Thinking about 'King Lear'
Here are 17 exercises on quotations in King Lear. They are designed for pair-work 10-minute sessions in class, but work perfectly well for individuals. You need to know the play well, so these are for revision at a late stage. The purpose is to make your mind work hard: retrieving factual details, certainly, about the sequence of the play, individual quotations and so on, but more importantly know making you think and create connections, and have a debate with a partner.
You don’t need to write on the original sheet itself: just take a piece of paper and jot down your responses. When finished find the quotation in context from the text itself, and then fill in any gaps. [Line numbers are from the Everyman edition Tragedies, Volume 1].
Here is a series of 15 exercises on Hamlet in the same format.
‘Good 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.’ 1.i. Go here.
‘He always loved our sister most, and with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off appears too grossly.’ I i 292. Go here.
‘Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit. / All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit.’ I ii 196-7. Go here.
‘Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend / To make this creature fruitful.’ I iv 283-4. Go here.
‘Poor Turlygod, Poor Tom, / That’s something yet. Edgar I nothing am.’ II iii 20-21. Go here.
‘O reason not the need! Our basest beggars / Are in the poorest thing superfluous.’ II iv 264-5. Go here.
‘Thou, all-shaking thunder, / Strike flat the thick rotundity o’th’ world.’ III ii 6-7. Go here.
‘Tremble, thou wretch, / That hast within thee undivulged crimes / Unwhipped of justice.’ III ii 51-3. Go here.
‘O, I have ta’en / Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; / Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.’ III iv 32-4. Go here.
‘See what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause in nature that make these hard hearts?’ III vi 775. Go here.
‘He that will think to live till he be old, / Give me some help. – O cruel! O you gods!’ III vii 70-71. Go here.
‘So distribution should undo excess, / And each man have enough.’ IV I 72-73. Go here.
‘Why I do trifle thus with his despair / Is done to cure it.’ IV vi 33-4. Go here.
‘There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog’s obeyed in office.’
IV vi 159-161. Go here.
‘Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound / Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears / Do scald like molten lead.’ IV vii 46-7. Go here.
‘Come, let’s away to prison: / We two alone will sing like birds i’th’cage.’ V iii 8-9. Go here.
She’s gone for ever. / I know when one is dead and one lives; / She’s dead as earth.’ V iii 261-3. Go here.