King Lear: Character Quotations (OCR A Level English Literature): Revision Note

“Nothing”

Lear rejects Cordelia's honest, understated love because he can only value love that is performed

Appearance and reality

• Lear says this to Cordelia after she refuses to exaggerate her love for him during the love test, unable to accept that her honesty could hold any value:

  • He views love, and worth more generally, in purely transactional terms, something that must be spoken and performed loudly to exist at all and there to sate his ego

• This moment establishes the flaw that drives the entire tragedy:

  • Everything that follows, all that befalls him and his family, stems from his inability to recognise sincerity when it is not dressed up in performance

• He fails to see that Cordelia’s sincerity comes from not performing, compared to her elder sisters just saying whatever they can to further their own gains

• It is also darkly ironic, since Lear himself will be reduced to nothing by the end of the play, stripped of his kingdom, his sanity and eventually his life

“Blow, winds”

Lear clings to his power, but his authority is waning, both as a ruler and on his own sanity

Authority and power

• Lear gave up his power to his two eldest daughters in Act 1, on the condition he can live alternately with each daughter a month at a time, and with 100 knights as his retinue:

  • In Act 2, he left Goneril’s in anger as she strips him of knights and treats him with contempt

  • By this moment, he has visited Regan, who treats him similarly and locks him out in the storm

• Lear appears not to recognise the futility of demanding control of the weather:

  • He is losing control of everything in his life and cannot accept it

• The use of imperative verbs like "blow," "rage," and "crack" show him still speaking like a king who expects to be obeyed:

  • He is used to having command, but it is being stripped from him

  • With no people to follow his orders, he is left nothing but foolish rage at nature

• The short, stabby words, without anything else, reflect the storm:

  • Usually verbose and confident, these short commands show him losing his grip on himself and the changes being forced upon him

  • It also shows his rage, wanting violent retribution

• While it looks to be arrogance and power that remain within him, Lear here is showing some desperation:

  • He is shorn of status by his daughters, and hopes in vain that the weather can bring the reckoning he wishes to, but cannot 

  • Lines later, he shows that realisation, calling himself a "slave" to the weather

  • His orders were a front, he knows he is weakened, and this is the first time he outwardly accepts it, rather than trying to negotiate a way out

"I have ta’en too little care"

For the first time, Lear admits he neglected the poor and only cared for his luxury

Justice and suffering

• Stuck out in the storm, Lear laments his poor treatment of those outside of his elite circles when he was in power:

  • Faced with needing to find shelter, he suddenly empathises with others

• He sees now he has never shown enough care for anyone else:

  • The "this" he speaks of is a lack of shelter and care for the common people under his rule

  • Had he still been in power, he knows he would have sat in warmth and not even considered how others must be doing

• This is a striking reversal from the man who, in Act 1, could not recognise sincerity even from his own daughter:

  • This humility would have saved him at the start, but now comes too late

• In this moment, the idea of Lear as purely a tragic fool is complicated by his change and growth: 

  • His suffering produces real moral insight, even as it destroys him

"Nature, art my goddess"

Edmund is frustrated that social laws are limiting his ambitions, as being born out of wedlock leaves him of lesser status than his brother, Edgar

Authority and power

• Alone on stage, this sentence opens Edmund’s soliloquy as he airs his frustrations about his heritage and the conventions that push him down:

  • As a bastard, he is seen as lesser than his brother, and somewhat a source of shame

  • The social customs of the time means he is considered less worthy than his brother

  • As such, he is not due the same inheritance

• Edmund instead chooses to follow the law of nature:

  • He believes he has the makings and instincts to deserve more power and status

  • Nature will not limit him on this, as he believes it is in his nature to hold more power

  • He feels just as strong and smart as his brother

• By using the language of religious devotion, Edmund positions himself as a kind of rival belief system to the traditional values of loyalty and duty

• Here, he vows to fight against the customs that are against him and get what he feels he deserves:

  • He plans to trick his father and steal his brother’s land so he can rise to power

• In this speech, Edmund sets himself out as a little different to others in the play:

  • In this instance, he openly admits that he acts entirely for himself

  • Many pretend, even privately, to be doing otherwise, but Edmund is clear and honest

Key word or phrase to memorise:

What the quotation means:

Theme:

“revenging gods /  'Gainst parricides”

Edmund fakes an attack on himself and invents a story of Edgar plotting to kill their father

