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Act 1 Activity Pack
Act 1 Activity Pack
Act 1 Scene 1
*Task: Write the answers to these questions in your books.
3. What are Gloucester and Kent discussing at the start of the scene?
4. How does Gloucester feel about his son Edmund? Use embedded quotations in your answer.
5. Explain why Gloucester feels like this. Use embedded quotations to support your answer.
6. When Lear enters, what does he tell the other characters that he proposes to do?
7. What reason do the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy have to be rivals?
** Task: Lear asks his three daughters to profess how much they love him. Write a quotation to show
each daughter’s response:
Goneril Regan
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Cordelia
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M. Georgiou ©
William Shakespeare King Lear
*** Task: What impression do we have of the daughters from their responses?
Goneril
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Regan
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Cordelia
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**** Task: Once Lear has refused Cordelia a dowry, how do France and Burgundy respond to this?
Use quotations to support your answer.
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M. Georgiou ©
William Shakespeare King Lear
***** Task: Write references to eyesight/blindness and if you can, make a comment.
M. Georgiou ©
William Shakespeare King Lear
Act 1 Scene 2
Edmund’s Soliloquy
M. Georgiou ©
William Shakespeare King Lear
What do the following mean:
Art ______________
Doth _____________
Wherefore ________________
Repetition: ____________________________________________________________________
Rhetorical Questions:
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Triples:
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Which line/s do you think were most effective in conveying Edmund’s feelings? Why?
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Act 1 scene 2
*Task: Multiple choice
What does Edmund put in his pocket upon his father’s arrival? A knife/his phone/ a letter/Edgar’s ring
Where does Edmund say he found it? (his closet/in the car/in his pocket)
What does Gloucester mean by ‘character’ in line 59? (a friend/a person in a play/handwriting/facial
features)
**Task:
Describe what is happening between lines 26- 61
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Explain the significance of this line:
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M. Georgiou ©
William Shakespeare King Lear
What references to symbols, themes or motifs can you find in this section? Highlight and annotate your
texts or write them in your books with explanations.
How does Gloucester react to this discovery about his son? Use quotations to support your answer.
SUPERNATURAL
PARENT/CHILD
DIVISION
Act 1 Scene 3
*Task: Short answers
Where is this scene set? ________________________________________________________________
Which characters are present in this scene? _________________________________________________
What does Goneril tell Oswald to say to her father when he arrives?
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**Task:
Write a summary of what is happening in Act 1 Scene 3 explaining the characters feelings using key
quotes to help support your points.
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***Task: Prediction
M. Georgiou ©
William Shakespeare King Lear
Can you predict how Lear will react to Oswald’s ‘weary negligence’?
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****Task: Opinion
Why do you think Goneril is behaving like this towards her father? What do you think of Goneril and
why?
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Act 1 Scene 4
What does Lear call Goneril (hated cat/loathed wasp/detested kite/killer cow)? _________________
1. That she may feel how sharper than a Thee in a child, than the sea- monster
2. Into her womb Thwart disnatur’d torment to her
3. And from her derogate body never Organs of increase
4. If she must teem Her brow of youth
5. Let it stamp wrinkles in Convey sterility
6. More hideous, when thou show’st To laughter and contempt
7. Dry up in her the Create her child of spleen
8. With cadent fears Spring a babe to honour her
9. Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits fret channels in her cheeks
M. Georgiou ©
William Shakespeare King Lear
10. That it may live and be a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child
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How do you think Lear expects to be received? Find quotations to support your answer.
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M. Georgiou ©
William Shakespeare King Lear
Act 1 Scene 5
Devise questions/tasks based on characters and /or events in this scene for your classmates to answer.
M. Georgiou ©