"King Lear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be amiss to mention here another class of stories which come under the formula of "Persecuted Maiden." The class resembles in some respects the story of King Lear. The youngest daughter is persecuted by her father because he thinks she does not love him as much as her older sisters. A good example of this class is Pitre, No. 10, L'Acqua ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... region in which Michael Angelo, Beethoven, Goethe, and the antique Athenian stage poets are great. He would really not be great at all if it were not that he had religion enough to be aware that his religionless condition was one of despair. His towering King Lear would be only a melodrama were it not for its express admission that if there is nothing more to be said of the universe than Hamlet has to say, then 'as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods: they ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... with an ever-increasing violence, until it seemed that even the stalled car would be compelled to yield to its force. Claire had never seen it rain harder; the storm had a vindictive fury that reminded her of the dreadful tempest in "King Lear." ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... exhibited at the Shakspeare Gallery, or at least taken from that poet, the only ones, as has been very correctly said, which Sir Joshua ever executed for his illustration, with the exception of a head of 'King Lear' (done indeed in 1783), and now in possession of the Marchioness of Thomond, and a portrait of the Hon. Mrs. Tollemache, in the character of 'Miranda,' in The Tempest, in which 'Prospero' and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... for Shakespeare's 'King Lear' and 'Cymbeline' came from Geoffrey's 'Historia Britonum,' as did also the story of 'Gorboduc,' the first tragedy in the English language. Milton intended at one time that the subject of the great poem for which he was "pluming his wings" should be King Arthur, as may be seen, in his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... save that here and there a solitary monk wore out his days in copying the treasures of antiquity, and used his imagination in embellishing the lives of saints and martyrs. When the manuscript is found which settles the exact date of King Lear's reign, I cannot doubt that it will give all particulars ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... I beg your pardon!" she hastily corrected herself, "King Lear! I hadn't noticed the crown." (Bruno had very cleverly provided one, which fitted him exactly, by cutting out the centre of a dandelion to ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... every way. He is the cat's-paw. By much dragging of chestnuts from the fire for others to eat, his claws are burnt off to the gristle, and he is thrown aside as unfit for further use. As the fool said of King Lear, when his daughters had turned him out of doors, "He 's a shelled peascod" ("That 's a ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... off Prince's Bay on Staten Island. A long, bright column told of the doings in the theatrical world—the plays produced, the actors appearing, the managers making announcements. Fannie Davenport was just opening at the Fifth Avenue. Daly was producing "King Lear." He read of the early departure for the season of a party composed of the Vanderbilts and their friends for Florida. An interesting shooting affray was on in the mountains of Kentucky. So he read, read, read, ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... the two elder ones vied with one another in attempts to set her mind at rest by undertaking everything, and promising for themselves and the children perfect regularity and harmony. Sophy, with a bluntness that King Lear would have highly disapproved, said, 'She was glad mamma was going, but she knew they should be all at sixes and sevens. She would do her best, and very bad it ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with some forms of barbarism, the author of CYMBELINE was hardly the man to repugn it, even if he amused himself by putting forward Caliban[196] as the real "cannibal," in contrast to Montaigne's. He had given his impression of certain aspects of civilisation in HAMLET, Measure for Measure, and KING LEAR. As his closing plays show, however, he had reached the knowledge that for the general as for the private wrong, the sane man must cease to cherish indignation. That teaching, which he could not didactically impose, for such a world as his, on the old tragedy of revenge which he recoloured ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Like Shakespeare's King Lear he courts death and madness in a great storm, then commits mass murder, collapses in catatonic paralysis, and suicidally runs his ship into the ocean's most dangerous whirlpool. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... a printer by trade, an editor by profession, and a hunter by choice. When busily employed he usually puts his hat in his pocket, and his thin hair and long beard stream in the wind, giving him a wild look, much like that of King Lear in an illustrated copy of Shakespeare which tumbles ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... Re'gan, second daughter of King Lear, and wife of the duke of Cornwall. Having received the half of her father's king-[TN-119] she refused to entertain him with his suite. On the death of her husband, she designed to marry Edmund, natural son of the earl of Gloster, and was poisoned by her elder sister, Goneril, out of jealousy. Regan, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of the seventeenth century, between his thirty-seventh and forty-seventh year, he produced "Hamlet," "Measure for Measure," his part of "Pericles," "All's Well that Ends Well," "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Julius Caesar," "Antony and Cleopatra," "Troilus and Cressida," "Cymbeline," "Coriolanus," and "Othello." These, with other works, were the fruit of his mind in its full maturity and vigor. Think of it a moment! what a period it was! As my eye lights upon the back of the eleventh volume ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... 