King Lear: Plot Summary (OCR A Level English Literature): Revision Note

Plot summary

Examiners always praise students who clearly know the plot of the texts they are studying, as having this base of knowledge leads to the best exam responses. Below you will find:

• A general overview of the whole play

• Detailed summaries by act

Overview

King Lear was written by William Shakespeare around 1605–1606 and is considered one of his greatest tragedies. Set in ancient Britain, it follows an ageing king who decides to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, but first demands each publicly declare her love for him, hoping to give up the responsibilities of rule while keeping the title and privileges of being king. When his youngest daughter refuses to flatter him, and his most loyal follower challenges his judgement, Lear banishes them both, setting the tragedy in motion.

The play follows Lear's collapse from a domineering king into a broken, homeless old man as his two elder daughters gradually strip him of his power, his status and, eventually, his dignity. Alongside this runs a parallel story in which another nobleman, the Earl of Gloucester, is deceived into rejecting his loyal son in favour of his illegitimate son, Edmund, reflecting Lear's own fatal misjudgements. Together, the two stories explore the devastating consequences of pride, misplaced trust and betrayal.

It is worth noting that editions of the play vary. Spellings of characters’ names can differ between editions, for example Edmund/Edmond, and acts can be divided into a differing number of scenes. The version referenced throughout these notes is The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Alexander Text (Collins Classics), which is also the edition OCR uses when a passage is printed on the question paper. The Alexander text is a single conflated version, combining the two early printings of the play: the 1608 Quarto, The History of King Lear, and the 1623 First Folio, The Tragedy of King Lear. Other editions, such as the Oxford Complete Works, print these as two separate plays, so act, scene and line references will not always match. Centres are free to use any edition of their chosen Shakespeare text (avoiding heavily edited editions).

Act-by-act plot summary

Act 1

Scene 1

• Kent and Gloucester discuss how Lear intends to divide his kingdom.

• Gloucester introduces his illegitimate son, Edmund, to Kent, casually joking about Edmund's birth; his legitimate son, Edgar, is mentioned but does not appear in this scene

• Lear announces he will divide Britain between his three daughters, but first demands each publicly declare her love for him:

  • Goneril and Regan compete in exaggerated speeches, each claiming to love Lear above everything else

  • Cordelia refuses to flatter her father and simply says she loves him as a daughter should

• Enraged, Lear disinherits Cordelia and divides her share between her sisters:

  • When Kent tries to intervene, Lear banishes him too, unable to tolerate honesty over flattery, and orders him gone from the kingdom on pain of death

• Burgundy withdraws his marriage proposal now Cordelia has no dowry, but the King of France marries her anyway, valuing her integrity over her wealth

• Cordelia leaves, warning her sisters that time will eventually expose their true characters

• Left alone, Goneril and Regan coldly agree their father's judgement can no longer be trusted:

  • They blame his rashness on his advancing age and resolve not to let him keep any real power

Scene 2

• Alone on stage, Edmund resents being denied inheritance purely for being illegitimate

• He forges a letter, supposedly from Edgar, that proposes the brothers murder their father and share his revenue between them:

  • Gloucester, entirely convinced, vows to hunt Edgar down and disowns him on the spot

• Gloucester blames recent eclipses for the family's misfortune:

  • Alone, Edmund mocks this superstition, scorning anyone who blames the natural world for problems caused by their own behaviour:

    • He sees this as a Machiavellian rejection of fate in favour of self-interest

• Edgar arrives, and Edmund warns him to flee, ensuring his brother's guilt looks confirmed

• Edmund reflects that Gloucester's trust and Edgar's honesty make them easy to deceive

• Edmund manipulates both father and son:

  • Gloucester believes Edgar is plotting against him

  • Edgar believes Gloucester wants to arrest him

  • Neither can compare stories and expose Edmund's deception

Scene 3

• At Goneril's palace, she complains that Lear's knights have grown disorderly:  

  • She instructs her steward, Oswald, to treat her father with disrespect, hoping to make him leave

