King Lear

Play

King Lear

Summary

Lear is the aged king of Britain who catastrophically divides his kingdom among his three daughters based on their professions of love, banishing the one daughter who truly loves him. Stripped of authority, retinue, and shelter by Goneril and Regan, he is cast out into the storm where madness and suffering break him open — and through that breaking he achieves a hard-won, terrible understanding of himself and his world. His reunion with Cordelia is the emotional pinnacle of the play; her death is its annihilating conclusion.

Notable Quotations

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! / You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout / Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!" *(III.2)*

"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, / That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, / How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, / Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you / From seasons such as these?" *(III.4)*

"I am a very foolish fond old man, / Fourscore and upward, not an hour more or less; / And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind." *(IV.7)*

"Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones: / Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so / That heaven's vault should crack." *(V.3)*

"Nothing will come of nothing." *(I.1)*

"O, I have ta'en / Too little care of this!" *(III.4)*

Cross-references