GRE Literature in English (REA) Read Online Free PDF Page A

and be familiar with some of the major soliloquies, such as “To be or not to be,” and “Oh that this too too sullied flesh would melt.”
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    King Lear
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    A popular play with ETS, this tragedy concerns the old King’s decision to divide his kingdom between his three daughters, Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia. Lear rashly banishes Cordelia because of her refusal to engage in hyperbolic flattery, and divides the kingdom between the two remaining daughters. The division of the kingdom is a disaster, and King Lear finds himself alienated from Cordelia and at odds with Regan and Goneril. Accompanied by his Fool and Poor Tom (a nobleman named Edgar in disguise), he goes mad and takes up residence in a desolate heath. Cordelia, ever loyal, returns with her husband, the French King, and an army to retake the land from her sisters and to rescue her father. The invasion fails and she is killed at the order of the bastard Edmund. Lear dies of grief.
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    Othello
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    Another tragedy, Othello tells the story of a Moor who marries a white Venetian noblewoman, Desdemona, against the wishes of her father. The action is then moved to Cyprus, where the sinister Iago, one of Shakespeare’s most famous and compelling figures, poisons Othello’s mind against his new wife. Through a series of coincidences and intricate plots set by Iago, Othello becomes convinced that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him with his officer Cassio. He then strangles her in her bed. Iago’s treachery is revealed and the Moor kills himself, pronouncing that he has loved “not wisely, but too well.”
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    Henry IV, Part I
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    A popular play among Shakespeare scholars, Henry IV contains one of Shakespeare’s most popular characters, the fat knight Falstaff. Falstaff is an eloquent and witty figure who also happens to be a notorious liar and coward. Falstaff is a frequent answer to identification questions on the Subject Test— you can usually identify him by his sarcastic and yet articulate rationalizations of his own shameful behavior. The play’s other main figures are the young Prince Hal, the king’s prodigal son and Falstaff’s boon companion who eventually comes into his own as the “true prince,” and Hal’s rival Hotspur, who is leading a rebellion against the king. Hotspur is killed and the main part of the rebellion is put down as the play ends.
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    The Merchant of Venice
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    This play is famous for two characters in particular, the bold and intelligent heroine, Portia, and the compelling old Jew, Shylock. The plot revolves around Shylock’s attempts to extract a cruel debt—a pound of flesh—from Antonio, a Venetian merchant. Portia, engaged to Antonio’s best friend Bassanio, saves the day by going in disguise as a lawyer and turning the tables on Shylock in a dramatic court scene. In the end, Shylock is forced to convert to Christianity and forfeit his fortune, which he values above all things with miserly delight. The play is difficult because of the simultaneously sympathetic and anti-Semitic portrait it renders of Shylock and because it perennially vexes definitive interpretation. Was Shakespeare, like virtually all of his contemporaries, convinced of the inherent depravity of Jews and using his play as a vehicle to reiterate this commonplace, or was he attempting to make audiences question such practices? Particularly important for this debate is Shylock’s famous speech in Act III, Scene i that begins “Hath not a Jew eyes?” Read and remember these lines. They are famous in and of themselves, and are often alluded to as a way of commenting on the things that unite all human beings. Equally famous and worth reviewing is Portia’s “The quality of mercy” speech from Act IV, Scene i.
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    The Tempest
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    This is an increasingly popular play due to the growing interest in the history of European