Thee and Thou – What Does It All Mean?
One thing that puts people off Shakespeare is the effort needed to understand the language - particularly trying to understand the meaning of all these thees and thous! In actual fact,... more »
“This Is The Excellent Foppery Of The World” King Lear Soliloquy Analysis
Read King Lear’s This Is The Excellent Foppery Of The World soliloquy below with modern English translation & analysis
Spoken by Edmund, King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master 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. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardising.
“This Is The Excellent Foppery Of The World” Soliloquy Translation:
What his father had been saying was typical of the stupidity of the people around him: that when something bad happened, often as a
result of our own extravagant behaviour, we blame it on the sun, the moon, the stars, as though we can’t help being villains – fools because heaven has commanded us to be fools; knaves, thieves and traitors because of the position of the spheres at our birth; forced to be drunkards, liars and adulterers by the stars, and all the evil in us thrust on us by divine intervention. What a wonderful evasion by a lecher to blame his goat-like disposition on a star! His father mated with his mother under the Dragon’s tail and he was born under the influence of Ursa Major, so it followed that he was rough and lecherous! Rubbish! He would have been exactly the same if the most chaste star in the firmament had twinkled over his bastardy!
See other King Lear soliloquies >>
Read King Lear in modern English >>
-
Shakespeare: The 21st Century Man
An historian, working with a team of digital artists, has spent three months updating a series of classic portraits to reflect how historical figures might look today. A fourteen... more »
-
Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare!
William Shakespeare turns 449 on 23rd of April 2013. His birthday is celebrated in thousands of places around the world every year. Next year will be the four hundred... more »
-
William Shakespeare & Robert Johnson – The Musical Collaboration
I’m grateful to Ed Kliman, one of our readers, for drawing my attention to the composer, Robert Johnson, the son of John Johnson, lutenist to Elizabeth I , who... more »
-
Teaching Shakespeare to Middle Schoolers in Spring
Guest blog post from English teacher Robert Dale,. “It’s Spring!” My English teacher used to yell, usually at the boys. “The sap is rising!” She would look at us... more »
-
Deaths In Shakespeare’s Tragedies
Stabbings, beheadings, poisonings, drownings, snakebites, hanging, cannabalism and more – what a collection of gruesome deaths Shakespeare wrote into his tragedy plays! This cool infographic from progressivegeographies.com shows how each of... more »
-
How Shakespeare’s Home Was Demolished
England is one of the world’s top tourist destinations, where visits to the homes of English poets, dramatists, novelists, artists, composers and scientists are firmly on the itinerary. To... more »
-
Shakespeare & Winter Imagery
We are in the middle of a harsh winter, one that has gripped the northern hemisphere more firmly than usual, and in spite of our modern life with heating... more »
-
Shakespeare & St Valentine
February 14th is a very special day for us in Western culture: St Valentine’s Day - a day when we pull out all the stops to express our love... more »
-
Shakespeare, Richard III and a Leicester Carpark
We are all familiar with a range of Medieval English kings. We know about the fiery, charismatic Bolingbroke who deposed his weak cousin, Richard II, who was indecisive and... more »