King LearStandard Ebooks King Lear is a tragedy by Shakespeare, written about 1605 or 1606. Shakespeare based it on the legendary King Leir of the Britons, whose story is outlined in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s pseudohistorical History of the Kings of Britain (written in about 1136). The play tells the tale of the aged King Lear who is passing on the control of his kingdom to his three daughters. He asks each of them to express their love for him, and the first two, Goneril and Regan do so effusively, saying they love him above all things. But his youngest daughter, Cordelia, is compelled to be truthful and says that she must reserve some love for her future husband. Lear, enraged, cuts her off without any inheritance. The secondary plot deals with the machinations of Edmund, the bastard son of the Earl of Gloucester, who manages to convince his father that his legitimate son Edgar is plotting against him. After Lear steps down from power, he finds that his elder daughters have no real respect or love for him, and treat him and his followers as a nuisance. They allow the raging Lear to wander out into a storm, hoping to be rid of him, and conspire with Edmund to overthrow the Earl of Gloucester. The play is a moving study of the perils of old age and the true meaning of filial love. It ends tragically with the deaths of both Cordelia and Lear—so tragically, in fact, that performances during the Restoration period sometimes substituted a happy ending. In modern times, though, King Lear is performed as written and generally regarded as one of Shakespeare’s best plays. This Standard Ebooks edition is based on William George Clark and William Aldis Wright’s 1887 Victoria edition, which is taken from the Globe edition. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks. |
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... bear , Our potency made good , take thy reward . Five days we do allot thee , for provision To shield thee from diseases of the world ; And on the sixth to turn thy hated back Upon our kingdom : if , on the tenth day following , Thy ...
... with such dispositions as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us. We shall further think on't. GONERIL We must do something, and i' the heat. (Exeunt.) SCENE II The Earl of GLOUCESTER'S castle EDMUND GLOUCESTER EDMUND.
... bear you- Pray you , content . What , Oswald , ho ! ( To the FOOL . ) You , sir , more knave than fool , after your master . Nuncle Lear , nuncle Lear , tarry and take the fool with thee . A fox , when one has caught her , And such a ...
... bears by the neck , monkeys by the loins , and men by the legs : when a man's over- lusty at legs , then he wears wooden nether - stocks . What's he that hath so much thy place mistook To set thee here ? It is both he and she ; Your son ...
... bear bags Shall see their children kind. Fortune, that arrant whore, Ne'er turns the key to the poor. But, for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year. O, how this mother swells up toward ...