'King Lear is an admirable tragedy of the same kind, as Shakespeare wrote it: but as it is reformed according to the chimerical notion of POETICAL JUSTICE, in my humble opinion it has lost half ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... accompaniment gracefully); a pleasant "Reverie" for string orchestra, harp, and organ; and two impromptus for string orchestra, a "Meditation" representing Cordelia brooding tenderly over the slumbering King Lear,—art ministering very tenderly to the mood,—and a cleverly woven ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... madness would seem to pass into real madness in Ophelia. King Lear's growing perturbation becomes insanity the moment he ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... full pelt, But as quiet as if he was 'shod with felt,' Till he rushes against you with all his force, And then I needn't describe the course, While he kicks you about without remorse, How awkward it is to be groom'd by a horse! Or a bullock comes, as mad as King Lear, And you never dream that the brute is near, Till he pokes his horn right into your ear, Whether you like the thing or lump it,— And all for ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... or St Leger sweeps to be held in his house. "You have seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar, and the creature run from the cur. There thou might'st behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office." You have—very well. Take crazy King Lear's words as a text for a sermon against legislative inconsistencies, and come back with me ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... translation of Letourneur. Before that translation began to appear, JEAN-FRANCOIS DUCIS (1733-1816), the patron of whose imagination was his "Saint Guillaume" of Stratford, though he knew no English, had in a fashion presented Hamlet (1769) and Romeo and Juliet to his countrymen; King Lear, Macbeth, King John, Othello (1792) followed. But Ducis came a generation too soon for a true Shakespearian rendering; simple and heroic in his character as a man, he belonged to an age of philosophers and sentimentalists, an age of "virtue" and "nature." Shakespeare's translation ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... settle down comfortably in lodgings, in Dove Court, Mansion House. He was soon hard at work upon 'The Death of Rizzio,' adorning his walls with pictures he had brought with him or sent for afterwards from Kendal, such as 'King Lear,' 'Elfrida,' 'The Death of Lefevre,' and a few portraits of friends. The Rizzio picture has been represented as 'a work of extraordinary merit, combining energetic action with strong expression.' Its fate was sad enough; attracting no notice, producing no profit, and at ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... benefit of that great actor[5] who was proceeding rapidly toward the highest paths of fame, when death, dropped the oblivious curtain, and closed the scene for ever. The part which he performed was King Lear; his wife, afterward Mrs. Fisher, played Cordelia, but not with sufficient eclat to render the profession an object for her future exertions. The whole school attended, Mr. Powel's two daughters being then pupils of the Misses ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... creative force. His sympathy is universal, and therefore so is his interest. He sees the like in the unlike, the differences in things which are similar. Every little bird and every little flower are known to him. He contemplates Falstaff and Poor Tom with as much interest as though they were Hamlet and King Lear. In all original minds the power of observation is great. It is the chief source of our earliest knowledge, of that which touches us most nearly and most deeply colors the imagination. When the boy is wandering through ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... of a palsied old man. I sank upon a stone to rest, to try and arrange my scattered ideas into some sort of connection and order. Mad! I clasped my aching head between my hands, and brooded on the fearful prospect looming before me, and in the words of poor King Lear, I prayed in ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... distract, So should my thoughts be sever'd from my griefs, And woes by strong imagination lose The knowledge of themselves. King Lear. ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... episode in King Lear's earlier years, which throws much imaginative light on Goneril's and Cordelia's later treatment of their father. Lear's wife herself, as we might have ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... on, "My prologue an anachronism, quotha! The groundlings will never mark it. Think'st thou wisdom came to mankind with the stenchful rocket and the sundered atomy? More, the Bard himself was topfull of anachronism. He put spectacles on King Lear, had clocks tolling the hour in Caesar's Rome, buried that Roman 'stead o' burning him and gave Czechoslovakia ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... again the fret of heart and soul, The loneliness and passion of King Lear; No more bewilderment and broken words Of wild ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... critics, concludes his remarks on King Lear with these words: "Of the heavenly beauty of soul of Cordelia, I will not venture to speak." Now if I attempt what Schlegel and others have left undone, it is because I feel that this general acknowledgment ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... about Shakespere. Weren't you perfectly astonished when you found out how many other plays there were of his? I always thought there was nothing but "Hamlet," and "Romeo and Juliet," and "Macbeth," and "Richard III.," and "King Lear," and that one that Robson and Crane have—oh, yes, "Comedy ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... less striking and unfamiliar. From the dead branches of those skeleton pines and hemlocks, these rampikes, hang masses of white moss, snow-white, amid the dark verdure. An actor might wear such a beard in the play of King Lear. Acadian children wore such to imitate "grandpere," centuries ago; Cowley's trees are "Patricians," these ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... smoke again? Last night I had been in a sad quandary of spirits, in what they call the evening; but a pipe and some generous Port, and King Lear (being alone), had its effects as a remonstrance. I went to bed pot-valiant. By the way, may not the Ogles of Somersetshire be ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... are passages in King Lear which are enough to make us wish we had never been born. They are almost an impeachment of the Ruler of the Universe, and yet—there is Cordelia. Whence did she come? She is as much His handiwork as Regan, and in all our conclusions about Him we ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... loyalty, follows his master with quip and quirk, into exile. When all, even his daughters, have forsaken King Lear, the fool bares himself to the storm and covers the shaking old man with his own cloak. And when in our own day we meet the avatars of Trinculo, Costard, Mercutio and Jacques, we find they are men of tender susceptibilities, generous hearts ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... my guardian angel ever since my blindness. She does all my writing, reads the plays and my notes to refresh my memory. She was reading King Lear this afternoon, and I was much stirred by the sad trials of the poor old king. I mentally compared my lot with his and found that the advantage is mine. He had no home, two ungrateful daughters, and, as far as I can learn, no 'shadow of a rock ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody
