Level

Ages 14-18 (GCSE, A-level, AP Lit, IB); adaptable for first-year seminars

Sequence

3 lessons of 60 minutes

Focus

Language and power in the love test, Lear’s change on the heath, and competing readings of the ending

You will need

Copies of the play (1.1, 3.2, 3.4, 5.3), the printed worksheet, highlighters, mini whiteboards or paper

Overview

This sequence picks three moments that mark the arc of the play: the division of the kingdom, the night on the heath and the last entrance. It assumes students know both plots; if not, set the act summaries in the King Lear study guide as homework first.

• Students will be able to analyse how language reveals power and its loss in the opening scene.
• Students will be able to explain how Lear’s speech on the heath marks a change in what he sees.
• Students will be able to evaluate hopeful and bleak readings of the ending and argue for one.

Assessment focus. Lessons 1 and 2 concentrate on analysis of language, form and structure (the AO2 idea). Context (AO3) appears where it explains a choice: ideas of kingship and natural order, and the fact that Shakespeare altered a story his audience knew. Lesson 3 builds a sustained argument (AO1) and, for older students, weighs critical interpretations against the text.

Lesson 1: The love test

Key question: What does the opening scene show about how Lear understands love and power?

• Compare the language of Goneril and Cordelia in Act 1, Scene 1.
• Analyse what Lear’s responses reveal about him.
• Explain why the division of the kingdom would alarm Shakespeare’s first audience.

Differentiation

• Support: provide the exchange with a paraphrase and three quotations to choose from.
• Core: annotate independently and write to the success criteria.
• Stretch: read Edmund’s soliloquy opening 1.2, Thou, Nature, art my goddess. How does his idea of what children owe differ from Cordelia’s bond?

Assessment and homework

Look for paragraphs that analyse a specific word, not a general impression of Lear as proud. Homework: reread 2.4 from O, reason not the need! to Lear’s exit and summarise in three sentences why he leaves.

Lesson 2: The storm and the hovel

Key question: What changes in Lear between raging at the storm and praying outside the hovel?

• Contrast Lear’s language in Act 3, Scene 2 with his language in Act 3, Scene 4.
• Analyse how the “Poor naked wretches” speech presents a shift in perspective.
• Link the speech to ideas about kingship and responsibility.

Differentiation

• Support: gloss bide, looped and windowed, physic, pomp and superflux on the sheet; answer questions 1-4.
• Core: all questions and the full writing task.
• Stretch: compare Gloucester’s parallel speech in 4.1, where he gives his purse to Poor Tom. Why does Shakespeare give the same insight to both fathers?

Assessment and homework

Collect exit tickets and the writing task; look for comment on who is addressed and on the turn at O, I have ta’en / Too little care of this. Homework: finish the writing task. As a low-stakes reading habit alongside it, students with an iPhone or iPad could read the day’s page in Daily Bard, one Folger-verified passage a day with a plain-English reading on the back, and note one word they would comment on.

Lesson 3: “Is this the promised end?”

Key question: Does the ending of King Lear offer any consolation?

• Analyse the language of Lear’s last speeches in Act 5, Scene 3.
• Understand hopeful and bleak critical readings and test each against the text.
• Construct and defend an argument in speech and writing.

Differentiation

• Support: provide six quotations from 5.3 to sort into “hopeful” and “bleak”.
• Core: find evidence independently and write the paragraph.
• Stretch: Kent asks Is this the promised end? and Edgar replies Or image of that horror?. What are they comparing the scene to, and what does that add?

Assessment and homework

The paragraph shows whether students can hold two readings and choose. Homework: an essay on “How far does Lear’s suffering lead to understanding?”, planned with the essay planner and drawing on all three lessons.

Student worksheet: “Poor naked wretches”

Lear has been shut out by his daughters and is on the heath in a storm with Kent and the Fool. They have reached a hovel. Read the passage twice.

LEAR Prithee, go in thyself. Seek thine own ease.
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more. But I’ll go in.
In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty -
Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp.
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou may’st shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just.

King Lear · Act 3, Scene 4

1. Whom does Lear send into the hovel first, and what does he say he will do before he sleeps?
2. Who are the Poor naked wretches? Are they on stage?
3. Explain in your own words what Lear admits in O, I have ta’en / Too little care of this.
4. Look at the pelting of this pitiless storm and looped and windowed raggedness. How do sound and imagery make the suffering of the poor vivid?
5. Take physic, pomp. Who or what is being given an order, and what is the “medicine”? What is the effect of the short sentence?
6. In Act 3, Scene 2 Lear gave orders to the storm. To whom does he give orders here? What does the change suggest?
7. Lear wants the rich to shake the superflux to the poor and so show the heavens more just. Does this mean the heavens are just, or that people must make them appear so?

Writing task

How does Shakespeare present a change in Lear in this passage? Write two or three paragraphs.

• Begin each paragraph with a clear point about what has changed.
• Use short, embedded quotations.
• Name at least two methods, such as apostrophe, alliteration, imperative or metaphor.
• Compare one detail with Lear’s language earlier in the play.

Teacher notes and indicative answers

1. The Fool (In, boy; go first). He will pray. The king puts a servant’s comfort before his own.
2. The homeless poor of his kingdom. They are absent: this is an apostrophe, an address to people who are not present.
3. That as king he neglected the poor. It is his first admission of a fault that is not about his daughters.
4. Plosive alliteration in pelting and pitiless imitates beating rain. looped and windowed pictures rags so full of holes that they are like a building with openings, a bitter metaphor for people who have no house.
5. pomp, meaning the powerful, including Lear himself, is personified and told to take medicine: exposure to what the poor feel. The three-word imperative is blunt after the long question before it.
6. To himself and his own class. The imperatives have turned inward, from commanding nature to correcting power.
7. Open. The conditional phrasing suggests that justice is something humans must supply; the heavens have shown little sign of it.

Model paragraph

Shakespeare presents the change in Lear through a change of address. In the previous scenes his imperatives were hurled at the storm; here he speaks to the absent Poor naked wretches of his kingdom, an apostrophe that turns his attention outward for the first time. The plosive alliteration of pelting and pitiless makes him feel the weather on their behalf. The admission O, I have ta’en / Too little care of this falls across a line break, as if forced out, and the curt command Take physic, pomp is aimed at himself. A king who divided his realm by flattery now measures kingship by care for those with nothing.

Extending the sequence

For a fourth lesson, set the blinding of Gloucester (3.7) beside his I stumbled when I saw in 4.1 and map the parallels between the two plots. The King Lear study guide has the context and critical perspectives to support it, and the quotation sheet is useful for retrieval starters. Our essay on “Blow winds, and crack your cheeks” goes further into the storm speech used in Lesson 2, and the close reading toolkit and guide to Shakespeare’s language give students a reusable method. The assessment map shows in general terms how this work is credited, and these plans are available as a printable PDF. The Othello lesson plans follow the same pattern.