• She writes to Regan asking her to do the same:

  • This is the first of many letters in which the sisters coordinate against their father, dismissing him privately as an old man who must be managed rather than obeyed

Scene 4

• Kent, now disguised as a servant, is unknowingly hired by Lear, and shows his loyalty in comic form by tripping Oswald after Lear insults him

• Lear's Fool appears and begins mocking his master's decision to give away his power:

  • He suggests Lear has made himself powerless by handing authority to his daughters 

• Goneril confronts Lear and demands he halve his knights:

  • He wishes she will one day suffer the pain of having an ungrateful child 

  • Lear storms away, hoping Regan will treat him more kindly

• Goneril also writes ahead to Regan to make sure her sister has already been told her version of events before Lear arrives, ensuring the two sisters present a united front against him

Scene 5

• Lear sends Kent ahead to warn Regan of his arrival

• The Fool jokes that Regan will treat Lear exactly as Goneril has, foreshadowing Lear's second betrayal

• Alone with the Fool, Lear begins to regret disowning Cordelia and admits, for the first time, that he fears losing his mind:

  • This is the true beginning of his psychological unravelling, long before the storm arrives

Act 2

Scene 1

• Edmund learns from a courtier, Curan, of rumoured conflict between Cornwall and Albany, and instantly recognises the political instability as useful to his own scheme

• He uses Regan and Cornwall's imminent arrival to make his deception against Edgar more convincing:

  • He wounds himself and claims Edgar attacked him for refusing to help murder their father

• Gloucester, enraged, formally disowns Edgar and names Edmund his heir

• Regan and Cornwall arrive and, having already received Goneril's letter complaining about Lear, reward Edmund's apparent loyalty and take him into their service

• Regan explains they have come to Gloucester's house partly to escape the dispute at home and to seek his counsel as an old family friend 

• Regan and Cornwall decide to stay the night at Gloucester's house rather than continue:

  • This puts them directly in the path of Lear's coming arrival

Scene 2

• Kent, still disguised, recognises and attacks Oswald outside Gloucester's home, expressing his loyalty through crude, comic aggression rather than noble restraint:

  • Cornwall punishes him by placing him in the stocks, ignoring Gloucester's protests

• Alone in the stocks, Kent reads a letter from Cordelia proving she already knows of his disguise and plans to return

Scene 3

• Edgar, now proclaimed an outlaw, escapes the hunt by hiding in the hollow of a tree and realises nowhere in the country is safe for him

• To survive, he disguises himself as "Poor Tom", a Bedlam beggar

• He ends the scene by declaring "Edgar I nothing am", abandoning his name and identity completely

Scene 4

• Lear arrives to find his own servant in the stocks and is horrified further when Regan initially refuses to see him

• Once she does appear, Regan blames his age and tells him to apologise to Goneril:

  • When Goneril herself arrives, the two sisters take turns cutting the number of knights Lear is allowed to keep, until he has no men left at all:

    • Lear vows vengeance but has no real power to enact, and storms out into a gathering storm with only Kent and the Fool

• Kent and Oswald essentially embody opposite values throughout this act: 

  • Kent risks punishment for honest loyalty

  • Oswald obeys power rather than conscience 

• As the scene and the act end, Lear and Gloucester are both failing, their collapses now running in exact parallel as the storm begins:

  • Lear has no remaining authority and no daughters willing to shelter him

  • Gloucester has unknowingly handed his title and trust entirely to the son plotting against him

Act 3

Scene 1

• Kent searches for Lear in the storm and learns that French forces are preparing to invade in Lear's support:

  • He sends a Gentleman ahead to inform Cordelia

Scene 2

• Lear rages against the storm, convinced nature itself has turned against him

• The Fool persuades him to seek shelter, and Kent leads them towards a hovel:

  • Before they enter, the Fool makes a strange, riddling prophecy about future chaos and confusion in the kingdom

• Kent notes that he has never witnessed a storm this violent:

  • It is reinforced throughout the scene that the weather itself is behaving as unnaturally as the family relationships that have collapsed around it

Scene 3

• Gloucester privately tells Edmund he intends to help Lear, condemning the cruelty Goneril and Regan have shown their father, and reveals he knows of the French invasion:

  • Edmund instantly resolves to betray this to Cornwall, sealing his own father's fate

• The domestic conflict becomes a national one: 

  • France prepares to invade to restore Lear:

    • Britain is quietly dividing between those loyal to him and those loyal to Goneril and Regan

Scene 4

• Before entering the shelter, Lear shows unexpected humility on the suffering of the poor, admitting he neglected them as king and gave too little thought to their hardship

• Edgar, disguised as the mad beggar "Poor Tom," is already hiding inside, and invents a backstory as a once wealthy man now with nothing:

  • Lear becomes fixated on him as a symbol of humanity stripped of status, declaring that a person with nothing left is the truest version of what a human being actually is

• Gloucester finds them and risks his own safety to offer shelter, unknowingly standing feet away from the son he has just disowned

• Lear insists Poor Tom accompany them rather than be left behind, growing strangely attached to him: 

  • This is an early sign that Lear is beginning to value a person for who they are, not their name or status

Scene 5

• Edmund reveals Gloucester's secret to Cornwall:

  • Cornwall names him the new Earl of Gloucester as reward for the betrayal

• Cornwall promises to treat Edmund as his own son from now on:

  • This comes just after Edmund has handed his own father over to Cornwall, revealing that Gloucester is secretly helping Lear and knows of the French invasion

Scene 6

• Gloucester leads Lear, Kent, the Fool and Poor Tom to shelter, where Lear's madness deepens into a mock trial of Goneril and Regan

• After leaving, Gloucester returns with news that they must flee immediately to Dover:

  • He has overheard a plot on Lear’s life, and believes Cordelia's forces can protect the king

• The Fool never appears in the play again, a mysterious exit that is never explained

• Left alone for a moment, Edgar admits that watching Lear's suffering makes his own feel lighter:

  • Here, he recognises the parallel running between the two families and their issues

Scene 7

• Regan and Cornwall discover Gloucester's betrayal and have him seized; Goneril leaves with Edmund before the punishment begins:

  • They interrogate him on Lear’s whereabouts

  • When they find Lear is on his way to Dover, Cornwall shockingly gouges out one of Gloucester’s eyes and stamps on it as a punishment for what he views as treason and betrayal

• A servant, sickened by the violence, fatally wounds Cornwall before being killed himself:

  • Cornwall returns hurt and tears out Gloucester's second eye regardless

• Regan reveals it was Edmund who exposed him, and blind Gloucester is thrown out of his own home and told to find his own way to Dover

• The wound Cornwall receives from the servant kills him

• The surviving servants react with horror, resolving to treat Gloucester's wounds and to find "the Bedlam" (the disguised Edgar) to guide him

Act 4

Scene 1

• Edgar, still disguised, encounters his blinded father

• Gloucester, now recognising he misjudged Edgar entirely, sinks into despair about how little human suffering seems to matter to the gods, and asks "Poor Tom" to lead him to Dover's cliffs so he can end his life, unaware of who is truly guiding him

• His physical blindness is already beginning to function as new insight rather than pure loss: 

  • He now sees Edgar's innocence and his own foolishness more clearly than he ever did before, reinforcing the play's recurring theme of sight versus true understanding

Scene 2

• Goneril grows closer to Edmund and openly voices her contempt for her husband Albany's weakness

• She is drawn to Edmund precisely because he is ambitious, decisive and ruthless, everything she believes Albany is not:

  • Albany, by contrast, is horrified by what she has become

• News arrives that Cornwall has died of his wound:

  • Albany, appalled by Gloucester's blinding, treats this as a form of natural justice

• Goneril grows wary that Regan, now widowed, may also pursue Edmund

• After Goneril leaves, Albany vows revenge for Gloucester:

  • In this scene, he shows fight and independence, looking to oppose his own wife

Scene 3

• Kent learns from a Gentleman that Cordelia was deeply moved and tearful upon reading his letters

• Lear, ashamed of how he treated Cordelia, refuses to see her even as her army approaches

• Kent learns the King of France has already returned home, leaving Cordelia in sole command of the invading force

Scene 4

• Cordelia searches for her father

• A messenger reports the British army is approaching:

  • Cordelia prepares for battle purely to rescue her father rather than to claim territory

Scene 5

• Regan, suspicious of the bond growing between Goneril and Edmund, sends her own message to him and offers a reward for Gloucester's death

• She admits bluntly that she wants Edmund for herself now that she is a widow: 

  • The sisters' rivalry over Edmund is now openly beginning to undermine their earlier alliance

Scene 6

• Edgar convinces Gloucester he has thrown himself from Dover cliff and survived by a miracle, restoring his will to live through a deception used for compassionate rather than cruel ends:

  • Edgar keeps his true identity secret throughout, choosing to protect his father's fragile hope rather than reveal himself too soon

• Lear appears in a state of wild delusion

• Oswald attempts to kill Gloucester but is killed by Edgar instead:

  • Edgar buries the body and takes the letters from it

  • He reads that Goneril intends to have Albany murdered so she can marry Edmund

• Lear tells Gloucester that a person does not need working eyes to understand how the world truly operates, but can listen with their ears:

  • He is then chased off by attendants sent to bring him to Cordelia

Scene 7

• Cordelia is reunited with Lear, who recovers just enough to recognise her and beg forgiveness, calling himself a foolish old man

• The Doctor confirms Lear's madness is beginning to pass, and Lear openly acknowledges that Cordelia has every reason to hate him:

  • He says her sisters have done him wrong, and whilst she has cause to hate him, they do not

Act 5

Scene 1

• Edmund, now commanding Regan's army, privately debates which sister to commit to

• Edgar, adopting a third disguise as an ordinary peasant, secretly passes Albany a letter exposing Goneril's plot to have him murdered

• Goneril and Regan, forced to fight alongside one another against the French invasion, openly refuse to leave each other alone with Edmund:

  • This shows the alliance between the sisters is weakening still

Scene 2

• Edgar leaves Gloucester resting beneath a tree while he goes to fight for Lear's side, returning shortly after with the news that the battle is already lost

• The French forces are defeated offstage, and Lear and Cordelia are captured

• Gloucester, hearing they have lost, declares he would rather die here, where he is:

  • Edgar persuades him that death will come at its own time

Scene 3

• Lear and Cordelia are imprisoned

• Edmund secretly orders their execution via a written note to a captain, its contents never made explicit to the audience

• The rivalry between Goneril and Regan over Edmund turns fatal: 

  • Goneril poisons her sister

• Then, exposed as a traitor, Edmund is defeated in a duel by the disguised Edgar:

  • Edgar reveals his true identity and explains how he cared for Gloucester while disguised as Poor Tom

• As Edmund dies, a man enters with a bloody knife:

  • He reveals that Goneril has committed suicide after admitting to poisoning Regan

• Edmund confesses to ordering Cordelia's death, but the reprieve arrives too late:

  • Lear enters carrying her body, having killed her executioner himself but being unable to save her

• Kent, still disguised for most of this scene, finally reveals his true identity to Lear, who is far too consumed by grief over Cordelia to register who Kent really is

• Overwhelmed with grief, Lear dies beside Cordelia, believing for one final, agonising moment that he sees her lips move, before Kent confirms she is truly gone 

  • Edmund dies shortly after from his wounds, his last act an attempt at good he cannot complete in time

• Albany offers joint rule of Britain to Kent and Edgar:

  • Kent declines, explaining he feels his own death approaching and wishes only to say farewell

  • Edgar is left to govern a kingdom devastated by the same flattery and pride that began the tragedy

Sources

• Shakespeare, W. (1951) ‘King Lear’, in P. Alexander (ed.) The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Alexander Text. London: Collins [SME Digital Texts Library edition]