... follow Dr. Prior on this word: "Harlock, as usually printed in 'King Lear' and in ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... now agreed to accept that story as a great and tragic study of passion and sorrow, a wild picture of storm and moorland, of outraged goodness and ingratitude. The world which has crowned 'King Lear' with immortality, keeps a lesser wreath for 'Wuthering Heights.' But in 1848, the peals of triumph which acclaimed the success of 'Jane Eyre' had no echo for the work of Ellis Bell. That strange genius, brooding and foreboding, intense and narrow, was passed over, ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... write at any moment, whereas the speech of Lear is what Lear said at one particular moment. The contrast between the two is the contrast well put in the epigram about Barry and Garrick in their renderings of King Lear:— ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... because it is the most sincere expression of the deepest and rarest passion. His object was the object attained by Shakespeare in some of his supremest moments; the bare intolerable force of the speeches after the murder of Macbeth, or of King Lear's ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... Essays. I dare say I couldn't light upon all these now; but, having been turning over Essai 9, Lib. III. De la Vanite, I find one sentence which comes to the point: 'Car parfois c'est bien choisir de ne choisir pas.' In the same Essay is a piece of King Lear, perhaps; 'De ce mesme papier ou il vient d'escrire l'arrest de condemnation contre un Adultere, le Juge en desrobe un lopin pour en faire un poulet a la femme de son compaignon.' One doesn't talk of such things as of plagiarisms, of course; as ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... acquainted with Shakespeare, I was displeased with his coldness, with his insensibility, which allows him to jest even in the most pathetic moments, to disturb the impression of the most harrowing scenes in "Hamlet," in "King Lear," and in "Macbeth," etc., by mixing with them the buffooneries of a madman. I was revolted by his insensibility, which allowed him to pause sometimes at places where my sensibility would bid me hasten and bear me along, and which sometimes carried him away with ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... an intense power of invention and expression in domestic drama; (King Lear and Hamlet being essentially domestic in their strongest motives of interest). There is a tendency at this moment towards a noble development of our art in this direction, checked by many adverse conditions, which may be summed in one,—the insufficiency of generous ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... with pleasure and remembers here and there a passage of fine poetry, or a noble or lovely trait. But their characters, as wholes, leave a fading impression. Who, even after a single reading or representation, ever forgets Falstaff, or Shylock, or King Lear? ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... usurped its throne, and ever since the maddened old creature, with hoary crest of foam, wails and laments continually, like King Lear exposed to the fury ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... supporting her back when making an ascent; he carried her shawls, chair, and other little necessities, reverently, lovingly, as if he had become her son when she had ceased to be his wife. And there sat King Lear with his daughter,—it was terrible to see. He was over sixty, had had eight children, six of whom were daughters, and who, in his days of affluence, he had allowed to manage his house and, no doubt, the economy thereof. Now he was poor, had nothing, and they had all deserted him except one daughter ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... sight-seeing in Boston all day, was to dine and go to the theatre with us afterwards. The talk naturally turned upon the stage. Longfellow said he thought Mr. Charles Mathews was entirely unjust in his criticisms upon Mr. Forrest's King Lear. He considered Mr. Forrest's rendering of the part as very fine and close to nature. He could not understand why Mr. Mathews should underrate it as he did. Longfellow showed us a book given him by Charles ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... possession. 62. Ignorance on the subject of mental disease. The exorcists. 63. John Cotta on possession. What the "learned physicion" knew. 64. What was manifest to the vulgar view. Will Sommers. "The Devil is an Ass." 65. Harsnet's "Declaration," and "King Lear." 66. The Babington conspiracy. 67. Weston, alias Edmonds. His exorcisms. Mainy. The basis of Harsnet's statements. 69. The devils in "Lear." 70. Edgar and Mainy. Mainy's loose morals. 71. The devils tempt with knives and halters. 72. Mainy's seven devils: Pride, Covetousness, Luxury, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... years his success was tremendous—then came the sad ending. McCullough had always been supremely great in characters requiring the delineation of madness—Virginius, King Lear, Othello. Whether this had anything to do with the final tragedy cannot be said, but in 1884, while playing at Chicago, he broke down in the midst of a performance, and had to be led from the stage. His mind was gone; he never rallied, and ended his ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... they pointed out to her the desk at which Shakespeare sat as a lad, with all its boyish hieroglyphics, and her thought instinctively leaped across the years to "The Tempest," "King Lear," and "Hamlet." She pondered deeply the relation between the activities of the lad and the behavior of the man, wondering how much the school had to do with the plays that stand alone in literature, and whether ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... praised her so injudiciously that she became completely spoiled. She has performed a round of characters during the last week, very miserably, though we are bound to confess that her performance of King Lear last evening was superior to anything of the kind we ever saw. Miss Pelican is about forty-three years of age, singularly plain in her personal appearance, awkward and embarrassed, with a cracked and squeaking ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... Berlioz at the Conservatoire, Chopin played an "Andante" for the piano with orchestral accompaniments of his own composition, which, placed as it was among the overtures to "Les Francs-Juges" and "King Lear," the "Harold" Symphony, and other works of Berlioz, no doubt sounded at the concert as strange as it looks on the programme. The "Andante" played by Chopin was of course the middle movement of one of his concertos. [Footnote: Probably ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... in numbers, or both. Dynasties and aristocracies which have disregarded the laws of nature have decreased in numbers and degenerated in stature; 'mariages de convenance' leave their enfeebling stamp on the offspring of them (King Lear). The marriage of near relations, or the marrying in and in of the same family tends constantly to weakness or idiocy in the children, sometimes assuming the form as they grow older of passionate licentiousness. The common prostitute rarely has any ...
— The Republic • Plato
