King Lear, Act 1

Due March 24.

For this act, you should respond to TWO of the reader-response questions. Your answers should be 300+ words apiece.

1. Identify with Edmund. What do you know about family dynamics and parents’ treatment of children that might make him act the way he does? What is there to respect about him? Why do you think Gloucester treats him the way he does? Is there any modern day equivalent to this?

2. Consider the character of Goneril or Regan in this first act. Yes, they are monstrous, but what does that monstrosity look like from the inside? What drives them? What does the world inside their heads look like?
To put it in another way…. Jealousy and power-grabbing seem to be as much a part of families as they are of politics and business. Can you relate to either of these two sisters? Have you ever seen a situation similar to the one in the first act of this play? In your opinion, what drives this kind of behavior?

3. How do you understand the relationship between Cordelia and Lear? He seems to love her, and she him, but how? Why is she unable to speak when her very survival depends on her speaking? Why is he unable to hear her truth?
To take the same concept from another angle…. While her sisters’ speeches are excellent examples of verbal manipulation, the one person (Cordelia) who goes in honestly with Lear’s best interests at heart is punished because she doesn’t want (or know how to) “play the game.” Have you seen situations like this? Have you used your powers of manipulation to get what you want? Have you been the loser in a game like this?

4. Leo Tolstoy tells us in the first line of his great novel Anna Karenina, “All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Lear’s is obviously an unhappy family, as is Gloucester’s. Explore the source of the unhappiness in both of the families. What is it that has torn each one apart? Some sin of the fathers? Or of the children? Human nature? What is wrong here? Are there any similarities between the two, or are they indeed “both unhappy in their own way?”

5. Discuss the nature of loyalty. Kent’s loyalty to Lear is of such an extreme form that it may be hard to understand. There really aren’t servants in the modern day—at least, not servants like Kent, who will follow their king off into the moors after the king has treated them like garbage. Yet our present world is full of examples of unswerving loyalty. From the blind devotion of cult followers to the more benign allegiance football players to their coach, we have all seen it. Where does it come from in general? Is there some personality type that is more likely to be loyal? To inspire loyalty? Can you speak from personal experience or observation? Return to the play long enough to address what the presence of this type of loyalty tells us about Lear and about Kent.