Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. -- Edgar If you are a student assigned to read or see King Lear, or an adult approaching it for the first time, your experience will be special. These notes will help you get started. If there was ever a historical King Lear, his memory has faded into mythology. Llyr and his son Manannan are Celtic ocean-gods; Manannan reappeared in Yeats's plays and the "Dungeons …showed first 75 words of 4945 total…

…showed last 75 words of 4945 total…illegitimate son Edmund with some smutty jokes. We do not need to see Edmund's face to imagine how often this must have happened, and how Edmund's feelings must have been hurt by it. Edmund soliloquizes that he is as talented and as loved as his legitimate brother Edgar, and that the accident of his birth is unjust. He professes allegiance to "nature" rather than law or love, and decides that he will try to gain