King Lear Gender Quotes

KENT: Is not this your son, my lord?
GLOUCESTER: His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to ‘t.
KENT: I cannot conceive you.
GLOUCESTER: Sir, this young fellow’s mother could: whereupon she grew round-wombed, and had, indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1. The Earl of Gloucester jokes to the Duke of Kent about his illigitimate son Edmund, setting the scene for some family drama to come. Gloucester admits that Edmund has been an embarrassment to him and Kent says he doesn’t understand what he means. Gloucester responds with verbal irony, playing on the word "conceive," to explain how Edmund was born out of wedlock. He then cracks a rude joke about female genitals, mocking Edmund’s mother while ignoring Edmund’s presence. "Do you smell a fault?" he tells Kent. This is foreshadowing of how a resentful Edmund will embark on a plot against his father and half-brother.

Hear, Nature, hear, dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful.
Into her womb convey sterility.
Dry up in her the organs of increase,
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen, that it may live
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her.
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child! – Away, away!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4. Lear finally realizes that his daughter Goneril is betraying him. For Goneril, living with Lear is not working out so well, so if he wants to stay with her she rules that he must lose 50 of his knights as they are too rowdy. Calling on the goddess of Nature, an enraged Lear curses his Goneril’s womb with sterility. And if the gods decide that she will have children, he wishes that she goes through painful labor and has a "thankless child" to make her life thoroughly miserable. Lear uses the metaphor of the pain of a snake bite to describe what it feels like to have a thankless child.

I’ll tell thee.
[To Goneril.] Life and death! I am ashamed
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus,
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,
Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon thee!
Th’ untented woundings of a father’s curse
Pierce every sense about thee! Old fond eyes,
Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out
And cast you with the waters that you loose
To temper clay.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4. Lear, asked by Albany what’s the matter, responds with this speech. Feeling betrayed, he tells Goneril that he is ashamed she has the power to shake his "manhood" so much that he is reduced to tears – Goneril does this by cutting his retinue of knights. He curses her with incurable pain and vows that if his old eyes should weep again because of her, he will pluck them out, foreshadowing Gloucester’s blinding. It was Lear’s blindness to the true character of Goneril and sister Regan that led him abdicating to them. The English Shakespearean actor Corin Redgrave said: "Lear has a great fear of the feminine side of his nature. At every critical juncture in the conflict with his daughters, his anxiety and dread are that he will betray his masculinity by crying, and when that happens he is devastated. Notice also how this speech, with its violent imagery of blinding, in this case self-inflicted, anticipates the blinding of Gloucester, who is horribly punished for taking pity on Lear – pity and mercy being feminine qualities."

No, no, my lord,
This milky gentleness and course of yours,
Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon,
You are much more at task for want of wisdom
Than praised for harmful mildness.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4. Goneril sets about manipulating her husband Albany into going along with her scheme to reduce further Lear’s power and half his number of knights. She suggests that Albany is too mild-mannered and refers to his feminine-like quality of "milky gentleness." She also accuses him of being lacking in wisdom.

O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!
Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element’s below!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4. Lear feels betrayed by his daughters who are telling him what to do and disrespecting him. His fatherhood is being taken away from him and it is being replaced by motherhood, he believes. He says that he is suffering from "Hysterica passio," a medical disorder of women which brings on choking or breathlessness. English Shakespearean actor Corin Redgrave said of Lear: "Lear is terrified of the mother, ie the woman, within him. Scholarly notes explain that according to ideas of anatomy at this time, hysterica passio begins in the womb (hysteria in Greek), and climbs, via the heart, to the patient’s throat, suffocating him."

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both!
If it be you that stir these daughters’ hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks!

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 2, Scene 4. Lear calls out to the gods over his betrayal by daughters Goneril and Regan. He ask the gods to grant him noble anger. He pleads with them not to let him cry and have "women’s weapons" (tears) stain his manly cheeks.

LEAR: Now all the plagues that in the pendulous air
Hang fated o’er men’s faults light on thy daughters!
KENT: He hath no daughters, sir.
LEAR: Death, traitor! Nothing could have subdued nature
To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. When Lear meets Edgar disguised as the near-naked and mad beggar Poor Tom, he believes that his dreadful state must have been caused by his daughters. When Kent points out that Poor Tom has no daughters, Lear is still convinced that nothing in the world could have reduced a man’s nature to such a low state except unkind daughters! All the problems of the world are caused by daughters, it appears to Lear – especially madness and poverty!

Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders’ books, and defy the foul fiend.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. Edgar as Poor Tom warns Lear not to let his heart be seduced by a woman, to stay out of brothels, keep his hands off skirts, stay out of debt and defy the devil. Why Poor Tom has a bit of an attitude towards women we don’t know, it may be just part of his insanity act.

I must change arms at home, and give the distaff,
Into my husband’s hands.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 2. Goneril tells Edmund that her husband Albany is such a coward that must reverse the normal gender roles so that she is the man of the house. Learning of Albany’s reluctance to fight against Lear and Cordelia, Goneril says that Albany is only fit for domestic duties and should be given the “distaff.” She on the other hand will “change arms” and take over his position as sword-carrying military leader.

Thou changèd and self-covered thing, for shame
Bemonster not thy feature. Were ‘t my fitness
To let these hands obey my blood,
They are apt enough to dislocate and tear
Thy flesh and bones: howe’er thou art a fiend,
A woman’s shape doth shield thee.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 2. Albany wants nothing more of his evil wife Goneril. He calls her a devil in a woman’s shape and warns her not to make herself look even more monstrous. If he allowed his hands do what his heart wishes, he would tear her apart with his hands, but he says that her woman’s appearance protects her. Goneril is saved here only by her gender.

Behold yond simpering dame,
Whose face between her forks presages snow;
That minces virtue, and does shake the head
To hear of pleasure’s name;
The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to ‘t
With a more riotous appetite.
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above:
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiend’s;
There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulphurous pit,
Burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there’s money for thee.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 4, Scene 6. Lear’s insanity reaches its climax in this scene. He arrives according to the stage directions "fantastically dressed with wild flowers" and talking nonsense, then goes off on a rant about sexuality and women, replete with misogynistic sexual insults. He describes women as normal from the waist up and belonging to the gods, but down below they belong to the devil: "There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulphurous pit."

My name is Edgar, and thy father’s son.
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.
The dark and vicious place where thee he got
Cost him his eyes.

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. Edgar reveals his true identity to Edmund after mortally wounding his half-brother in a duel. He says that the gods are just because they punish human beings for their wrongdoings. He believes that Edmund got what he deserved. But Edgar seems to suggest that Gloucester’s blinding is punishment from the gods for his illicit love which resulted in Edmund’s conception. Edgar claims that the woman Gloucester committed adultery with, Edmund’s mother, cost Gloucester his eyes and he calls her a "dark and vicious place." Not everyone would agree with Edgar’s belief that such divine retribution for Gloucester’s adultery is fair and proper justice. His blinding is the plays’s greatest act of cruelty and one of the most violent and shocking scenes in all of Shakespeare’s dramas. However, few would quibble with the justice of killing the evil Edmund.
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