Family, loyalty and betrayal

• Edmund says this to Gloucester, shortly after wounding himself and claiming Edgar attacked him for refusing to join a plot against their father:

  • Gloucester wants to know exactly what happened, so Edmund invents a detailed account of a conversation with Edgar that never took place

  • This builds directly on the forged letter from Act 1

  • The lie has now escalated from a private deception aimed at inheritance into a public accusation with life-or-death consequences for Edgar

• The specific word choice is doing a lot of work here:

  • "Parricide" refers to the killing of a parent or close relative, and in this period was considered one of the most unnatural crimes a person could commit

  • By inventing a version of Edgar who casually discusses parricide, Edmund is not just accusing him of one act of violence

  • He is making him sound like the kind of person capable of the very worst crime imaginable

• "Revenging gods" and "thunders bend" borrow the imagery of divine punishment raining down from above: 

  • This gives Edmund’s fabricated warning a dramatic, almost biblical weight that makes his account feel like solemn testimony rather than a casual report

• There is great irony on show here, as Edmund cries foul at the idea of betraying family as part of his plan:

  • It is further ironic because it is the act of betraying his father to Cornwall that ends with Gloucester’s blinding

• This also shows a shift from Edmund's Act 1 soliloquy, where his devotion to "Nature" was presented as a genuine, privately held belief:

  • Here, religious language is used purely as a performance to manipulate Gloucester

  • This shows that Edmund is capable of playing with the social and cultural rules that he has rejected for his own ambitions

• This quotations shows Edmund at his most calculating, using exactly the kind of performed sincerity that Cordelia refused to offer Lear in Act 1

"Despite of mine own nature"

As he dies, Edmund tries to save Cordelia, but it arrives too late

Justice and suffering

• Fatally wounded and facing death, Edmund makes one final attempt at good, trying to reverse his order for Cordelia's execution:

  • The phrase "despite of mine own nature" shows Edmund is aware this act contradicts everything he has stood for throughout the play

• This is the closest the play comes to redeeming Edmund, yet Shakespeare denies him even this:

  • The order arrives too late, and Cordelia dies anyway, suggesting that a single act of conscience cannot undo a lifetime of ruthless self-interest

• Edmund’s dying act shows both recognition and regret for what he has done, and that he cannot be seen as wholly malevolent:

  • By distancing himself from his own behaviour, Shakespeare complicates any reading of Edmund as pure "vice"

  • This is an indicator that he, and maybe all of the characters, have gotten lost in the search for power and status, showing us characters of the moment, not who they wholly are

• Shakespeare, however, does not allow self-awareness and regret to act as mitigating circumstances for a harsh fate:

  • Knowing this, whether before or after, does not allow Edmund redemption or spare him his end

"I nothing am"

Edgar abandons his entire identity to survive, disguising himself as the mad beggar Poor Tom

Appearance and reality

• Forced into hiding after being falsely accused by Edmund, Edgar decides to abandon his identity and adopt the disguise of the mad beggar, Poor Tom:

  • The word "nothing" deliberately echoes Cordelia and Lear's exchange in Act 1, tying Edgar's loss of identity to the play's wider theme of value and worth

• Smartly, Edgar sheds himself of the clothing and image he is known by:

  • Had he not, he may not have lived much longer after his father sent a manhunt after him

• A mad, filthy beggar is about as far from how is known as he could get:

  • The egos of his former contemporaries mean they would not think a man of his status would be able to make himself filthy and poor, as they never could

• This transformation is presented as a kind of death and rebirth: 

  • There is nothing of the nobleman left in Poor Tom, and Edgar only survives by erasing any recognisable trace of who he was

• Unlike Edmund, who embraces ambition to gain status, Edgar's survival depends on giving his status up completely: 

  • This is a direct contrast that Shakespeare sets up between the two brothers

“Ripeness”

Edgar persuades Gloucester that death comes at its own natural time, convincing him not to give up on life

Justice and suffering

• After Edgar returns to Gloucester with news of Lear’s, and Britain’s, defeat at battle, Gloucester is despondent, and wants to stay where he is to die:

  • Edgar says this to convince him otherwise, telling him death will come when it comes, not by his choice

  • This is one of the most quoted philosophical statements in the entire play, distilling Edgar's hard-won wisdom into three words:

• The advice works and Gloucester is persuaded to go on living rather than give up:

  • It is a sign of how far Edgar's role has shifted from victim to guide, and how he has changed in adversity

