are also revealed to have a tragic flaw that causes them to hesitate to act, to make foolish errors of judgment, to lie, or even to commit murder.” The New York Times informs us that

with Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus or Shakespeare’s Hamlet, their tragic flaws, enacted, became the definition of tragedy. It may be angst (Hamlet), or hubris (Faustus), but it’s there and we know, watching, that the ruinous end will be of their own making.

The former British prime minister Boris Johnson, who has supposedly been writing a book about Shakespeare, and who compared himself in the dying days of his benighted regime to Othello beset by malign Iago, claims that “it is the essence of all tragic literature that the hero should be conspicuous, that he should swagger around and that some flaw should lead to a catastrophic reversal and collapse.”

Also in The New York Times Stephen Marche tells us that

we go to tragedy to watch a man be destroyed. Macbeth must be destroyed for his lust for power, Othello for his jealousy, Antony for his passion, Lear for the incompleteness of his renunciation. They are tragic precisely because their flaws are all too human.

In a review of a biography of Andrew Jackson, the president is called a “‘Shakespearean tragic hero,’ inflexible as Coriolanus, whose tragic flaw was ‘his incessant pursuit of virtue in the political realm.’” Maureen Dowd notes that Barack Obama “has read and reread Shakespeare’s tragedies” and “does not want his fatal flaw to be that he compromises so much that his ideals get blurred out of recognition.”

This stuff is part of the language. Like most clichés, it perpetuates assumptions, not just about Shakespeare but about the world: your ruinous end is of your own making. Tragedies happen not because human beings are dragged between large historical, social, and political forces that are wrenching them in opposite directions, but because individuals are branded from birth with one or another variant of original sin. In seeking to understand ourselves, we can forget the epic and think of the assholes—who receive satisfyingly just deserts. As Johnson put it in 2011, Shakespeare “was, frankly, the poet of the established order” because the troublemakers in his plays “get their comeuppance.” The tragically flawed heroes meet the gory deaths their flaws deserve. Alongside “many insights into the human heart,” Johnson tells us, Shakespeare provides “such ingenious defences for keeping things as they are, and keeping the ruling party in power.”

The most obvious problem with all that is, even if it were true, it would be crushingly dull. Moral tales in which people do bad things because they have wicked instincts and then get their comeuppance are ten a penny. The clichés shrink Shakespeare to the level of Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest , the author of a three-volume novel of “more than usually revolting sentimentality” who explains that in her book “the good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” If the definition of tragedy lies in the tragic flaw of the protagonist, we are reduced to a monotonous game of matching the shortcoming to the character: Hamlet = angst; Macbeth = ambition; Othello = jealousy; Lear = reckless vanity.

Fortunately none of this bears even a passing resemblance to the experience of seeing or reading a Shakespeare play. It is terrifyingly clear to us as we encounter these dramas that we are not in a moral universe of comeuppances and rewarded virtue. “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods:/They kill us for their sport,” says Gloucester in King Lear . Macduff’s children are slaughtered. Ophelia is driven to drown herself. At the end of Othello , there are two innocent corpses on the stage: Desdemona’s and Emilia’s. Lear’s terrible question over the dead body of Cordelia echoes through these tragedies: “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,/And thou no breath at all?” Much of the time in Shakespeare, there is no answer.

There is nothing in Cordelia’s or Ophelia’s or Desdemona’s or Emilia’s characters that has led them to extinction. It is simply that in this cruel world, while the bad may indeed end unhappily, so may the good. At the end of King Lear , we have the rather pitiful Albany doing a Miss Prism act: “All friends shall/Taste the wages of their virtue and all foes/The cup of their deservings.” This assurance of just deserts is immediately undercut by one of the most devastating images of absurd injustice, Lear raging at a universe in which his blameless daughter will not take another breath, in this world or the next: “Never, never, never, never, never!”

If the tragedies are supposed to show us the playing out of the innate flaws of their protagonists, they are not very good . Does anyone ever come out of the theater thinking that if only Hamlet had been less angsty, nothing would have been rotten in the state of Denmark? If Macbeth is already consumed by a lust for power, why does his wife have to goad him into killing Duncan? If Othello has an innate instinct for psychotic jealousy, why does Iago have to stage such elaborate plots to get him to believe that Desdemona is cheating on him? Lear may indeed be old and foolish, but he was surely not always thus—the shock of his decision at the beginning of the play to divest himself of the kingdom stems from his having ruled successfully for a very long time. (In the traditional story that Shakespeare adapted and that his audience would have known, Lear had reigned for sixty years.)

As for Shakespeare being “the poet of the established order,” it is certainly true that he was extremely adept in his navigation of a treacherous political landscape in which his greatest predecessor, Christopher Marlowe, was most probably murdered by the state and another fellow dramatist Thomas Kyd died after torture. He did so largely by avoiding references to contemporary England and setting his plays either in distant Catholic countries (where of course they do things no good Protestant ruler would countenance) or in the past. His political skill was rewarded. As of May 1603, after James I’s accession to the throne, Shakespeare was an official of the court as Groom of the Chamber. He and his fellow shareholders in the King’s Men (as they were now called) were each issued with four and a half yards of red cloth for the royal livery in which they were allowed to appear on state occasions. It is hard to think of Shakespeare as a liveried servant, but for him that red coat was surely also a suit of armor that protected him from the violence of his surroundings.

The wonder, though, lies in what he did with that position. He took his royal master’s obsessions and made unprecedented dramas out of them. James was interested in witches, so they appear in Macbeth . The king was—after the Gunpowder Plot in which Catholic conspirators tried to blow him up, along with his entire court and Parliament—worried about the way Catholic suspects under interrogation gave equivocal answers to avoid incriminating themselves. So the Porter in Macbeth , imagining himself as the gatekeeper to Hell, says, “Faith, here’s an equivocator that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven.” As a Scot, James was anxious to establish the idea of Britain as a political union, with himself as “emperor of the whole island.” So Shakespeare shows in King Lear the terrors of a disunited kingdom. James was fascinated by demonic possession, so Shakespeare brushed up on its alleged symptoms in contemporary accounts and has Edgar, in his guise as Poor Tom, enact them on the blasted heath. *

But if these plays start with the need of the King’s Man to suck up to his royal patron, they emphatically do not end there. A hack propagandist of the kind that Boris Johnson imagines Shakespeare to be would have shown, in Macbeth , that equivocation is just what you might expect from traitorous Catholics. Instead he makes the slipperiness of words and the inability to trust people universal aspects of life under rulers who imagine their power to be absolute. Almost everyone in Macbeth plays games with truth and lies, because that’s what you have to do in a murderous polity.

Poor Tom, in King Lear , may be there to flatter the sovereign’s desire to see a man who is (or is pretending to be) possessed by demons. But we don’t care about that because his performance becomes a heartbreakingly real enactment of mental distress: “The foul fiend haunts poor Tom in the voice of a nightingale. Hoppedance cries in Tom’s belly for two white herring. Croak not, black angel. I have no food for thee.” What begins with a brilliant opportunist keeping an eye out for what will appeal to his new master ends as some of the strangest, most searingly painful language ever spoken on the stage.

And even though Shakespeare undoubtedly started King Lear as a fable on the dangers of splitting up the kingdom, he lets it run off into the most devastating mockery of all arbitrary political power. Lear tells Gloucester that the “great image of authority” is a cur biting the heels of a beggar. It is perhaps not surprising that someone who thought Lear’s declaration that “a dog’s obeyed in office” is Shakespeare supporting the established order proved to be such a dog in office himself.

So what does Shakespeare teach us? Nothing. His tragic theater is not a classroom. It is a fairground wall of death in which the characters are being pushed outward by the centrifugal force of the action but held in place by the friction of the language. It sucks us into its dizzying spin. What makes it particularly vertiginous is the way Shakespeare so often sets our moral impulses against our theatrical interests. Iago in Othello is perhaps the strongest example. Plays, for the audience, begin with utter ignorance. We need someone to draw us in, to tell us what is going on. A character who talks to us, who gives us confidential information, can earn our gratitude. Even when that character is, like Iago, telling us how he is going to destroy a good man, we are glad to see him whenever he appears. Within the plot he is a monster. Outside it, talking to us, he is a charming, helpful presence. Drawn between these two conditions, we are not learning something. We are in the dangerous condition of unlearning how we feel and think.

