1. It’s Madness in Shakespeare’s Greatest Tragedy

2. The opening scene of King Lear is vastly different from the way Shakespeare traditionally opens his plays. Instead of being quick and dramatic, the opening introduces all the major characters, the dual story line, and reveals the major conflicts. In the opening scene, Lear explains his decision to divide the kingdom into three parts so that he can be free of his weighty responsibilities and asks his daughters to proclaim their levels of love for him. Goneril and Reagan both enthusiastically proclaim their devotion to their father. Cordelia says, “I cannot heave/My heart into my mouth.” One way of interpreting this is to say that words cannot express how Cordelia feels about her father. Yet, Lear is enraged. ACT ONE

3. Cordelia leaves to be married to the King of France. By the end of the scene, we see that Goneril and Regan are already scheming. The scene illustrates Shakespeare’s masterful use of language to characterize and categorize. The basic medium is blank verse (which is typical of Shakespeare), but some passages are written in prose. Sometimes in Shakespeare, prose is associated with lower-class characters. Here, the characters are noble, but Gloucester and Kent open with cynical and ignoble comments which are best rendered in prose. The same for the sisters’ conniving at the end. ACT ONE (CONTINUED)

4. Apostrophe is the act of addressing some abstraction or personification that is not physically present. For instance, John Donne commands, "Oh, Death, be not proud.” King Lear proclaims, "Ingratitude! thou marble-hearted fiend, / More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child / Than the sea- monster." Death, of course, is a phenomenon rather than a proud person, and ingratitude is an abstraction that hardly cares about Lear's opinion, but the act of addressing the abstract has its own rhetorical power.. WHAT IS APOSTROPHE?