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.
Character Analysis
Lear
Lear is a mighty figure and a titan among Shakespeare’s tragic heroes. But he’s also a small-minded, ill-tempered, and self-involved old man—at least at the start. Lear’s initial bad decision to ask his daughters how much they love him before he’ll give them his kingdom sets the scene for the whole play. This demand suggests a world where love is nothing but an expression of power. Lear is fortunate to be truly loved by Cordelia, Kent, and his Fool, who refuse to play along with his manipulative game.
As his plan backfires, Lear rediscovers his connection to reality over the course of the play. When he goes mad in the midst of a terrible storm, his madness paradoxically reconnects him to reality: he remembers that he, like Edgar’s beggar “Poor Tom,” is a “poor, bare, forked animal” (3.4.108), a mortal being in a painful and unpredictable world. Over the rest of the play, he acts on what he’s learned, consoling the blinded Gloucester, humbling himself before the wronged Cordelia, and submitting to imprisonment with a wisdom that comes from a sense that there are things in this world more important than power and status.
But this isn’t a morality play—at least, not in the conventional sense—and Lear receives no reward for his education in harsh reality.
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