... cannot, as it were, see the wood for the trees; there is no room for perspective, no lawns and glades for pleasure and repose, no vistas through which to view some towering hill or elevated temple; everything in that crowded space seems of the same value: he speaks with no more awe of "King Lear" than of the last Cobden prize essay; he has swallowed them both with the same ease, and got the facts safe in his pouch; but he has no time to ruminate because he must still be swallowing; nor does he seem to know what even Macbeth, with Banquo's ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... better than those sudden leaps from society, and M. Egiste Brancadori, who kept the Marzocco, was one of those unconscious buffoons of whom he was continually in search in real life, one of those whom he called his "Thebans", in reference to King Lear. "I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban," cried the mad king, one knows not why, when he meets ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and struck a vein of reminiscence of a very poignant kind. Browning told us that he did not know Landor very well, but that he saw him in the last years of his life under circumstances of a terribly pathetic kind. Landor played almost exactly the part of King Lear—though from a different reason—and got almost exactly King Lear's reward. Landor, it will be remembered, was originally a rich man. It will also be remembered that he was possessed of a very arbitrary and turbulent nature and quarrelled with many members of ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... talk: about dramatists; you have read Shakespeare?" "Yes, every play again and again." "Which do you like best?" "I like them all, the historical and the imaginative; I have never seen one acted, but to me King Lear is his masterpiece." ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... opportunity. Sometimes he would go up to her in the midst of the little party and broach one of these topics straight on end, without preface or introduction, as which was her favourite play of Shakespeare, and what did she think of the character of King Lear? It was not very wise, not any wiser than his neighbour was, who made pretty little Ursula into the ideal lady, the most gentle and stately figure in poetry; and yet no doubt there was something in both follies that was a great deal better than wisdom. The society ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... given by Reginald Scot. The narrative is edifying as peculiarly illustrative of the mode of marring a curious tale in telling it, which was one of the virtues professed by Caius when he hired himself to King Lear. Reginald Scot, incredulous on the subject of witchcraft, seems to have given some weight to the belief of those who thought that the spirits of famous men do, after death, take up some particular habitations near cities, towns, and countries, and act as tutelary and guardian ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium, and doubted as to whether I was senseless in feeling works regarded as the summit of perfection by the whole of the civilized ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... Another night we spent in Philadelphia, and went to the Chestnut Street Theater. Staples had a fondness for theaters, and on these occasions I followed his example. I had been in a theater but one, when I saw Forrest in Boston, in King Lear. At Philadelphia I bought a copy of Byron for three dollars. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... without much persuasion, to join the rest of the party at dinner. In the evening, all (Fairthorn excepted) draw round the fire. Waife is entreated by George to read a scene or two out of Shakespeare. He selects the latter portion of "King Lear." Darrell, who never was a playgoer, and who, to his shame be it said, had looked very little into Shakespeare since he left college, was wonderstruck. He himself read beautifully—all great orators, I suppose, do; but his talent ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he learned that his Ariel—otherwise Marie Moke—had forsaken him and had married Pleyel. In a wild state of frenzy he would go to Paris at once and seek revenge. He started, got as far as Nice, grew calmer, remained at Nice for a month, during which time the Overture to "King Lear" was written, then returned to Rome by the way of Genoa ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... And thus King Lear—that impersonation of absolutism—the very embodiment of pure will and tyranny in their most frantic form, taken out all at once from that hot bath of flatteries to which he had been so long accustomed, that his whole self-consciousness had become saturated, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the Verona houses. There is always feud where there is not understanding. There is eternal feud between those two camps of misunderstanding, age and youth. This play, written by a young man, shows the feud from the point of view of youth. The play of King Lear shows it from the point of view of age. This play of youth is as lovely and as feverish as love itself. Youth is bright and beautiful, like the animals. Age is too tired to care for brightness, too cold to care for beauty. The bright, beautiful creatures ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... drawn up to his fullest height, imposing as a new King Lear, his deep, dark eyes glowing with ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... the corruptions, or, as they are called, alterations and adaptations of the plays of Shakspeare. As he has not prosecuted the subject, I will, with your permission, say a word or two on that vilest and most infamous of literary treasons, Tate's burlesque of king Lear. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... musical form, it was generally at the expense of his program. Are the somewhat picturesque episodes of "Harold in Italy," whatever their virtues, and they are many, more than vaguely related to the Byronism that ostensibly elemented them? The surprisingly conventional overture to "King Lear" makes one feel as though Berlioz had sat through a performance of one of Shakespeare's comedies under the impression that he was assisting at the tragedy, so unrelated to its subject is the music. And where, on the other hand, Berlioz did succeed in ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... pantomime is very touching," said Reggie. "The pantaloon is one of the most luridly tragic figures in art or in life. If I were a great actor, I would as soon play the pantaloon as 'King Lear.'" ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... out the math for the interplanetary ships? I did! Without me they would never have been built!" He turned dramatically, as though he were playing King Lear. "And what do I get for it?" He pointed an accusing finger at Arcot. "What do I get? He is called 'Earth's most brilliant physicist', and I, who did all the hard work, am referred to as 'his mathematical assistant'." He shook his head solemnly. ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... point of address. I myself, for example, am the meekest of men, and in abhorrence of slavery yield to no human creature, and yet I don't admit the sequence that I want Uncle Tom (or Aunt Tomasina) to expound "King Lear" to me. And I believe my case to be the ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... Nahum Tate was an English Poet-Laureate. It is said of him that he was so extremely modest that he was never able to make his fortune or to raise himself above necessity. He was not too modest, however, to dare to make a metrical version of the Psalms, to write an improvement of King Lear, and a continuation of Absalom and Achitophel. Brady—equally modest—translated the Aeneid in rivalry of Dryden. "This translation," says Johnson, "when dragged into the world did not live long ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... written thirty-seven plays and many poems. The best of his rhymed poems are his Sonnets, in which he chronicles many of the various moods of his mind. The plays consist of tragedies, historical plays, and comedies. The greatest of his tragedies are probably Hamlet and King Lear; the best of his historical plays, Richard III. and Julius Csar; and his finest comedies, Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It. He wrote in the reign of Elizabeth as well as in that of James; but his greatest works ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... be directed to some great master of ideal mimicry. The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy, though liable to great abuse in point of practice, is undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in KING LEAR, universal, ideal, and sublime. It is perhaps the intervention of this principle which determines the balance in favour of KING LEAR against the OEDIPUS TYRANNUS or the AGAMEMNON, or, if you will, the trilogies with which they are connected; ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... title page of the autograph copy of the full score is inscribed the following quotation from King Lear: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods; they kill us ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... November 1662 to print the first part of 'Hudibras.' The quaint title of this poem has attracted much curious cavil. The name is used by Milton, Spenser, and Robert of Gloucester for an early king of Britain, the grandfather of King Lear; and by Ben Jonson—from whom Butler evidently adopted it—for a swaggering fellow ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... her lips pursed up, and her eyes on the ground, and she was insolent enough to say that she would pray for me. I am not a furious old man with a long white beard, and I don't curse my daughter and rush out into a thunderstorm afterward—but I know what King Lear felt, and I have struggled with hysterics just as he did. With your wonderful insight into human nature, I am sure you will sympathize with and forgive me. Mr. Penrose, as my daughter tells me, behaved ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... may see how this world goes with no eyes.—Look with thine ears: See how yon justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark in thine ear—change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? King Lear. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... much?" She did not feel at all disturbed when Marion answered, "Yes," though that was the word she had been dreading, for the speech she added, "If the child is going to be worth while it always hurts, but one does not care," seemed to her one of those sombre and heartening things like "King Lear," or the black line of the Pentland Hills against the sky, which she felt took fear from life, since they showed it black and barren of comfort and yet more than ever beautiful. It settled her practical consideration: she had known that she would ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... we find the fatality in "Hamlet," "King Lear," in "Macbeth"? Is its throne not erected in the very centre of the old king's madness, on the lowest degree of the young prince's imagination, at the very summit of the Thane's morbid cravings? Macbeth ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... two horsemen as evincing some ingenuity, and as likely to charm the reader by its freshness and originality. But one point, we must confess, is not new, and that is the representation of Shakespeare as a lawyer. The supposition, that the author of "Macbeth," "Hamlet," and "King Lear," was a bustling young attorney, is of respectable age, and has years enough upon its beard, if not discretion. It has been brought forward afresh by two members of the profession for which is claimed the honor of having Shakespeare's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... of Junction City, Kansas, has written a series of short stories on the property rights of women in Kansas, a subject that was and is, still, of vital importance to the women of the state. "The Legal Status of Mrs. O'Rourke" and "King Lear in Kansas" are two ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... more enthusiastic, and wrote: "You will be very proud of 'Le Pere Goriot.' My friends insist that nothing is comparable to it, and that it is above all my other compositions."[*] Certainly the vivid portrait of old Goriot, that ignoble King Lear, who in his extraordinary passion of paternal love rouses our sympathy, in spite of his many absurdities and shortcomings, is a striking instance of Balzac's power in ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... lost in Lord Byron. To commence with the great Shakspeare himself, to whom universal admiration continues to be paid. Had Shakspeare been cut off at the same early period as Byron, The Tempest, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Coriolanus, and several others of an equal character, would never have been written. The high reputation of Dryden would also have been limited—his fame, perhaps, unknown. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... train and I'll ask her. I am sure she will let you, because last night, when it was so cold, she said she felt sorry for anything that had to be out in it, even the poor old cedar trees, with the sleet on their branches. She said that it was King Lear's own weather, and she could understand how Cordelia felt when she said, 'Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me, should have stood that night against my fire!' It is just like auntie to feel that way about it, only she's so good to everybody she couldn't ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... nothing in history more majestic than the battle of this giant soul against his doom; nothing more heartrending than his bitter outcries; nothing loftier than his high determination to serve his turn on earth in spite of all. He was the very King Lear of music, trudging his lonely way with heart broken and hair wild in the storms that buffeted him vainly toward the ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... answer to the maid: "Who then is this Mam'selle Wieck? I know two Fraeulein Wieck only; they are my two little daughters here. I know no other!" As Litzmann says: "With so shrill a dissonance ended Clara's stay at Leipzig." He compares this exile of the daughter by the father to the story of King Lear and Cordelia. But it was the blind and tyrannical old Lear of the first act, driving from his home his most loving child. On October 3d, Clara went back to Berlin to her mother. Her father moved heaven and earth to make Clara ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... unfavorable that it was necessary to remain two weeks, waiting for an opportunity to see the stars. One evening I visited the theatre to see Edwin Booth, in his celebrated tour over the Continent, play King Lear to the applauding Viennese. But evening amusements cannot be utilized to kill time during the day. Among the tasks I had projected was that of rediscussing all the observations made on the transits of Venus which had occurred