King Lear is a tragedy about an old king who gives away his kingdom to the daughters who flatter him and banishes the one who loves him, and about the storm of cruelty, madness, and grief that follows until almost everyone is dead.
Written around 1605 and 1606, it is often called Shakespeare’s greatest and bleakest play. Its main plot, Lear and his three daughters, is mirrored by a second: the Earl of Gloucester and his two sons, one loyal and one treacherous.
This guide covers the plot act by act, the main characters, the themes, and the most famous lines, and ends with a reading of the word the whole play is built on. For the other plays, see our guide to all of Shakespeare’s plays.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about King Lear for quick reference.
King Lear in Brief
The whole story in a few sentences, before the act-by-act detail.
Old King Lear decides to divide Britain among his three daughters according to how much each says she loves him. Goneril and Regan flatter him lavishly; the youngest, Cordelia, refuses, and he disowns her. Once they have his kingdom, Goneril and Regan turn him out, and he wanders into a terrible storm and loses his mind. At the same time, the Earl of Gloucester is tricked by his illegitimate son, Edmund, into turning against his loyal son, Edgar, and is later blinded for helping the king.
Cordelia returns with a French army and is reconciled with her father, but her forces are defeated, and she and Lear are captured. Edgar defeats Edmund in single combat, Goneril poisons Regan and kills herself, and the dying Edmund tries too late to save Cordelia, who has been hanged. Lear carries in her body and dies of grief.
King Lear Plot Summary, Act by Act
What happens in each of the play’s five acts.
Act 1: The Love Test
Lear announces that he will give up the business of ruling and divide his kingdom among his daughters, giving the largest share to the one who loves him most. Goneril and Regan make extravagant speeches. Cordelia, asked what she can say to earn a richer share than her sisters, answers, “Nothing, my lord.” “Nothing will come of nothing: speak again,” warns Lear. She loves him, she says, according to her duty, no more and no less. Enraged, Lear disowns her and divides her share between her sisters. When the Earl of Kent protests, Lear banishes him too. The King of France marries Cordelia without a dowry, admiring her honesty.
Meanwhile, Gloucester’s illegitimate son, Edmund, resents his lower status: “Now, gods, stand up for bastards!” With a forged letter, he convinces his father that his legitimate brother, Edgar, is plotting to kill him. Kent, in disguise, returns to serve Lear. Lear goes to live with Goneril, who soon orders him to dismiss half his hundred knights. Lear curses her, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child!”, and rides off to Regan, with his Fool mocking him for giving everything away.
Act 2: Shut Out
Edmund persuades Edgar to flee, and Gloucester proclaims him an outlaw. Edgar disguises himself as a mad beggar, Poor Tom. At Gloucester’s castle, Kent quarrels with Goneril’s steward, Oswald, and Regan and her husband, Cornwall, put Kent in the stocks, an insult to the king whose messenger he is.
Lear arrives to find his messenger humiliated, and Goneril soon joins her sister. Together they bid his knights down, “five-and-twenty, ten, or five,” until Regan asks, “What need one?” “O, reason not the need!” he cries. He will not weep, though his heart breaks: “O fool, I shall go mad!” He rushes out into a rising storm, and the doors are shut behind him.
Act 3: The Storm
On the heath, Lear rages at the storm: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!” He insists that he is “a man / More sinned against than sinning.” Kent leads him and the Fool to a hovel, where they find Poor Tom, naked and raving. Looking at him, Lear sees what humanity is without its trappings, “unaccommodated man,” “a poor, bare, forked animal,” and tears off his own clothes. His mind begins to break.
Gloucester secretly helps the king and arranges for him to be taken to Dover, where a French army has landed. Edmund betrays his father to Cornwall. Cornwall and Regan tie Gloucester to a chair and put out his eyes: “Out, vile jelly!” A servant who tries to stop them gives Cornwall a fatal wound. Blinded, Gloucester learns that Edmund betrayed him and that Edgar was innocent, and he is thrown out of his own house.
Act 4: Dover
Edgar, still disguised, finds his blind father and agrees to lead him to Dover. Gloucester has lost all faith in the gods: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, / They kill us for their sport.” He wants to throw himself off a cliff, but Edgar tricks him into believing he has jumped and survived by a miracle. Goneril and Regan both fall for Edmund, while Goneril’s husband, Albany, turns against her cruelty. Edgar kills Oswald and finds a letter from Goneril to Edmund, which he later gives to Albany.
Lear, wandering mad and crowned with wildflowers, meets the blind Gloucester. “Ay, every inch a king,” he says. Cordelia’s followers find him, and she cares for him until he wakes. He barely knows her: “I am a very foolish fond old man.” He asks her forgiveness, and they are reconciled.
