How the Sub-Plot Mirrors the Main Plot in King Lear by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's King Lear is a play which shows the consequences of one man's decisions. The audience follows the main character, Lear, as he makes decisions that disrupt order in his Kingdom. When Lear surrenders all his power and land to his daughters as a reward for their demonstration of love towards him, the breakdown on order in evident. Lear's first mistake is to divide his Kingdom into three parts. A Kingdom is run best under one ruler as only one decision is made without contradiction. Another indication that order is disrupted is the separation of Lear's family. Lear's inability to control his anger causes him to banish his youngest daughter, Cordelia, and loyal servant, Kent. This foolish act causes Lear to become vulnerable to

The tragedy of Shakespeare’s King Lear is made far more tragic and painful by the presence and suffering of the king's youngest daughter, Cordelia. While our sympathy for the king is somewhat restrained by his brutal cruelty towards others, there is nothing to dampen our emotional response to Cordelia's suffering. Nothing, that is, at first glance. Harley Granville-Barker justifies her irreconcilable fate thus: "the tragic truth about life to the Shakespeare that wrote King Lear... includes its capricious cruelty. And what meeter sacrifice to this than Cordelia?"5 Yet in another passage Granville-Barker has come much closer to touching on the real explanation. I quote the passage at length.

Shakespeare’s King Lear, also follows Poetics guidelines of tragedy with the death of Cordelia, and Lear’s kommos. In the beginning of the tragedy, King Lear is ready to disperse his kingdom between his three daughters. “Which of you shall we say doth love us most, / That we our largest bounty may extend/ Where nature doth with merit challenge…”, Lear challenges his daughters (I, i, 53-55). Lear desires for his daughters to express their love for their father and he will give the daughter, with the greatest affection, the largest section of land. Regan and Goneril, two of the daughters, express their great love for their father, yet Cordelia, Lear’s favorite, answers with “Nothing” (I, i, 91). Lear, not receiving the answer he wished for, banishes Cordelia without a dowry to marry the King of France. Lear is then faced with being kicked out of his other daughters’ houses and his own kingdom; after these events Lear proceeds to go insane. King Lear even regrets Cordelia’s banishment later in scene one, “I did her wrong” (I, v, 25). Lear’s actions and selfishness cause pity for Cordelia because of her devotion to her father; however, in the end of the tragedy, he is faced with a realization of his mistake which leads to a katharsis of feelings of pity for Cordelia.

King Lear shows an extreme of human suffering. While there is some foreshadowing to the tragic end of the play and

Of the deaths in Shakespeare’s King Lear, the death of Cordelia and King Lear at the end of Act V are most significant in revealing the development of Lear and how his development contributes to the theme surrounding it. The dynamic King Lear is a tragic hero whose fatal flaw, arrogance, prompts his removal from power and eventually the death of both himself and Cordelia. However, by the time of King Lear’s death, his arrogance has been replaced with a compassion which allows him to mourn the death of Cordelia and die from his own grief. Besides redeeming himself for his flawed judgement, the compassionate King Lear of Act V recognizes the loyalty in characters like Kent and Cordelia, while also seeing through the dishonesty of Regan and Goneril which fools the King Lear of Act I. King Lear’s transition from disowning Cordelia because of his arrogance to recognizing her as his only faithful daughter is demonstrated through Lear’s death, which serves as the culmination of his development and a reversal of his character. Furthermore, his death elaborates the theme of how someone’s arrogance may blind them from the reality of others’ intentions, which can be seen through a more compassionate and humble lens.

King Lear is understandably one of William Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, it encompasses the journey through suffering and explores, in detail, the idea of justice. Each character in the play experience s one or the other throughout the progression of the plot, it is evident that through compositional features such as these, the play write is trying to convey this meaning. Through methods such as intense imagery, motifs, repetition of words and rhyming the play write has given intensity to certain passages, speeches and conversations. Shakespeare, through the use of character development, unravels the way in which humanity responds to injustice, the character relationships, specifically character foils, give rise to a number of notions

   King Lear meets all the requirements of a tragedy as defined by Andrew Cecil Bradley.  Bradley states that a Shakespearean tragedy has to be the story of the hero and there is exceptional suffering and calamity slowly being worn in.  Also, the current time must be contrasted to happier times.  The play also depicts the troubled parts in the hero’s life and eventually he dies instantaneously because of the suffering and calamity.  There is the feeling of fear in the play as well, that makes men see how blind they are not knowing when fortune or something else would be on them.  The hero must be of a high status on the chain and the hero must also possess a tragic flaw that initiates the tragedy.

At the beginning of “King Lear,” an authoritative and willful protagonist dominates his court, making a fateful decision by rewarding his two treacherous daughters and banishing his faithful one in an effort to preserve his own pride. However, it becomes evident during the course of the tragedy that this protagonist, Lear, uses his power only as a means of projecting a persona, which he hides behind as he struggles to maintain confidence in himself. This poses a problem, since the audience is prevented from feeling sympathy for the king. Shakespeare’s ironic solution is to allow Lear’s progressing madness to be paired with his recognition of truth, thereby forcing Lear to shed his persona, and

Cordelia’s disinheritance and banishment are frighteningly disproportionate to the “sin” she has committed in not flattering Lear. So too, is Kent’s treatment at his hands. This concept of disproportionate consequences for actions done, underlines how monstrous Lear’s arrogance is, as well as his petty tyranny and his lack of self-knowledge. However, the horrors Lear himself will have to suffer later in the play, as a result of his own folly, will also be out of all proportion to his initial blunder. Without Cordelia in the play, these actions would not have been sparked in Lear.

What aspects employ the genre of tragedy within novels, plays, and cinema? Tragedy is something that is defined universally as the upheaval of any plot, story, or play where an event causes or leads to great suffering for everyone. Authors, playwrights, and even directors all know the certain scene or event that is key for the foreshadowing of tragedy to take place. This signal in any work allows us as an audience or reader to understand the meaning and significance for the need for a certain event to occur. King Lear the renown play about family ties by William Shakespeare has the genre tragedy stamped all over it due to the chaotic and brutal ending. The historian Hayden White’s essay “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact” focuses

Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear can be interpreted in many ways and many responses. The imprecision’s and complication of the play has led

The hunger for power is the root of the tragic outcome in King Lear. There are 3 characters that embodied this theme exactly. King Lear with his loss of power made him lash out. The way Edmund was treated made him want the power he could never have and deceive anyone to get it. Goneril’s hunger for power made her go against those she supposedly loved. These three characters aren’t only to blame for their own tragedies but the tragedies of every character.

This quote is coming from Cordelia in the first scene of the first act. Lear has just called his three daughters in and is dividing up his kingdom. The daughters are telling Lear how much they love him in order to influence the decision on dividing the kingdom. Regan and Goneril both lie and say that they love him more than words can express but Cordelia doesn't lie and tells the truth. In this quote, she says, “Lear you have raised me and loved me and I’m returning the favor. I love you just as I should, I obey you, I love you and I honor you. Hopefully, when I get married I will give you my husband and half of my love.” This quote is showing that in King Lear, Shakespeare uses characters to represent something greater. In the story, there are a few main characters that are big metaphors one being King Lear representing madness and insanity. A second being Goneril representing greed and lastly, Gloucester used to show the metaphors of people not opening their eyes to what's actually going on. All these metaphors have an important lesson to them that can be applied into the

In comparison to Ozymandias, King Lear was too corrupted by power. In William Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, the corruption of power leads to the downfall of his kingdom and the king himself. In contrast to Ozymandias, King Lear is not only a monarch, but has the responsibilities of his family as well. To begin King Lear, Shakespeare starts by Lear giving up power. King Lear originally wants to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters, the two eldest Goneril and Regan and his youngest daughter Cordelia. Before the empire can be divided the girls must share their dying love for Lear in a speech. The two eldest daughters going first, exaggerate their love for their father. In contrast, although Cordelia expresses her love for her father, it is only as a daughter should love their father, nothing more. Lear’s pride

King Lear is a character who displays a great deal of anger throughout the course of the play, he often allows his anger to take over him. A lot of things that are said and during the course of the play are due to Lear’s anger which is a leading factor for his insanity. Lear loses his temper during a love test when his daughter does not give the answer that he was looking for, he disowns her calling Cordelia his, “sometime daughter,” (1.1.119) and gives her share of the land to her sisters. This in turn leads to his insanity because in his blind rage he does not acknowledge the sincerity behind Cordelia’s veiled words; unlike her sisters she does not try to flatter her father in order to receive more land, whereas her sisters have their secrets agendas and do not truly love Lear. In addition to this, King Lear is also enraged when the Earl of Kent who is a loyal follower of Lear, goes against the banishment of Cordelia and speaks up in favour of the youngest daughter. Lear is livid with Kent going against him and banishes Kent, as well reminding him that, “if on the tenth day