in 1761 and 1769, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... conception of these dramas as a whole. They had heard one voice among the many; but when the many voices blended, what all meant they can not begin to guess. What playgoer will give a valid analysis of King Lear? Ask him, and his ideas will be chaotic as clouds on a stormy night. Not even the elder Kean is the best interpreter of Shakespeare; for the dramatist reserves that function to himself—Shakespeare is his own ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... was overspread with a blush, that improved the glow of youth to a deeper crimson; and I daresay set many a female heart a palpitating. When he made his first appearance, there was just such a humming and clapping of hands as you may have heard when the celebrated Garrick comes upon the stage in King Lear, or King Richard, or any other top character. But how agreeably were we disappointed, when our young gentleman made such an oration as would not have disgraced a Pitt, an Egmont, or a Murray! while he spoke, all was hushed in admiration and attention; you could have almost ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Belford's objections, That virtue ought not to suffer in a tragedy, is not well considered: Monimia in the Orphean, Belvidera in Venice Preserved, Athenais in Theodosius, Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear, Desdemona in Othello, Hamlet, (to name no more,) are instances that a tragedy could hardly be justly called a tragedy, if virtue did not temporarily suffer, and vice for a while triumph. But he recovers himself in the same paragraph; ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... and if he had succeeded there would have been no need for the Wright brothers to bother; but when he got as far as London from Bath the wing-strings broke and he fell, plop! on a particularly hard temple of Apollo. After him reigned his son, no less a person than King Lear. I got this out of a queer little old book I bought the first day we came, but I assumed the air of having known it since childhood. There's another legend, it seems, about Bladud and a swine, but it's less esoteric than this, and Sir Lionel likes ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... always interest and importance in the action and reaction of subsidiary characters, in the event, in the accidental; there is intrigue, chance, misunderstanding, fate—active agencies of which Othello and Hamlet, King Lear and Romeo, are helpless victims; there is, even in this psychological English drama of the Elizabethans, fate in the shape of Iago, in the shape of the Ghost, in the shape of the brothers of Webster's duchess; fate ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... Mr. Beach Thomas or Mr. Philip Gibbs. My friend M. Joseph Reinach has successfully passed off long extracts from my story as descriptions of the Tanks upon British officers who had just seen them. The filiation was indeed quite traceable. They were my grandchildren—I felt a little like King Lear when first I read about them. Yet let me state at once that I was certainly not their prime originator. I took up an idea, manipulated it slightly, and handed it on. The idea was suggested to me by the contrivances of a certain ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Away old man, giue me thy hand, away: King Lear hath lost, he and his Daughter tane, Giue me thy hand: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Be comforted, good madam; the great rage, You see is cured in him: and yet it is danger To make him even o'er the time he has lost. Desire him to go in: trouble him no more, Till further settling. KING LEAR. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... sounds, the cutting short of its syllables, and the softening down of its terminations, and inflections of words.' Somewhere between 1180 and 1216, the majestic speech in which Shakspeare was to write 'Macbeth' and 'King Lear,' Lord Bacon his 'Advancement of Learning,' Milton his 'Paradise Lost' and 'Areopagitica,' Burke his 'Reflections,' and Sir Walter Scott the Waverley Novels, and whose rough, but manly accents were to be spoken ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... with which I had aimed at giving it an air of distinction had already been compared by one of my teachers to Persian hieroglyphics. In this composition I had constructed a drama in which I had drawn largely upon Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, and Goethe's Gotz van Berlichingen. The plot was really based on a modification of Hamlet, the difference consisting in the fact that my hero is so completely carried away by the appearance of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... mapped-out and circumscribed. But he is far too good a craftsman to do no more than give a mere panorama of that daily Bath programme which King Nash and his dynasty ordained and established. He goes back to the origins; to the legend of King Lear's leper-father; to the Diary of the too-much-neglected Celia Fiennes; to Pepys[55] and Grammont's Memoirs; to the days when hapless Catherine of Braganza, with the baleful "belle Stewart" in her train, made fruitless pilgrimage to Bladud's spring as a remedy ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... say? It seems to me that any more suicidal thing than throwing away the borough never was done. Who will thank you? What additional support will you get? How will it increase your power? It's like King Lear throwing off his clothes in the storm because his daughters turned him out. And you didn't do it ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... says the fool in King Lear, why the seven stars are no more than seven— is a pretty reason— because they are not eight. This is a fool's reason; but we (like many other commentators) cannot give a better one, why the Parts of Speech ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... Greece till about 800 B.C. is a string of the fairy tales, all about Theseus and Heracles and Oedipus and Minos and Perseus is a Cabinet des Fees, a collection of fairy tales. Shakespeare took them and put bits of them into 'King Lear' and other plays; he could not have made them up himself, great as he was. Let ladies and gentlemen think of this when they sit down to write fairy tales, and have them nicely typed, and send them to Messrs. Longman & Co. to be published. They think that to write a new fairy tale is easy work. ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... criticism is practised, though not avowedly. Far different is the case with so-called "historical facts," such as the alleged foundation of the Monarchy in 660 B.C. and similar statements paralleled only for absurdity by what passed for history in mediaeval Europe, when King Lear, Brute, King of Britain, etc., etc., were accepted as authentic personages. For the truth, known to all critical investigators, is that, instead of going back to a remote antiquity, the origins of Japanese history are recent as compared with that ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... of comparing was introduced into English, both methods were often used with the same adjective; and, for a time, double comparatives and double superlatives were common; as, worser, most boldest. In "King Lear" Shakespeare uses the double comparative a dozen times.]; as, valuable, less valuable, least valuable. Most definitive and many descriptive adjectives cannot be compared, as their meaning will not admit ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... feeling that Pindar's Isle of the Blest, whither he was brought by Thetis, whose mother's prayer had moved the Heart of Zeus, to dwell with Cadmus and Peleus, is Achilles' true home; or the isle of the heroes of all time, described by Carducci, where King Lear sits telling OEdipus of his sufferings, and Cordelia calls to Antigone, "Come, my Greek sister! We will sing of peace to our fathers." Helen and Iseult, silent and thoughtful, roam under the shade of the myrtles, ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... in which she sat in corners with her eyes cast down; flushed whenever she was addressed; stammered whenever she answered a question, and nearly died of heart failure when subjected to an examination of any sort. She delighted the committee when reading at sight from "King Lear," but somewhat discouraged them when she could not tell the capital of the United States. She admitted that her former teacher, Miss Dearborn, might have mentioned it, but if so she ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... paused for a moment, "I see that it would take too long. You must deal with so many prejudices—such, for example, as that which supposes 'King Lear' and ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... opinion in the following terms: "How little Shakspeare was once read, may be understood from Tate, who, in his dedication to the altered play of King Lear, speaks of the original as an obscure piece, recommended to his notice by a friend; and the author of the Tatler, having occasion to quote a few lines out of Macbeth, was content to receive them from Davenant's alteration of ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... recites the text (of King Lear) as though it were all prose, and not occasionally written in poetic measure; whereas, blank verse can, and always should, be distinguishable from prose by proper modulations of the voice, which a listener with a nice ear and a cultivated taste could ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... disgraced himself at Sir Charles Mirabel's table, by premature inebriation. A carriage was called for him: the hospitable door was shut upon him. Often and sadly did he speak to his friends at the Kitchen of his resemblance to King Lear in the plee—of his having a thankless choild, bedad—of his being a pore worn-out, lonely old man, dthriven to dthrinking by ingratitude, and seeking to dthrown his sorrows ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his every impersonation on the stage, minutely from some living model? Surely observation and natural originality is more than the photographic copying of your "conscientious" artist! Worse feebleness still it is when an artist has to paint a well-known character, say King Lear or Mary Queen of Scots, and goes about hunting for a living person as near as possible in appearance to the original, and then costumes and slavishly reproduces him or her, without any show of judgment or insight after the model is once selected. And this lack of insight ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the familiar Chester. About the second case, that of Leicester, there is a slight difficulty, for it assumes in the Chronicle the form of Laegra ceaster, with an apparently intrusive letter; and the later Welsh writers seized upon the form to fit in with their own ancient legend of King Lear. Nennius calls it Cair Lerion; and that unblushing romancer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, makes it at once into Cair Leir, the city of Leir. More probably the name is a mixture of Legionis and Ratae, Leg-rat ceaster, the camp of the Legion at Ratae. This, again, grew into Legra ceaster, Leg ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... give the history of other early kings of Britain, including Arthur. They often touch the true epic note,—as in the wrestling match between Corineus and the giant,—use similes drawn from every-day life, and supply us with legends of King Lear and of Cymbeline. ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... rags Do make their children blind; But fathers that wear bags Do make their children kind. —Shakespeare (King Lear, ii. 4). ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... artist is never morbid. He expresses everything. He stands outside his subject, and through its medium produces incomparable and artistic effects. To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote 'King Lear.' ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... when the daughter of Bodb Dearg was given to him as his wife. On her death, he married her sister, who transformed her step-children into swans.[304] Ler is the equivalent of the Brythonic Llyr, later immortalised by Shakespeare as King Lear. ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... etching) and by W. M. Rossetti (the verses): "Cordelia." For the belated No. 3 of "The Germ" we were much at a loss for an illustration. Mr. Brown offered to accommodate us by etching this design, one of a series from "King Lear" which he had drawn in Paris in 1844. That series, though not very sightly to the eye, is of extraordinary value for dramatic insight and energy. We gladly accepted, and he produced this etching with very little self-satisfaction, so far as the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... There appear to be two legitimate modes of interweaving tragedy with something like comedy. The first and most easy, which has often been resorted to, is to make the lower or less marked characters of the drama, like the porter in "Macbeth," or the fool in "King Lear," speak the language appropriated to their station, even in the midst of the distresses of the piece; nay, they may be permitted to have some slight under-intrigue of their own. This, however, requires the exertion of much taste and discrimination; for if we are once seriously and ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... on such an eminence in the august presence of my mother and my regent aunt, but if my small cousin, the Most Christian King, should enter, I must be dethroned, and a succession of bows must ensue before we can either of us be seated. I always fear that I shall some day break out with the speech of King Lear's fool: 'Cry you mercy, I took you for a ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... corrupt passages in the text that go far to justify this contention. We may be sure that Shakespeare, then at the zenith of his power, would not have stinted the measure of a work which seems to have taken more of his time than any previous play. Following closely upon "Macbeth" came "King Lear," produced at Whitehall for the Christmas festivities of 1606, and founded, like several of its ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... princesses drowned in them, in accidental journeys, or by the violence of rival claimants to their thrones. The pretended records contain a vast number of legends, of very little interest or value, as the reader will readily admit when we tell him that the