Single Text Notes › King Lear
King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s most demanding texts, and it regularly appears as a Single Text option on the Leaving Cert Paper 2. If you have chosen it, you are working with a play that deals with power, family, madness, and justice in ways that give you enormous scope for essay writing. The trade-off is that it is long, complex, and full of parallel plots that you need to keep straight.
The play opens with Lear dividing his kingdom among his three daughters based on how well they flatter him. Cordelia refuses to play the game, and everything that follows is a consequence of that opening mistake. Lear’s journey from arrogant king to broken old man on the heath is one of the great character arcs in English literature, and it is the kind of material examiners love to ask about.
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For your exam, focus on how Shakespeare uses the subplot involving Gloucester and his sons to mirror and deepen the main plot. The parallel between Lear and Gloucester, between Cordelia and Edgar, between Goneril/Regan and Edmund, is where the richest analysis lives. Strong answers on King Lear show awareness of the play’s structure, not just its characters.
Our notes below cover the play act by act, with dedicated sections on characters, themes, and key scenes. If you are starting your revision, begin with the character notes for Lear and Cordelia, then work through the thematic material on justice, sight, and nature.