Act 5: The End
The British forces defeat the French, and Lear and Cordelia are captured. Lear is almost happy: in prison, “We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage.” Edmund sends them away with secret orders for their deaths. Albany exposes Edmund as a traitor, and a masked champion appears to fight him: Edgar, who wounds him mortally and reveals himself. Gloucester, Edgar reports, has died. Goneril, having poisoned Regan, kills herself.
Dying, Edmund tries to do one good deed and reveals his order to kill Lear and Cordelia. It is too late. Lear enters carrying Cordelia’s body: “Howl, howl, howl, howl!” She has been hanged. He cannot accept that she will not come back: “Thou’lt come no more, / Never, never, never, never, never!” Believing for a moment that she breathes, he dies. In the Folio text, Edgar speaks the play’s final words.
Characters
The main figures in the play, and what drives each of them.
King Lear
The aging king of Britain, proud, rash, and used to absolute obedience. He mistakes flattery for love and gives away his power, then learns, through madness and suffering, what he really is: “a very foolish fond old man.” His daughter Regan says he has “ever but slenderly known himself.”
Cordelia
Lear’s youngest daughter, who loves him too honestly to flatter him. Banished and disinherited, she returns with an army to rescue him, forgives him completely, and is killed.
Goneril and Regan
Lear’s elder daughters, who win their kingdoms with false words and then strip their father of everything. Regan joins in blinding Gloucester. Both fall for Edmund, and their rivalry destroys them: Goneril poisons Regan, then kills herself.
The Earl of Gloucester
A loyal nobleman whose story mirrors the king’s. He believes the son who lies to him and condemns the son who loves him, and only after he is blinded does he see the truth.
Edgar
Gloucester’s legitimate son, falsely accused and forced into hiding as the mad beggar Poor Tom. He guides his blind father, saves him from despair, and finally defeats Edmund. He survives to the end.
Edmund
Gloucester’s illegitimate son, clever, charming, and ruthless, who refuses to accept the lower place society gives him. He betrays his brother and his father to rise, and plays Goneril and Regan against each other. Dying, he admits, “The wheel is come full circle.”
The Earl of Kent
Lear’s blunt, loyal counselor, banished for defending Cordelia. He returns in disguise to serve the king who banished him, and stays with him to the end.
The Fool
Lear’s jester, who tells him the truth in jokes and riddles. He is the only one allowed to mock the king, and he keeps reminding Lear of his folly in giving his kingdom away.
Albany and Cornwall
The husbands of Goneril and Regan. Cornwall is as cruel as his wife and dies of a wound received while blinding Gloucester. Albany is at first mild, then turns against Goneril and survives.
Themes
The ideas that run through King Lear and give it its lasting power.
Sight and Blindness
Lear and Gloucester are both blind to the truth about their children. Gloucester only sees it after his eyes are put out, and Lear only after he loses his mind. As the mad Lear tells the blind Gloucester, “A man may see how this world goes with no eyes.”
Nature and the Unnatural
The words “nature,” “natural,” and “unnatural” run all through the play. Lear sees his daughters’ ingratitude as a crime against nature. Edmund, the “natural” son, calls on Nature as his goddess and means the law of the strongest. The storm on the heath is nature itself in revolt.
Justice and the Gods
Does anyone in heaven care what happens? The characters keep calling on the gods, and the gods never answer. Gloucester concludes that they kill humans “for their sport.” When Cordelia dies after the villains are already defeated, the play refuses the justice its audience wants.
Madness and Wisdom
The play is full of madness, real and pretended: Lear’s breakdown, Edgar’s performance as Poor Tom, and the Fool’s professional folly. Yet the mad and the foolish speak the deepest truths. Watching the mad king, Edgar calls it “Reason in madness.”
Key Quotations
The most famous lines in King Lear, who speaks them, and what they mean.
“Nothing Will Come of Nothing”
Lear, Act 1, scene 1, when Cordelia says she has nothing to say to win a richer share: “Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.” If she says nothing, she will get nothing. It is a threat, and he carries it out.
“Now, Gods, Stand Up for Bastards!”
Edmund, Act 1, scene 2, at the end of his opening soliloquy. Why should he be treated as lesser because his parents were not married? He will take what his legitimate brother has.
“How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth It Is to Have a Thankless Child”
Lear, Act 1, scene 4, cursing Goneril after she orders him to reduce his knights. A child’s ingratitude wounds more deeply than a snake’s bite.
“Blow, Winds, and Crack Your Cheeks!”
Lear, Act 3, scene 2, raging on the heath. He calls on the storm to do its worst and destroy the whole ungrateful world. A few lines later: “I am a man / More sinned against than sinning.”
“As Flies to Wanton Boys Are We to the Gods”
Gloucester, Act 4, scene 1, blinded and in despair: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, / They kill us for their sport.” The gods treat human beings the way careless boys treat insects, killing them for fun.
“Ay, Every Inch a King”
Lear, Act 4, scene 6, mad and crowned with wildflowers, when the blind Gloucester recognizes his voice. It is a proud claim from a king with nothing left.
“I Am a Very Foolish Fond Old Man”
Lear, Act 4, scene 7, waking to find Cordelia beside him: “I am a very foolish fond old man, / Fourscore and upward.” “Fond” means foolish, doting. For the first time, he sees himself plainly.
“Men Must Endure Their Going Hence”
Edgar, Act 5, scene 2, to his despairing father: “Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither: / Ripeness is all.” We cannot choose the time of our death any more than our birth; we can only be ready.
“Never, Never, Never, Never, Never!”
Lear, Act 5, scene 3, over Cordelia’s body: “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, / And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more, / Never, never, never, never, never!” A line of blank verse made of a single word, repeated five times.
Language and Form
How Shakespeare builds the play, and the techniques that make it work.
The Double Plot
The Lear plot and the Gloucester plot mirror each other at every step. Two fathers misjudge their children, reward the false ones, and turn on the true one. Both are thrown out, one losing his mind and the other his eyes. The echo makes the story feel less like one family’s misfortune and more like a picture of the world.
The Storm
The storm in Act 3 is both real weather and a picture of Lear’s mind. As he rages at it, the chaos outside and the chaos inside become one.
The Fool’s Language
The Fool speaks in riddles, rhymes, and scraps of song, often in prose, against the king’s blank verse. His jokes carry the play’s hardest truths.
Two Versions
The play survives in two early texts, the 1608 Quarto and the 1623 Folio, which differ by hundreds of lines. Many scholars believe the Folio is Shakespeare’s own revision. Most modern editions combine the two.
A Closer Reading: Nothing
The first word that goes wrong in King Lear is “nothing,” and the play spends five acts discovering what that word really means.
When Cordelia answers her father’s love test with “Nothing, my lord,” she means that she has nothing false to add. Lear hears only an empty answer: “Nothing will come of nothing.” He treats love as something that can be measured, like land, and gives her nothing in return. One scene later, Edmund, hiding his forged letter, answers his father with the very same words: “Nothing, my lord.” This time the nothing hides everything, and Gloucester is fooled. Both fathers believe the lie and reject the truth, and both are undone by the word.
Then the word turns on Lear himself. When the Fool asks, “Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?”, Lear repeats his own rule: “nothing can be made out of nothing.” But he has given everything away, and the Fool tells him what he has become: “Now thou art an O without a figure,” a zero with no number in front of it. “I am a fool, thou art nothing.” Edgar, stripped of his name, says the same of himself: “Edgar I nothing am.”
Everything Lear believed could be counted, love, loyalty, knights, turns to nothing. And out of that nothing comes the only thing of value he ever finds: Cordelia’s forgiveness, freely given to a man who has nothing left to offer her. At the end, holding her body, he is reduced to the plainest word of all, repeated until it becomes a line of verse: “Never, never, never, never, never!” The play that began with “nothing” ends with “never,” and in between it shows that the things that matter most cannot be measured at all.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about King Lear, answered briefly.
What Is King Lear About?
An old king who divides his kingdom between the two daughters who flatter him and disowns the one who truly loves him. Betrayed and turned out, he goes mad in a storm. A parallel plot follows the Earl of Gloucester, betrayed by one son and saved by the other. Almost everyone dies by the end.
Why Does Lear Disown Cordelia?
She refuses to flatter him in the love test. Her sisters make extravagant declarations, but Cordelia says she loves him according to her duty, no more and no less. Lear, wanting public praise, takes her honesty as an insult.
Who Dies in King Lear?
Cornwall, Oswald, Gloucester, Regan, Goneril, Edmund, Cordelia, and Lear. Of the main characters, only Edgar, Kent, and Albany survive.
Did King Lear Ever Have a Happy Ending?
Yes, though not by Shakespeare. In 1681, Nahum Tate rewrote the play so that Lear and Cordelia survive, and his version replaced Shakespeare’s on the professional stage until 1838. Shakespeare’s own ending, with Cordelia’s death, is his change to the older story, in which Cordelia helps her father regain his throne.
Why Are There Two Versions of King Lear?
The play was printed in a 1608 Quarto and in the 1623 First Folio, and the two texts differ significantly. Many scholars think the Folio reflects Shakespeare’s own revision. Most editions combine them into one text.
Related Reading
Three pages that take King Lear further.