• This moment confirms Edgar as the character who has grown the most through suffering, in direct contrast to Edmund, whose suffering (and subsequent, fleeting growth) only arrives at the very end

“Speak what we feel”

Those involved, still alive, need to feel this sadness and learn to speak honestly, rather than performatively

Appearance and reality

• This comes in the final lines of the play as Edgar speaks about what they need to learn from what has happened, feel the sadness they have all caused, and start to act and speak truthfully:

  • Lear has fallen and died suddenly, leaving only Edgar and the Duke of Albany definitely alive, as the Earl of Kent seems to announce he will commit suicide to follow his master, King Lear

• This directly contrasts how the play opens, and the moment that sets the story in motion, with Lear demanding flattery and rejecting Cordelia’s calm honesty:

  • This closes the play with a reminder of its beginning, bringing it full circle

  • Poor character, dishonesty and performative acts of supposed love and loyalty have caused all of this, and Edgar now wants honesty to help them move forward

• The line is deliberately understated rather than triumphant, reflecting how little genuine victory there is left by the end of the play

“Eclipses…portend no good”

Gloucester blames the stars for his family's problems instead of his own actions

Appearance and reality

• This is said to Edmund, immediately after Gloucester is shown the forged letter suggesting Edgar is plotting against him:

  • Shocked and taken aback by this apparent betrayal, Gloucester reaches for a supernatural explanation rather than questioning whether the letter is genuine

  • This superstition makes him easy prey for Edmund, who privately mocks this exact belief moments later

• Shakespeare uses this line to establish Gloucester as a parallel figure to Lear: 

  • Both men are guided by belief systems (flattery for Lear, superstition for Gloucester) that prevent them from seeing the truth in front of them

• This quotation is important for tracking Gloucester's development: 

  • When he is blinded later in the play, it is this that ironically brings him closer to real understanding than this early, sighted superstition ever does

“I would not see”

Gloucester explains why he helped Lear, to Cornwall and Regan’s disgust

Family, loyalty and betrayal

• Gloucester says this to Cornwall and Regan, who have just had him bound, and are interrogating him after Edmund exposed his secret correspondence with Lear:

  • Defying Cornwall and Regan even as he is about to be punished, Gloucester explains he helped Lear specifically to prevent this kind of cruelty from being inflicted upon the king

  • The line is grimly ironic, as his punishment for trying to save Lear is the exact fate he believes he is saving Lear from, and just as he describes

• This is the clearest moment of genuine courage and loyalty Gloucester shows in the entire play, arriving at the very point he loses everything for it

• It marks the definitive end of Gloucester's earlier passivity: 

  • For the first time, he takes a clear moral stand regardless of the personal cost

"Kiss that hand"

Blind Gloucester reaches out with tenderness towards the mad Lear, whose suffering now mirrors his own

Family, loyalty and betrayal

• Gloucester says this to Lear as he recognises his voice and status, even through his madness 

• Encountering the mad Lear near Dover, blind Gloucester reaches out with tenderness towards the man whose suffering now mirrors his own:

  • This small, physical gesture of compassion is a marked contrast to the mockery and cruelty both men have experienced from their own children

• The moment brings together the play's two parallel plots directly on stage for the first time: 

  • It is a moment that allows Shakespeare to show both fathers recognising something of themselves in the other's ruin

• Gloucester's blindness, again, proves no obstacle to genuine feeling: 

  • It may be what finally allows him a moment of true connection

"Nothing"

Cordelia refuses to give an overblown and exaggerated showing of love and flattery to her father

Appearance and reality

• Asked to declare her love for Lear before her sisters' inheritance is decided, Cordelia refuses to perform an answer she does not believe reflects the reality of her feelings:

  • She will not turn her love into a performance for the room and her father

• This single line triggers the entire tragedy that follows, making Cordelia's honesty, ironically, the most consequential moment in the play:

  • Lear sees this as disloyalty, not recognising sincerity

  • Similarly, he does not recognise how insincere his elder daughters are

• With Cordelia then banished, Goneril and Regan inherit further political power:

  • This also leaves Lear with nobody to look out for him, and he is then manipulated

• Kent is banished, too, after he defends Cordelia:

  • As his most loyal servant, Kent acts in Lear’s best interests

  • With both gone, Lear is left with nobody who genuinely cares for him

• The word “nothing” becomes one of the play's most repeated ideas, echoed later by both Lear and Edgar as their own identities and certainties collapse:

  • Lear sees nothing in small gestures and truth, showing truth to be insignificant to him beside persuasive lies

  • The word “nothing” evolves into a central motif, symbolising loss of identity and self

  • Lear later becomes nothing himself, after initially describing how Cordelia’s “nothing” will get her nothing, in terms of inheritance

  • Edgar, forced to flee, later calls himself “nothing” to show that he is stripped of all his status

• By the end of the play, “nothing” has become deeply ironic:

  • What Lear initially dismisses as worthless proves to be the source of truth (Cordelia's honesty) 

  • The things he valued most, the titles, power, and flattering words, are exposed as empty 

"No cause"

Cordelia insists she has no reason to hate Lear, despite all he did to her in Act I

Family, loyalty and betrayal

• Lear wakes from a sleep to find Cordelia there:

  • He assumes she must want revenge on him for how he treated her

  • Cordelia simply insists she has no reason, no cause, to hate him at all

• The brevity of the line is significant: 

  • Where her sisters filled Act 1 with elaborate, exaggerated declarations, Cordelia again offers only the smallest amount of language necessary to convey total sincerity

• This moment completes the emotional arc begun by “Nothing, my lord” in Act 1: 

  • Both are minimal, restrained responses that Shakespeare uses to show Cordelia's honesty is consistent from beginning to end

“with best meaning”

Facing capture, Cordelia reflects that just because they are in the right with honest intentions does not mean they will escape a bad fate

Justice and suffering

• Facing capture and likely death, Cordelia accepts her situation with calm resignation rather than despair or bitterness:

  • She says this to Lear, who has been imagining a peaceful life as a pair in prison

• This response reflects her consistent character throughout the play: 

  • Even at her lowest point, she remains dignified rather than performative, exactly as she was in Act 1

• The quotation also gestures towards the play's wider, bleaker view of justice: 

  • Good intentions, Cordelia recognises, do not guarantee good outcomes, foreshadowing her death moments later

“Thou art nothing”

The Fool points out that Lear now has less real status than his own jester, having given away all his power

Authority and power

• Mocking Lear for giving away all his other titles while still expecting to be treated as king, the Fool points out that Lear now has less real status than his own jester:

  • At least the Fool is still a fool, he has a title of sorts, whereas Lear is no longer a king in name or status 

• This is arguably the single sharpest piece of characterisation in the whole play, delivered with the casual honesty only the Fool is permitted to use with Lear:

  • The Fool is able to get away with more than anyone else, befitting a role of comic relief

  • However, sharp observations like this show why he transcends just a role of comedy figure

• The line also introduces “nothing” as a recurring idea that will follow Lear, Cordelia and Edgar throughout the rest of the play: 

  • This ties the Fool's wit directly into the play's larger themes

“Let go thy hold”

The Fool advises abandoning those losing power, though he never actually follows his own advice and stays loyal to Lear

Appearance and reality

• Lear waits outside Gloucester’s castle, having just discovered Kent in stocks:

  • The Fool tells him to leave behind those who have lost power, lest they bring him down with them

• Advising Lear on how to survive now that his own power is collapsing, the Fool suggests it would be wiser to abandon those who are losing influence rather than stay loyal to them

• The irony is immediate and deliberate: 

  • The Fool himself never follows this advice

  • He remains with Lear through the storm despite the real danger to his own safety

• This contradiction between what the Fool says and what he does reinforces his role as the play's voice of wisdom disguised as nonsense: 

  • His jokes often contain more genuine insight than his own actions appear to follow

“To bed at noon”

The Fool's final, riddling line before he vanishes from the play entirely with no explanation given

Appearance and reality

• This strange, riddling line is the Fool's final words in the play before he vanishes from the text entirely with no explanation ever given:

  • “Going to bed at noon” was a phrase associated with folly or waste, as a person would be sleeping through the productive part of the day

  • Some readings take it as the Fool making one last joke at his own expense, calling himself foolish right before he exits 

• There is no stage direction, no death, no farewell:

  • He simply is not in the text/play after this 

  • There is some debate as to whether his fate is later revealed by Lear

  • In Act 4, Lear says, “And my poor fool is hanged,” an ambiguous line that could mean he has suffered a foul fate offstage 

• The phrase itself suggests exhaustion or even a wish for death, a stark contrast to the sharp, energetic wit he showed in Act 1

• The mystery of the Fool's disappearance remains one of the most discussed unresolved details in King Lear:

  • Some suggest he leaves simply because his function is no longer needed: