“On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again” is a sonnet poem by John Keats. Before writing this poem, Keats read King Lear play by Shakespeare several times to gain inspiration and motivation. According to Keats, Shakespeare is the most successful English poet of his era. Keats wrote “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again” in 1818, but it was published in 1838, ten years after his death. Using Keats' voice, the speaker narrates the poem in the first person point of view.
The speaker compares King Lear's play by Shakespeare to romance folk stories. According to the speaker, every time he reads King Lear's tragedy, it transforms his pain into pleasure. The poem opens with the speaker bidding, "Adieu to Golden-tongued Romance." The speaker is in love with Adieu, a personified character from medieval fairy tales of magic. However, today the speaker does not need Adieu's company because he wants to read King Lear's play.
When the speaker starts reading King Lear's play, he discovers it is not a romantic story because it is about a self-centered king who has lost power. The king is intensely dreadful with the realization that he is powerless. The king faces the harsh reality that he is like any other ordinary man. In King Lear's play, the statement "betwixt Damnation and impassioned clay" means that the ultimate end of humanity is death.
