Krantz
English 4620
Reading Guide
King Lear Questions 2

1. How does Shakespeare present the Duke of Albany? What seems to be his character?
2. What lines make Goneril especially loathsome to you? Explain.
3. What appears to motivate Regan's and Goneril's hatred of their father?
4. What is the motive for France's invasion of England?
5. What is Edmund's motive for acting against brother and father? Is it believable?
6. What is the King's relationship to Edgar?
7. Why does Kent so purposefully anger his audience in 2.2?
8. How can Lear's daughters dictate to him where he'll live and how many retainers he'll have?
9. Where does Lear first appear mad? Does he appear sane anytime subsequently? Explain.

10. If this play seems to you to have more bawdy references than other of Shakespeare's plays that you have read, explain why this might be so.
11. What sins are present in the play? What redemptive acts? Which are more powerful? Explain.

12. Is Lear's line, "I am a man more sinned again than sinning," a true characterization? Explain.
13. Is Lear's speech about the benefits of suffering convincing? (3.4) Why or why not?
14. Besides the obvious link of the child's sin against the father, what else connects the two plots?
15. Is Gloucester's care for Lear motivated by politics or loyalty? Explain.
16. Lear constantly curses his daughters. Does he ever confess his own faults as helping to cause the tragedy of the play?
17. What characteristics show Edgar as a good person?
18. What motivates Cornwall to blind Gloucester? What makes this crime especially heinous?
19. Given the belief of Renaissance humanists in the Great Chain of Being, the play becomes a commentary on the penalty for reversing the order of nature: children seeking to usurp the power of the parent; reason overthrown by madness; storms showing chaos in nature. How do the actions of Cornwall's servants fit in with the theme of reversal of nature?
20. Why must Edgar continue to act the madman even after his father knows the extent of Edmund's betrayal?

21. How is Cordelia characterized? We really don't get to know her. Is this a weakness in the play?.
22. Why does Shakespear arouse our hopes that Cordelia still lives even though she is pronounced dead definitively only a few lines afterwards?
23. Find a particularly moving speech in the play and examine it for metaphors and other rhetorical figures.