Kent pleads, “See better, Lear; and let me still remain / The true blank of thine eye.” What does the sight image ask Lear to recover?

Gloucester says, “I stumbled when I saw.” What claim is he making about his earlier sight?

Lear tells blind Gloucester, “A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears.” What does the paradox do?

When Gloucester answers, “I see it feelingly,” what has replaced the certainty he once associated with sight?

Lear says, “Get thee glass eyes; / And like a scurvy politician, seem / To see the things thou dost not.” What does the image attack?

Gloucester learns that he misjudged his sons only moments after he is blinded. What does the literal blinding reveal about the motif?

Lear cries, “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!” What does this shift in address register?

“O, that way madness lies; let me shun that,” Lear says when his thoughts return to his daughters. What does the line register?

Sheltering in a farmhouse near Gloucester's castle, Lear arraigns a joint-stool as if it were Goneril. What does the shift in his language register?

Lear turns from curses to “Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are.” What change in his mind does the speech mark?

Lear asks, “Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?” What does this question reveal about his madness?

When Lear wakes to Cordelia and says, “Pray, do not mock me: / I am a very foolish fond old man,” what shift does the language register?

“Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law / My services are bound.” Which sense of nature is Edmund claiming?

Lear argues, “Allow not nature more than nature needs, / Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.” What sense of nature is at stake?

Lear cries for nature's molds to crack and all “germens” to spill. What idea of nature drives the curse?

Cordelia is described as the one “Who redeems nature from the general curse / Which twain have brought her to.” Which sense of nature is invoked?

Albany condemns “nature, which contemns its origin.” What does nature mean in his rebuke of Goneril?

Gloucester says, “As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods; / They kill us for their sport.” What vision of nature does this express?

Lear tells the elements, “I never gave you kingdom, called you children.” What does the comparison do?

“Here I stand, your slave, / A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.” What does the heath setting accomplish here?

Lear imagines the storm summoning hidden sinners to ask for grace. What moral function does the tempest take on?

The storm drives Lear, Kent, the Fool, and Poor Tom toward a hovel rather than a palace. What does that setting test?

Lear calls Poor Tom “unaccommodated man,” a “poor, bare, forked animal.” What has the sight of Tom taught him?

“Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; / Robes and furred gowns hide all.” What claim does the clothing image make?

Lear commands, “Take physic, pomp; / Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.” What does exposure mean here?