King Lear is a story of tragedy written by the play guru, William Shakespeare. The play revolves around the gradual entry into madness of the lead character after he gives off his territory to two of his three daughters bringing misfortune to them all. The play is a derivation of the legendary Lear of Britain, a mythological pre-Roman leader, and has been widely used both on stage and motion pictures with the title role being acted by most of the world’s renowned actors.
First performed a St. Stephen Day in 1606, Shakespeare was first given recognition for the play in 1608 and more performances followed. However, due to audience preference, later on, the subsequent plays were revised to conform to a jovial, non-tragic ending. The lead character, King Lear of Britain is old and wants to retire from his monarchial duties. He decides to divide his wealth among his three daughters. The leader openly, declares to give the biggest share of his kingdom to the daughter who loves him most. The eldest Goneril, gets the first opportunity to declare her love for the father (Bullough 33).
In her flatter, the old king is moved by the eldest daughter’s words and goes ahead to give her a share f his fortune even before listening to the other two. Regan, the second born gets the next opportunity and flatters her father in equal measure and gets her share of the wealth. Finally, the youngest, Cordelia gets the opportunity to express her love, but first refuses on the grounds that her love for the father is comparable to nothing, nor does she have the proper words to express the same.
While she is the most honest of the three, the King is infuriated by her stand on the matter and disinherits her and goes ahead to divide her portion between the Regan and Goneril. This becomes the backbone of the play as the events hat unfold find their roots from the above scenario. King Lear brings out several themes within the play. The other characters help him to develop the themes and bring out the other that Lear may not bring on his own The Problem of Evil One of the broadest themes seen in the play is the great contrast between good and evil.
The writer depicts this theme very well using Lear in conjunction with the other characters. While the wronged daughter does the right things throughout the play, Edmund the evil son does every trick to rise to power to fill the vacuum left by the father. However, the book shows he reality of life that indeed life is not simple as depicted by the complex King who leaves nothing to chance. The book gives a further in-depth insight on all the shades between what is good and evil (Bullough 39). Although Regan and Goneril do not start out as wicked, the two are later on consumed into corruption and greed.
Lear himself starts off as an evil father who disowns one of his daughters, but in the end is portrayed to be a good person. Simirlaly, Gloucester shares the same story as Lear when he realizes how shortsighted he is after losing his vision. Finally, Albany, married to the wicked Goneril and a friend to the illians shows some bit of honor by the end of the play. All these characters are related to the central character, King Lear. To sum it up, King Lear is not only a showcase of the good and evil; it is a book that deeply explores whether redemption from evil is possible.
King Lear is a cruel play, full of brutality and meaningless disasters. The play’s terrible events that follow one after the other brings to question whether or not justice exists in the world. The same further shows that the world is simply indifferent or just hostile for the humanity. Actually, various characters share their opinion on the theme. However, King Lear is the center of this theme. The other characters just help to build on the follies of the king. For example, Gloucester get amused when he realizes that it is foolish to assume that the world accepts parallelism with some social or moral convenience of justice.
On the other hand Edger claims that “gods are just” and insist that people get what they work for. However, in the end, although the wicked also die, the good people also pass on, leaving a spectacle of horrifying uncertainty. Therefore, we are made to believe that there is some goodness in the world. Similarly, there exist the mad as ell as death shown in Lear, and it becomes difficult to tell which one over rules the others in the end. From the play different character show the existence of fate and the significance of free will in making choices.
King Lear still remains the focal point regarding fate, chance and free will. Gloucester believes that fete would never go wrong with him. Furthermore, he has a firm belief that it is the gods who determine someone’s fate. The king equally seems to share in this belief. Therefore, he dismisses the results of his freewill and refuses to take responsibility of his actions. The same is shown when Lear uses is freewill to give power to his two daughters leaving out the youngest who actually loved him most (Bullough 54).
The book depicts him as one who does not intelligently use his free will to make informed decisions. The same causes him a lot of pain in the end as the family gets into unending conflict because of his decision. Similarly, the other two daughters use their free will to misuse the powers given to them by their fathers in indulging in greed and corruption. Their power of choose overwhelms them and brings more harm than good to the family. The King defines fate as a force that is determinant of all occurrences in the niverse.
He believes that fate can either bring one’s fortunes or their fall. Moreover he say that fate is such a powerful force that no one apart from God can control. It is probably because of such beliefs that his uses fate to take undue opportunity and exercises freewill to gain power in a society that has been rendered lawless by “fate”. Through various characters, and Lear in particular fate is used to either disrupt or restore the balance of nature. To define it, balance of nature is when power is in the right hands and where it is not abused or used to bring conflict into the society.
However Lear the central character together with, Edmund, the son, Goneril and fellow villains through freewill, create conflict to take control of or maintain power. Luckily, in the end, they all suffer and meet their end as fate would have it in the final chapters of the play. King Lear brings out the above theme very clearly. Despite being the ruler with every say in his kingdom, we see from the play that nothing is permanent. He uses his freewill to give skewed leadership to his people. However, this does not last for long. Tragedy upon the other come on the way of his family as greed and struggle for ower takes center stage.
To an extent the only permanent aspects of the play seem to be the conflicts encountered from the beginning of the book to the end. Fate seals the permanence with which King Lear’s family is entangled (Bullough 32). It thus teaches humanity that everything is vanity and that nothing in this world remains forever, not even the most powerful ruler or territory. Things shift over time and from one generation to the next. King Lear is depicted to have been a strong ruler whose territory could remain permanent. However, in the end everything falls apart verifying the impermanence of the world.