famous story of King Lear is the most entertaining one in the whole collection. It ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Sir Arthur Hodgson, Chairman of the Shakespeare's Birthplace Trustees: "I beg to convey from my mother and myself our grateful acknowledgment to the Executive Committee of Shakespeare's Birthplace for their most kind expression of sympathy and for their beautiful wreath. My father was reading 'King Lear,' 'Troilus and Cressida,' and 'Cymbeline' through the last days of his life. On Wednesday he asked for Shakespeare. I gave him the book, but said, 'You must not try to read.' He answered, 'I have opened the book.' I looked at the book at midnight when ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... the silence of his house was more depressing than ever. During the lonely days, and still more lonely nights, he thought much about the past. He knew that he had made a failure of life, and that he had nothing to live for now. At times he would endeavor to fan the coals of rebellion by reading "King Lear," "Timon of Athens," and the story of Old Aeneas. But the effect was never lasting, and when the artificial stimulation subsided he ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... beyond question Galds' best play, practically considered. The plot is simple, the handling of it direct and skilful, there is no propaganda to interfere with the characters, who are few, interesting, and admirably drawn. The contrast between the lion of Albrit (so often compared to King Lear) and the playful children is a master-stroke. Free from effectism, dealing only with inner values of the heart and morals, El abuelo can properly rank as one of the masterpieces of modern drama. Its theme ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... she was that Elizabeth should have so treated her, and as I didn't sleep any more than she did, though, owing to very different feelings about Elizabeth, I made up my mind as to some things I would say to her when she got back. And if she has never read "King Lear" I will see that she hears it read before very long with a glossary, and comments of my own on ingratitude and things of that sort. Also she may hear some ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... ago, I made the acquaintance of John McCullough, then at the very zenith of his fame. In even measure as was the elder Booth Richard the Third, Forrest, King Lear, or Edwin Booth, Hamlet, so was McCullough the born Macbeth. When I first saw him emerge with dishevelled hair and bloody hands from the apartment of the murdered king, I was, I confess, in mortal dread of the darkness. I have heard another since of even greater repute in that masterful ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... near it had acquired the name of Saint Swithin's Chair. It was the scene of a peculiar superstition, of which Mr. Rubrick mentioned some curious particulars, which reminded Waverley of a rhyme quoted by Edgar in King Lear; and Rose was called upon to sing a little legend, in which they had been interwoven ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of the parents was that Carl should become a clergyman, but his distaste for theology did not go unexpressed. So perverse and persistent were his inclinations that they preyed on the mind of his father, who quoted King Lear and said, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... deed; our basest beggars Are in the poorest things superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's." —King Lear. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... any hearse-plumes at hand? Do not be angry with me. Can you hear my teeth? I am only a poor little old man. Will you please undo my necktie? (cf. "King Lear"). Let us go to breakfast. Will there ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... stand in flawed strength, and fall by their vanities;—Hamlet is indolent, and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient boy; the Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to adverse fortune; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but too rough and unpolished to be of true use at the critical time, and he sinks into the office of a servant only. Orlando, no less noble, is yet the despairing toy of chance, followed, comforted, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... paradoxical, the fact is that all this scenery is in the way. I have seen King Lear in Paris, at the Theatre Antoine, where it was presented with very nearly perfect scenery. When the King and the fool roamed about the heath in the third act, amid thunder and lightning, everybody was gazing at the clouds in the flies and watching for the lightning, or listening to ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Coriolanus. Titus Andronicus. Romeo and Juliet. Timon of Athens. The Life and death of Julius Caesar. The Tragedy of Macbeth. The Tragedy of Hamlet. King Lear. Othello, the Moore of Venice. Anthony and Cleopater. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... spiritual condition, a moral chaos, which they set about converting, in some of his great plays, into a cosmos; and a sad muss, if not a ridiculous muss, they made of it. Signal examples of this are the 'rifacimenti' of the Tempest by Dryden and Davenant, the King Lear by Tate, and the Antony and Cleopatra (entitled 'All for Love, or the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... all his days in his lord's vineyard"; to sit or stand idly resting upon his elbows, instead of labouring in the vineyard. "A sovereign shame so elbows him."—King Lear, Act ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... operate upon the said eyes then and there, like the barbarous monsters in the stage-direction in King Lear. When her ladyship was going to tear out her daughter's eyes, she would retire smiling, with an arm round her dear child's waist, and then ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fixing the mark of shame upon the offender and publicly humiliating him by means of the solemn sentence of the judge. It may be asked, What human being is fit to exercise this awful office of acting as judge of another? Remember the words of Shakespeare in King Lear: ". . . .See how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark in thine ear: change places; and . . . . which is the justice, which the thief?" Or recall what the Puritan preacher said when he saw from his window a culprit being led to the gallows: "There, but ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... I have no hesitation in regarding Mr. Irving's King Lear as the finest creation of his genius. This is an instance in which the actor creates the piece. Shakespeare is, as a poet and playwright, at his worst in "King Lear." Yet his accessories are wonderful in variety and suggestiveness. Only Shakespeare could have created the heath, and have so ordered the old King's passion, as to make his madness part of the very thunder and lightning. That was Shakespeare's magnificent ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... Story says that Landor "was turned out of doors by his wife and children." He had conveyed the villa to his wife. It is Story who compares Landor to King Lear. "Conversations ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden |
