For Tuesday: King Lear, Acts 4-5

Here are six questions for Acts 4 and 5, since so much happens here! But you still only have to answer two of them for next week. Again, I don't care when you answer them, whether on Tuesday or Thursday, but keep in mind I'll be giving you questions for Thursday as well. If you need extra time to finish the play, don't worry--we'll only be reading a little bit next week from Wells and Poole, so you'll still have time. You don't have to finish exactly for Tuesday since we don't technically have classes anymore! 

Answer two of the following: 

Q1: Read Lear’s speech on page 90 (4.6) that begins “Ay, every inch a king!” carefully.  After emerging from the storm, Lear seems both mad and enlightened, speaking nonsense and ‘sense’ in equal terms.  In this speech, however, he goes on a misogynist rant against women and seemingly blames them for his downfall.  What is he specifically accusing women of here, and have we heard this language (or sentiments) in other characters in previous plays? Also, how might this relate to Lear’s interest in sex that Ian McKellan discusses in his video (the post above)?

Q2: In some ways, Cordelia and Edgar are mirror images of one another, each one caring for a damaged father, both exiled, and both of them acting (to some extent).  How might one character help us ‘read’ the other, and how do their paths cross metaphorically—or linguistically—in Act IV? 

Q3: How do we read the marital discord between Albany and Goneril in Act 4, Scene 2?  Is this the first time he’s seeing his wife like this—or has this knowledge been long known by him?  Is she surprised by his sudden sympathy for her father?  How does the language of their argument help us see them both—and particularly Goneril—in a new light?

Q4: In Goneril’s scene with Edmund (Act 4, Scene 2), she says, “Oh, the difference of man and man/To thee a woman’s services are due;/My Fool usurps my body” (179).  How does her definition of man, a definition defined against her husband, help us understand why she and her sister are so drawn to Edmund—and so angry toward their father?  Does this remind you of anything Lady Macbeth says to Macbeth? Are they defining “men” similarly?

Q5: By the end of Act V, Regan is poisoned, Goneril kills herself, Edmund is slain by Edgar, Gloucester’s heart breaks, Cordelia is hung, and Lear dies at her side.  However, many of these deaths were Shakespeare original invention, as the sources for King Lear (including a play of the same name) have Cordelia surviving. Why do you think Shakespeare insisted on doing away with Cordelia? Do we want—or hope for—a happy ending in this play?  Is it another attempt to frustrate our desires or expectations (giving us a play not as we like it?).  Or does Cordelia have to die to make sense of the play? 

Q6: Related to the above question, consider who does survive: Kent, Edgar, and Albany.  Why these men?  And what do you make of Edgar’s enigmatic final line: “The oldest have borne most; we that are young/Shall never see so much, nor live so long” (114)?  Why does he say this when both Kent and Albany are far from “young”?  Or is this statement about some other kind of youth/age?