KING LEAR Act V, i ii, iii Questions

  


King Lear Holding His Deceased Beloved Cordelia
by James Barry

 

Enlarged detail from the above.

  

Written answers to these questions are due this Monday.
V, i
1. Why is Albany fighting? What relationship exists among Edmund, Regan, and Goneril?
2. What do we learn from Edmund's soliloquy? Why was it written as a soliloquy?
3. How do Albany's plans differ from Edmund's?
V, ii  
1. How is Gloucester saved from harm?
V, iii
1. How do Lear and Cordelia react to their imprisonment?

2. What does Edmund give the Captain? Why?

3. How does Edmund answer Albany’s questions about the whereabouts of  King Lear and Cordelia? How does Albany react to Edmund’s presumptuous attitude?

4. How does Albany stop Regan’s attempt to give her power to Edmund? How does he know all that he claims to know about both Edmund and Goneril?

5. Why is Regan feeling sick?

6. Why does Albany command that a herald sound a trumpet?

7. What is the dramatic effect of Edgar’s entrance on the third sounding of the trumpet?

8. How does Edmund die? At whose hand?

9. Why did Gloucester die? Why was this dramatically or thematically necessary or justified?

10. According to Edgar, what was Kent’s condition when he last saw him?

11. How do Goneril and Regan die? Why is it fitting?

12. What does Edmund instruct the Captain to do with Cordelia?

13. How does King Lear respond to the death of Cordelia?

14. How does Albany honor  King Lear?

15. How and why does  King Lear die? Why is or isn't his death dramatically or thematically necessary or justified?

16. What happens to Kent?

17. Who is in control at the play’s end? Why? How do you think the future will be for him?

I suggest that you now reread Act III, ACT IV, and Act V.