74 pages • 2 hours read
William Shakespeare, William James RolfeKing Lear
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Acts I-IIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act I, Scene 1 Summary
Two noblemen, Kent and Gloucester, discuss a mysterious political change: the King plans to relinquish his power and divide his kingdom. Gloucester introduces Kent to his illegitimate son Edmund, making a few rude jokes about Edmund’s birth.
King Lear arrives and welcomes his family members: his eldest daughter Goneril and her husband Albany, his middle daughter Regan and her husband Cornwall, and his youngest unmarried daughter Cordelia. Lear announces he will “shake all cares and business from our age,/Conferring them on younger strengths while we/Unburdened crawl toward death” (39-41). He intends to divide his kingdom between his daughters and to marry Cordelia to one of two suitors, the King of France or the Duke of Burgundy.
Before relinquishing his kingdom, Lear insists that his daughters tell him: “Which of you shall we say doth love us most,/That we our largest bounty may extend/Where nature doth with merit challenge” (51-53).
The two eldest daughters take turns lavishly praising their father. Goneril goes first and shamelessly flatters him; Regan follows, saying that she loves her father as Goneril does, only even more. The youngest daughter, Cordelia, listens in horror to this insincere display.
Related Titles
By these authors
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare, Іван Франко, Barbara A. Mowat, Ivan Franko, Panteleimon Kulish, Cynthia Marshall, Ludwig Tieck, August Wilhelm von Schlegel, Paul Werstine
As You Like It
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare, Roma Gill, William Aldis Wright, Francis Fergusson
Cymbeline
William Shakespeare, Harold Bloom, Gabriele Baldini
Hamlet
William Shakespeare, Israel Gollancz, Harold Bloom, Rex Gibson, Henry Norman Hudson, Max J. Herzberg, L.A. Sherman
Henry IV, Part Two
William Shakespeare, David Scott Kastan, David Bevington
Henry V
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Michael Neill, Paul Werstine
Henry VIII
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
Henry VI, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare, Roma Gill, Harold Bloom, William Allan Neilson
King Henry IV, Part 1
William Shakespeare, David Scott Kastan
King Henry VI, Part 3
William Shakespeare, John D. Cox, Eric Rasmussen
King John
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare, Henry R. Woudhuysen
Macbeth
William Shakespeare, Jack Armstrong, Carmen Kahn
Measure for Measure
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine
Much Ado About Nothing
Gail Kern Paster, Robert Jackson, Barbara A. Mowat, Henry Norman Hudson, F.H. Mares, Henry Irving, Frederick S. Boas, Paul Werstine, William Shakespeare
Othello
William Shakespeare, Barbara A. Mowat, Paul Werstine