Hamlet talks to us too. He is entertaining, brilliant, sensitive, charismatic, startlingly eloquent—and he has a filial purpose of vengeance that we understand. So what are we to do with his astonishing cruelties—his cold-blooded mockery of the corpse of a man (Polonius) he has just killed by mistake, his mental torturing of Ophelia, his casual dispatch of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, announced to us as a fleeting afterthought? How far would the play have to tilt on its axis for Hamlet to be not its hero but its resident demon?

Shakespeare can, when he chooses, turn our attitudes to characters upside down and inside out. In the first act of Macbeth , Lady Macbeth is bold, vigorous, and supremely confident that she can “chastise with the valor of my tongue” a husband whom we already know to be a fearsome warrior. She makes herself “from the crown to the toe top-full/Of direst cruelty!” In the second act she takes charge while her husband is breaking down under the strain of Duncan’s murder—it is Lady Macbeth who returns the daggers to the chamber and smears the sleeping grooms with blood. In the third act she is still a commanding presence, able to deal with the disaster of the royal banquet and dismiss the courtiers when Macbeth is freaked out by Banquo’s ghost.

We then lose sight of her until the fifth act, when she is suddenly almost a ghost herself, a somnambulist reenacting in tormented sleep the moments after the murder. There is no transition, nothing to lead us gradually from the direly cruel and potent murderer to the fragile shell of a person, floating in “this slumbery agitation”—a phrase that almost cancels itself and thus captures her descent to nothingness.

Even as the action of the play continues to hurtle forward, we are thrown back into this gap between the dynamic woman we last saw and the strange creature she is now, in this liminal state between life and death. We have to try to fill that gap for ourselves, but we can’t quite do it because the stage is suddenly filled with drums and flags and Birnam Wood is about to come to Dunsinane and we have no time to think. Nor do we know quite what to feel—should we still despise her for her ruthless malice or give ourselves over to the poignancy of her mental dissolution?

Usually, if a dramatist shows us an act of extreme violence perpetrated by a character, it is a point of no return. After the enactment of butchery there can be no way back to emotional delicacy and poetic grace. Yet Hamlet stabs Polonius to death, calls the dead man a fool and a knave, tells his mother, in one of Shakespeare’s most brutal phrases, that “I’ll lug the guts into the neighbor room,” and exits dragging the body along like the carcass of an animal. It makes no sense that even after this shocking display of callousness, Hamlet still gets to be the tender philosopher considering the skull of Yorick. But he does. He is still the “sweet prince.”

Lady Macduff’s young son is stabbed to death before our eyes by Macbeth’s thugs. We watch a child—perhaps the most intelligent, charming, and engaging child ever seen onstage—being slaughtered in front of his mother. Yet fifteen or twenty minutes later we have the psychokiller Macbeth at his most affecting, playing the still, sad music of humanity: “And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.”

Othello wakes the sleeping Desdemona and twice calls her a strumpet. We listen to her heartbreaking plea: “Kill me tomorrow; let me live tonight.” In most productions, she tries to run away and Othello has to manhandle her back onto the bed. Then he takes a cushion and, as she continues to struggle for life, begins to smother her. But this is not quick. A short, staccato phrase of Othello’s, “So, so,” suggests that, as she continues to fight him, he either stabs her or pushes the cushion down even more violently on her face. But still Shakespeare prolongs the agony, for her and for us. Emilia appears at the door and gives Othello the news of Rodrigo’s murder. All the while Othello is still trying to kill his wife. We hear Desdemona’s voice again. Emilia opens the curtains and sees Desdemona dying. She gets two more lines and then expires. As Othello says himself: “I know this act shows horrible and grim.”

It is hard to think how Shakespeare could have made it more horrible. Depending on the production, it can take around ten minutes from start to finish. What could we feel except loathing and disgust? And yet Shakespeare forces us also, within just a few more minutes, to feel compassion for “one that loved not wisely, but too well;/…one not easily jealous but, being wrought,/Perplexed in the extreme.” It is not just Othello who is perplexed in the extreme. As audiences or as readers, we are left in a no-man’s-land where what we feel does not map onto what we have seen, and where extreme ugliness of action alternates with extreme beauty of language.

