King Lear Quiz                                   

English 305

Dr. Fike          

1.                                         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 honor you.

Why have my sisters husbands, if they say

They love you all?

2.  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.

3.  A credulous father, and a brother noble,             

Whose nature is so far from doing harms

That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty

My practices ride easy.  I see the business.

Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit.

All with me's meet that I can fashion fit.

4.  Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once:  of lust, as Obidicut; Hobbididance, prince of dumbness; Mahu, of Stealing; Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mowing, who since possesses chambermaids and waiting women.                                                                                   

5.  These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us.  Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects.  Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked twixt son and father.

6.  Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,        

With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,

Turn all her mother's pains and benefits

To laughter and contempt, that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child. 

7.  To both these sisters have I sworn my love,           

Each jealous of the other as the stung

Are of the adder.  Which of them shall I take?

Both?  One?  Or neither?  Neither can be enjoyed

If both remain alive.

8.  Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are,        

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you

From seasons such as these?  O, I have ta'en

Too little care of this!

9.  He childed as I fathered.                                      

10.  In one or two sentences, explain how the concept of "conflicting rituals" relates to King Lear.