The Nature of King Lear Essay

The power that Lear gives to Goneril and Regan makes them treacherous and deceitful. Lear offers his

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

In this soliloquy, the audience gets its first glimpse of the character of Goneril. The full spectrum of her greed and selfishness will not be revealed until later, but this is certainly a good sample of her personality. Her profession of love is so large that it seems almost artificial, and it also seems motivated by the fact that possession of land is involved. Still, Lear seems immensely pleased by her statement, and requests a similar profession of love from his other daughter, Regan. She obliges, and in her declaration she tells her father that she loves him even more than Goneril does. Regan emerges from her

Nature plays the utmost largest role in this play. We can begin with the orating of nature through Lear relinquishing his crown and dividing his power among his daughters. It is here that Lear states his intentions “ to shake all cares and business from our age,”(l.l.40) in order to “ unburthened crawl towards death.”(l.l.42) Although, it was not in the intentions of King Lear to wreak havoc on his kingdom, he did so by relinquishing his crown. Therefore, subsequently leading his kingdom to an ironic flow of catastrophic events. It was impossible for Lear to stop being king due to the fact that it was his rightful position and he acknowledges this by stating:

     In King Lear, the subplot of Gloucester corresponds to the major plot of King Lear. Both fathers have their own loyal legitimate child and their evil and disloyal child. They are both honourable men, who have children that return to them in their time of need. Gloucester and Lear are both tormented, and their

King Lear is a Shakespearian tragedy revolving largely around one central theme, personal transformation. Shakespeare shows in King Lear that the main characters of the play experience a transformative phase, where they are greatly changed through their suffering. Through the course of the play Lear is the most transformed of all the characters. He goes through seven major stages of transformation on his way to becoming an omniscient character: resentment, regret, recognition, acceptance and admittance, guilt, redemption, and optimism. Shakespeare identifies King Lear as a contemptuous human being who is purified through his suffering into some sort of god.

Shakespeare begins by introducing the reader to Lear’s madness in the opening scene of the play: “Tell me, my daughters…Which of you shall we say doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend Where nature doth with merit challenge” (Shakespeare 1.1.47, 50-52). Lear’s initial intent of shifting power to his daughters is equitable to that of a retired old man, who wishes “to shake all care…while we unburthened crawl toward death,” (Shakespeare 1.1.38, 40). However, in the exact moment that Lear allocates his well-being to his daughters, the entire dynamics of their relationship has thus transcended from parent to child. His status has become situated to a lower hierarchy, and can be seen as a foreboding on his mind as well as his country. Rebecca Munson symbolically makes this connection when she states, “ any inversion of sovereignty, either in the body natural or the body politic, not only morrows but causes such an

Here, Lear goes mad and tells Gloucester that even a dog gets obeyed by people who have to obey him and that appearance, authority and power all lead to corruption. He compares himself to the poor when he says that only the poor without power gets into justice and that the society always obeys power even if it is not justified. Even though Lear loses his senses, Edgar still finds out that he has got a point which seems to be reasonable.

Due to this flaw, Lear has given way to the two older daughters to conspire against him.  Lear is finally thrown out of his daughters’ homes and left with a fool, a servant and a beggar. This is when Lear realizes the mistake that he has made and suffers the banishment of his two eldest daughters.  Lear is caught in a storm and begins to lose his sanity because he can not bear the treatment of his two daughters as well as the error he has made with Cordelia and Kent.  Lear also suffers from lack of rest when he is moving all over the place and the thing that breaks him is the death of his youngest daughter, Cordelia.  This suffering can be contrasted with other happier times like when Lear was still king and when he was not banished by his two daughters.

Throughout the tragedy, Lear, at times, seems to only be capable of heinous volitions. His malevolent actions extend especially to his daughters. While angry, Lear tells his daughter, Goneril, that she is “More hideous when thou show’st thee in a child / Than the sea monster” (1.4.268-269). After not receiving his way, Lear refers to his daughters as “unnatural hags” (2.4. 280) because they would not let him keep all of his knights. He then threatens Goneril and Regan by letting them know that he “will have such revenges on [them] both” (2.4.281). Lear’s scathing cruelty shines through in his unnecessary name calling and threatening approach to his daughters. Lear also tells his fool that “[they will] have [him] whipped” (1.4.178) as a showing of his cruel nature. If Lear were able to keep his preposterous actions in check by learning to not be so cruel, much of the sorrow and destruction that occurred would not

King Lear's View of Himself "King Lear" is a play all about the cruelty of human nature and the ways in which all people, "good" and "bad", can sin, or be sinned against. Lear is a very difficult character to categorise as either "good" or "bad" as he is both "sinned against" and "sinning". It is also very difficult to use these sins as a measure of his character as they a varying in severity. When we first meet Lear he is in the process of dividing his kingdom into three, preparing to hand it to his three daughters. This is a sin, as according to The Divine Right of Kings, each monarch is chosen by God, and is there fore answerable to none but him.

The changeable use of voice by the actor in this production was used to show his volatile character. Critics of this early play comment on the straight-faced that Lear conveys while asking the question “which one of you, shall we say, doth love us most?” The replies from Gonerill and Regan are given an absurdist notion by the bizarre over-reactions. Their realistic language is contrasted to their two-faced body language.

Above all, Lear's foolishness is the cause of his downfall. His illogical decisions cause chaos in the kingdom. Though he means well, Lear does not think rationally when he decides to hand over his power to his daughters before he dies. Lear was too quick to step down from the throne and did not realize that a bloody power struggle would ensue. In addition to losing his title, Lear is also left without a home when he divides his kingdom. Lear greatly

In these situations, the cast confronts instances of betrayal and eventually self-growth. The story initiates with King Lear’s urgency for flattery, which drives him to commit a decision that instigated the power-hungry course of his daughters. The betrayal of Goneril and Regan caused Lear to separate from his man-made principles and praise those of nature. Besides the change in Lear, the audience also observed Gloucester’s position concerning the legitimacy of his two sons. Societal views were a detriment regarding the rights of illegitimate children, like Edmund. Seeing his brother Edgar conquer all his father’s treasures, Edmund left his praise of nature behind and instead exploited the reliance of status and relationships in his royal family to overcome the laws of society, forming a great deception against his own family.

     The play, “King Lear” by William Shakespeare, starts with noblemen Kent and Gloucester having a conversation and the audience finds out that Gloucester has two sons. Edgar who is his heir, and Edmund his unimportant son. This info. leads to the mini-plot. Then, Lear enters to say that he is going to end his life’s tasks and problems. He then points to the map, he tells the people there that he will split his land into three parts. They are going to be given to his three daughters. The two oldest, Goneril and Regan, tell their father that their love for him goes beyond expectations. The youngest one, Cordelia, tells him that she loves him, but only as she should love her father. He is then