And all the while that language is unsettling us further. Some of this is accidental: the passage of time has altered meanings, making the effects even stranger and more disconcerting than Shakespeare meant them to be. Words become treacherous because we think we understand them but in fact do not. In the opening scene of Hamlet alone, “rivals” means companions and “extravagant” means wandering. In the first scene of Othello , “circumstance” means circumlocution, “spinster” means someone who spins wool, “peculiar” means personal, and “owe” means own. We can never be quite sure of the linguistic ground beneath our feet. Especially as we experience these words aurally in the theater, stepping stones turn out to be trip hazards.

This effect may be unintended in itself (Shakespeare cannot have known how the English language would evolve over four centuries), but it merely exaggerates what Shakespeare is doing anyway: simultaneously offering and withholding meaning. One way he does this is with a figure of speech that is peculiar in his own sense, personal to him. A distinctive strand of his writing is his fondness for expressing one concept with two words, joined together by “and.” No one has ever made such a humble three-letter word so slippery.

For example, when Hamlet thinks of Fortinbras’s army going off to invade Poland, he remarks that the warriors are willing to die “for a fantasy and trick of fame.” Laertes warns Ophelia against “the shot and danger of desire.” Shakespeare uses this device sixty-six times in Hamlet , twenty-eight times in Othello (“body and beauty”), eighteen times in Macbeth (“sound and fury”) and fifteen times in King Lear (“the image and horror of it”). With these conjunctions, every take is a double take. When we hear “and,” we expect the two things being joined together either to be different yet complementary (the day was cold and bright) or obviously the same (Musk is vile and loathsome).

Shakespeare does use such obvious phrasing, but often he gives us conjunctions that are neither quite the same nor quite different. A trick and a fantasy are alike but not exactly. The shot and the danger are closely related but separate concepts, as are sound and fury. Sometimes our brains can adjust fairly easily: “The image and horror” can be put back together as a horrible image. The “shot and danger” is a dangerous shot. But sometimes they can’t. When Hamlet tells the players that the purpose of theater is to show “the very age and body of the time,” we get the overall idea: they should embody the life of their own historical period. But the individual pieces of the phrase don’t cohere. The time does not have a body—it is the thing to be embodied by the actors. The “age of the time” borders on tautology. When Hamlet talks of his father’s tomb opening “his ponderous and marble jaws,” we must work quite hard to get to what is being signified, which is the heavy marble construction of the tomb. That banal little word “and” leaves us in a place somewhere between comprehension and mystery.

Shakespeare also does this with the basic construction of his sentences. As readers or members of an audience, we are hungry for information, and exposition is one of the basic skills of the playwright. But Shakespeare loves to spool out facts like someone gradually feeding out the line of a kite, adjusting to the tug and tension of the words. He leaves us waiting even while we are being informed. A sentence has a subject, a verb, and an object. Shakespeare delights in separating them from one another to the point where they are almost cut adrift. Early in Hamlet , Horatio is giving us some important backstory: how Old Hamlet acquired Norwegian lands and how Fortinbras is trying to get them back. He starts simply: “Our last king…” He then takes eight words to get to the verb “was” and then another fifteen words to get to “dared to the combat.” And then we have another fifteen words before we find out that Old Hamlet killed Old Fortinbras in this duel.

Or in the second scene of Macbeth , we need to know that Macbeth has triumphed against the rebels on the battlefield. The Captain, bringing the news, tells us that “brave Macbeth…carved out his passage” through the ranks of the enemy. But between “brave Macbeth” and “carved out his passage” there are nineteen words. Lear, in the crucial caprice that catalyzes the tragedy, demands: “Tell me, my daughters…Which of you shall we say doth love us most.” Except what he actually says is:

Tell me, my daughters, Since now we will divest us both of rule, Interest of territory, cares of state, Which of you shall we say doth love us most.

We have to hang on for the dramatic point. This happens again and again in these plays: the language is used to keep us in states of suspended animation. The propulsive rhythms keep the words moving forward with a relentless energy. (Otherwise, we would lose patience and conclude that Shakespeare is really quite a bad writer.) But the import of the words lags behind. This is Shakespeare’s marvelous kind of syncopation: the meter is regular but the meaning is offbeat.

