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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... fortunes . CORDELIA Good my my lord , You have begot me , bred me , loved me : I Return those duties back as are right fit , Obey you , love you , and most honour you . Why have my sisters husbands , if they say They love you all ...
... fortune are his love, I shall not be his wife. Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon: Be it lawful I take up what's cast away. Gods ...
... fortune's alms. You have obedience scanted, And well are worth the want that you have wanted. Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last shame them derides. Well may you prosper! Come, my fair Cordelia ...
... fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them . I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny ; who sways , not as it hath power , but as it is suffered . Come to me , that of this I may speak more ...
... fortune— often the surfeit of our own behavior —we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical ...