Edexcel A Level English Literature King
Lear - Summary, Characters, Literary
Devices, Quotes, Critics, Themes
Comprehensive Exam Study Guide
King Lear - Answer>>The aging king of Britain and tragic hero
of the play. Lear, who is used to complete obedience from
everyone around him, makes two related major errors: giving up
of political responsibility by transferring power to his daughters;
and trusting the flattering Goneril and Regan over the
plainspoken, but true, Cordelia. Despite his flaws he is able to
maintain the loyalty of certain subjects, particularly Kent and
Gloucester. However, these will not be enough to save him from
madness and death.
Cordelia - Answer>>Lear's youngest daughter, disowned by her
father for refusing to flatter him. Cordelia is held in extremely high
regard by all of the good characters in the play—the king of
France marries her for her virtue alone, overlooking her lack of
dowry. She remains loyal to Lear despite his cruelty toward her,
forgives him, and displays a mild and forbearing temperament
even toward her evil sisters, Goneril and Regan. Despite her
obvious virtues, Cordelia's reticence makes her motivations
difficult to read, as in her refusal to declare her love for her father
at the beginning of the play.
Edmund - Answer>>Gloucester's younger, illegitimate son.
Edmund resents the fact that the accident of his birth has
deprived him of legal status (and, therefore, an inheritance). He
schemes to turn Gloucester against his legitimate son, Edgar, and
eventually usurp his title. Eloquent and seductively wicked,
Edmund almost succeeds in carrying out his malign plots to
fruition.
,Goneril - Answer>>Lear's vicious older daughter, who is the first
to flatter him in the power-transfer ceremony and the first to insult
him afterwards, throwing him and his knights out of her house.
Goneril's ruthless temperament contrasts with that of her
husband, the Duke of Albany. In the end, she plots against
Albany, and even against her former ally, her sister Regan, out of
lust for Edmund.
Gloucester - Answer>>Gloucester's story runs parallel to Lear's.
Like Lear, Gloucester is introduced as a father who does not
understand his children.
He jokes about Edmund and calls him a "whoreson" (I.i.) when
Edmund is standing right next to him. In his first soliloquy Edmund
reveals how much he resents the way his father treats him.
While the audience understands that Gloucester shouldn't trust
Edmund, Gloucester himself is blind to his son's true motivations.
Just as Lear falls for Goneril and Regan's flattery, Gloucester falls
for Edmund's deception. Lear banishes Cordelia, the daughter
who loves him, and Gloucester tries to execute Edgar, the son
who loves him. Both Lear and Gloucester end up homeless,
wandering on the beach near Dover. The close similarity between
Gloucester's story and Lear's serves to underline that Lear's fate
is not exceptional. In the bleak universe of King Lear, it's normal
for old men to suffer at the hands of their own children and to end
up with nothing.
Gloucester's blinding is one of the most violent and shocking
scenes in any of Shakespeare's plays, but the fact that no two
characters can agree if or why Gloucester deserves blinding
suggests that the act is not only unjust, but random and
meaningless.
,Edgar - Answer>>Gloucester's elder, legitimate son. Although
at first Edgar comes across as a bit naïve, easily duped by
Edmund, he later disguises himself successfully as a madman
beggar and manages not only to save himself from the death
sentence his misled father has pronounced on him, but also to
help Gloucester and Lear and to avenge the wrongs committed by
his traitorous half-brother.
kent - Answer>>A nobleman of the same rank as Gloucester,
banished by Lear in the first scene when he attempts to intercede
with the king on Cordelia's behalf. Kent spends most of the play
disguised as Caius, a disguise he takes on so that he can
continue to serve Lear even after being thrown out of his
kingdom.
Fool - Answer>>Lear's jester, who accompanies him through
much of the play. Although his statements come out as riddles,
the Fool offers insight into Lear's mistakes and their
consequences. Insofar as he stays with Lear, despite all his
mockery and criticisms (and at his peril, during the violent storm in
Act 3), the Fool, like Kent, Gloucester, and Cordelia, proves
himself loyal.
Albany - Answer>>The husband of Lear's older daughter,
Goneril, and a Duke. Albany is kind and generous, in contrast to
his malicious wife, and criticizes her for her treacherous behavior
toward her father. However, he realizes the viciousness of the
other characters he is aligned with (namely, Edmund and Regan)
too late in the play to prevent the evil that they cause.
France - Answer>>The husband of Cordelia. France is a
benevolent character, who takes Cordelia as his wife without a
dowry, when she has been rejected by her father, and even sends
her back to England with the French army to rectify the wrongs
, carried out by Goneril and Regan against Lear. However, France
only appears in the first scene.
Justice - Answer>>King Lear is a brutal play, filled with human
cruelty and awful, seemingly meaningless disasters.
The play's succession of terrible events raises an obvious
question for the characters—namely, whether there is any
possibility of justice in the world, or whether the world is
fundamentally indifferent or even hostile to humankind.
Various characters offer their opinions: "As flies to wanton boys
are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport," Gloucester
muses, realizing it foolish for humankind to assume that the
natural world works in parallel with socially or morally convenient
notions of justice (4.1.37-38).
Edgar, on the other hand, insists that "the gods are just," believing
that individuals get what they deserve (5.3.169). But, in the end,
we are left with only a terrifying uncertainty—although the wicked
die, the good die along with them, culminating in the awful image
of Lear cradling Cordelia's body in his arms. There is goodness in
the world of the play, but there is also madness and death, and it
is difficult to tell which triumphs in the end.
Authority versus Chaos - Answer>>King Lear is about political
authority as much as it is about family dynamics. Lear is not only
a father but also a king, and when he gives away his authority to
the unworthy and evil Goneril and Regan, he delivers not only
himself and his family but all of Britain into chaos and cruelty. As
the two wicked sisters indulge their appetite for power and
Edmund begins his own ascension, the kingdom descends into
civil strife, and we realize that Lear has destroyed not only his
own authority but all authority in Britain. The stable, hierarchal