Frank Kermode, riffing on T.S. Eliot, wrote of how a strange piece of language opens up “the bewildering minute, the moment of dazzled recognition” for which all poetry searches. These plays work toward those bewildering minutes when we both recognize something as profoundly human and are at the same time so dazzled by it that we cannot quite take it in. Some of these moments are elaborately linguistic: Hamlet’s contemplations of whether or not he should continue to exist, Macbeth’s articulation of the ways in which his violence has utterly isolated him from humanity itself. But some are almost wordless. There is Lear’s terrible “Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh!” over the body of his dead daughter and Othello’s “Oh, Oh, Oh!” when he realizes that he has murdered his wife for no reason. Shakespeare can make his eternal minutes from the most exquisite artifice or from the most primitive of sounds, knowing as he does that when words fail, after all the astounding articulacy we have been experiencing, the failure is itself unfathomably expressive.

None of this has anything to do with moral instruction. Moral destruction may be more like it: creating the “form and pressure” of the times through a great unraveling, in which what we know becomes un-known. If we have to go back to Aristotle’s theories of tragedy to understand what Shakespeare is doing, the place to go is not his idea of the fatal flaw—a concept Aristotle drew from Greek plays that could hardly be more different from Shakespeare’s. It is, rather, to Aristotle’s identification of the emotions that tragedy seeks to draw out of us: pity and terror. In Shakespeare’s tragedies, we have to supply the pity ourselves because there is precious little of it on offer to the people caught up in the violence of arbitrary power. But there is an abundance of terror. “Security,” says one of the witches in Macbeth , “is mortals’ chiefest enemy.” To feel secure is to be unprepared for the duplicity of reality. Shakespeare gives us crash courses in every kind of insecurity: physical, emotional, psychological, cognitive, even existential.

Ross, in the same play, explains to the soon to be murdered Lady Macduff:

But cruel are the times when we are traitors And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor From what we fear, yet know not what we fear, But float upon a wild and violent sea…

This could be applied to all these tragedies, in which fear itself cannot be defined or contained. The plays are wild and violent seas on which even the boundaries of terror cannot be charted. If you had to live in one of them, your best course would be to listen to what a messenger tells Lady Macduff: “If you will take a homely man’s advice,/Be not found here; hence with your little ones.”

These violent wildernesses are not created by the flaws in Shakespeare’s characters. The jumpy guards on the battlements at Elsinore as Hamlet begins are not watching out for ghosts: war is already coming, as Young Fortinbras threatens to invade if the lands Old Hamlet seized from Norway are not returned. Before Macbeth even meets the witches, Scotland is beset by civil war and invasion. The play proper opens with the question: “What bloody man is that?” The still-bleeding Captain delivers gory descriptions of a man being cut in two and of his severed head being displayed on the battlements. Macbeth and Banquo are said “to bathe in reeking wounds.” As the action of Othello is beginning, messages are already arriving in Venice with news of the coming Turkish assault on Cyprus—war has begun. The only one of the four protagonists in the tragedies who can be said to unleash large-scale violence by his own actions is Lear—but even then, the speed with which his kingdom falls apart after his abdication makes us wonder whether it would not have descended into chaos anyway if he had merely died of old age.

What we encounter, then, is nothing so comforting as imperfect men causing trouble that will be banished by their deserved deaths. It is men who embody the hurly-burly that, contrary to the predictions of the witches at the start of Macbeth , is never going to be “done.” Hamlet and Macbeth, Othello and Lear are distinguished in these dramas by the illusion that they can determine events by their own actions. They have, they believe, the power to say what will happen next. But no amount of power can ever be great enough in an irrational world. The universe does not follow orders. That, as Miss Prism might have said, is what Tragedy means.

It is nice to imagine a time when these plays could be loved for their poetry alone. It would be a delight to think that their pleasure would be that they speak, as Horatio has it at the end of Hamlet , to an “unknowing world/How these things came about.” But there is not yet a world that does not know the violence of these plays or the fury with which reality responds to all attempts to force it to obey one man’s will. There is no place in history where “Be not found here” is not good advice for millions of vulnerable people. We return to the tragedies not in search of behavioral education but because the wilder the terror Shakespeare unleashes, the deeper is the pity and the greater the wonder that, even in the howling tempest, we can still hear the voices of broken individuals so amazingly articulated. They do not, when they speak, reduce the frightfulness. They allow us, rather, in those bewildering moments, to be equal to it.

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Fintan O’Toole is the Advising Editor at The New York Review and a columnist for The Irish Times . His most recent book is We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland . (June 2024)

See my “Behind ‘King Lear’: The History Revealed,” The New York Review , November 19, 2015.  ↩

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