I have tracked the word Fortune throughout the book King Lear and have decided that these quotes best represent fate in King Lear.
Act 1, Scene 1
CORDELIA:This is after Cordelia loses all of her inheritance. Burgundy has
decided he does not want Cordelia's hand.
"Peace be with Burgundy!
Since that respects of fortune are his love,
I shall not be his wife"
Cordelia uses the word fortune to mean money or riches.She uses this word to show that Burgundy did not truly love her. He only wanted her inheritance and power. Her use of fortune means riches.
Act 1, Scene 2
EDMUND: In this quote Edmund exclaims his grief of being a bastard. This is after Edmund has set up his brother Edgar.
"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,--often the surfeit
of our own behavior,--we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star! My
father compounded with my mother under the
dragon's tail; and my nativity was under Ursa
major; so that it follows, I am rough and
lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am,
had the maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar--
[Enter EDGAR]
And pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old
comedy: my cue is villanous melancholy, with a
sigh like Tom o' Bedlam. O, these eclipses do
portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi."
Edmund uses the word fortune to express how his circumstances should be changed. Edmund talks about how his naturalness matches or even surpasses his brothers and that he should not be condemned for this but brought up as an equal son if not
favorite son. His use of fortune is simply a circumstance of life.
Act 2, Scene 4
Fool: The fool currently talks to Lear and Kent and this is before Lear's
confrontation with his daughters over his guards. This also lies before Lear's
exit into the storm.
"Winter's not gone yet, if the wild-geese fly that way.
Fathers that wear rags
Do make their children blind;
But fathers that bear bags
Shall see their children kind.
Fortune, that arrant whore,
Ne'er turns the key to the poor.
But, for all this, thou shalt have as many dolours
for thy daughters as thou canst tell in a year.]"
The Fool describes how fathers may pay off their daughters and all they will see is kindness from their children. Fortune could mean literal money in which the
Fool speaks of how the poor never will become rich. Or, fortune could mean
circumstances which would mean that fortune is cruel to the impoverished. The
fool describes fortune as a cruel being.
Act 4, Scene 1
EDGAR: This scene is after Gloucester has had his eyes gouged out and this is the first time Edgar lays his own eyes upon Gloucester his father.
"Yet better thus, and known to be contemn'd,
Than still contemn'd and flatter'd. To be worst,
The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear:
The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then,
Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!
The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
Owes nothing to thy blasts. But who comes here?
[Enter GLOUCESTER, led by an Old Man]
My father, poorly led? World, world, O world!
But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,
Lie would not yield to age."
Edgar complains about his circumstances. He one ups fortune and claims to owe
nothing to fortune and does not deserve the cards he is given but will not lament on his circumstances and will move forward. Edgar speaks as if fortune lives and breaths and he uses apostrophe in his anger towards his circumstances.
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