King Lear

A tragedy of fathers and children

King Lear is William Shakespeare's tragedy about an old king who divides his kingdom among his daughters according to how much they say they love him, and loses everything as a result. Shakespeare wrote it around 1605 or 1606. The first recorded performance was at court on December 26, 1606. It survives in two different texts: a quarto printed in 1608 and the First Folio of 1623, which cuts about 300 lines and adds about 100. Most modern editions combine them.

The story of Lear and his three daughters was an old British legend, retold in Holinshed's Chronicles and in an earlier play, King Leir. Shakespeare adds a second plot from Philip Sidney's Arcadia: the Earl of Gloucester, who trusts his scheming illegitimate son and turns against his loyal one. The two plots mirror each other. Two fathers misjudge their children, both are cast out, and both learn the truth through suffering.

The main characters:

• Lear, King of Britain, over eighty and used to obedience.
• Goneril and Regan, his elder daughters, married to the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall.
• Cordelia, his youngest daughter, honest and loving, who marries the King of France.
• The Earl of Gloucester, an old nobleman loyal to Lear.
• Edgar, Gloucester's legitimate son, who disguises himself as a mad beggar called Poor Tom.
• Edmund, Gloucester's illegitimate son, who plots to take his brother's place.
• The Earl of Kent, Lear's loyal counselor, who serves him in disguise after being banished.
• The Fool, Lear's jester, who tells him the truth in jokes.
• Albany and Cornwall, the two dukes: Albany slowly turns against his wife, while Cornwall is cruel.

The main themes are sight and blindness, nature and what is natural, the need for love against the claims of power, madness, and justice in a world where the gods seem indifferent.

Act 1: the love test

Lear announces that he will divide Britain among his three daughters and give the largest share to the one who loves him most. Goneril says she loves him more than eyesight, space and liberty. Regan says she loves him even more than that. Cordelia, the youngest and Lear's favorite, refuses to compete. Asked what she can say to win a richer third, she answers, "Nothing." Lear warns her that nothing will come of nothing. She says she loves him as a daughter should, no more and no less, and that her sisters cannot love only their father if they have husbands.

Lear disowns her in a rage. The Earl of Kent protests and is banished. The Duke of Burgundy withdraws his offer for Cordelia now that she has no dowry, but the King of France marries her for her own worth. Lear divides her share between Goneril and Regan. He will keep the title of king and a hundred knights, and he will live with each daughter in turn.

In the second plot, Edmund, Gloucester's illegitimate son, delivers a soliloquy to Nature, his goddess. He is as good as any legitimate son, he says, and he will take his brother Edgar's land. He forges a letter in which Edgar seems to plot against their father. Gloucester believes it at once.

Kent returns in disguise and enters Lear's service. Lear is staying with Goneril, who complains that his knights are rowdy and tells her steward, Oswald, to treat him coldly. The Fool mocks Lear for giving his power away. Goneril demands that he cut his train. Lear curses her with a terrible wish that she be childless, cries that a thankless child is sharper than a serpent's tooth, and leaves for Regan's house.

Act 2: shut out

Edmund tricks Edgar into running away, then cuts his own arm and tells Gloucester that Edgar attacked him. Gloucester declares Edgar an outlaw and makes Edmund his heir. Regan and Cornwall arrive at Gloucester's castle and take Edmund into their service.

Kent, carrying Lear's message, meets Oswald and beats him. Cornwall puts Kent in the stocks, an insult to the king whose messenger he is. Edgar, hunted, disguises himself as Poor Tom, a naked, raving beggar.

Lear arrives and finds his servant in the stocks. Regan refuses to see him at first. Goneril joins her, and the two sisters together strip him of his knights: fifty, then twenty-five, then ten, then five, then one. Regan asks what need he has of even one. Lear answers that even beggars have more than they need, and that if nature needs only what is necessary, a human life is as cheap as a beast's. Fearing he will go mad, he walks out into a rising storm. The sisters order the doors shut.

Act 3: the storm

On the open heath Lear rages at the storm and calls on the winds to crack their cheeks and flatten the world. Kent finds him with the Fool and leads him toward a hovel. Lear begins to think of others for the first time. He prays for the poor naked wretches who must endure such weather, and admits he took too little care of them as king.

Inside the hovel they find Poor Tom. Lear sees in this naked, shivering man the truth about humanity: without clothes, rank and comfort, a man is only a poor, bare, forked animal. Lear starts to tear off his own clothes.

Gloucester tells Edmund that he plans to help Lear in secret and that a French army has landed to restore him. Edmund reports this to Cornwall. Gloucester finds Lear and the others and leads them to a farmhouse, where Lear, now mad, holds a mock trial of Goneril and Regan, with a stool standing in for Goneril and the beggar and the Fool as judges. Gloucester warns that there is a plot against the king's life and sends Lear in a cart to Dover, where Cordelia waits.

Cornwall and Regan capture Gloucester in his own castle. They tie him to a chair. Cornwall gouges out one of his eyes. A servant, unable to bear it, draws his sword and wounds Cornwall, and Regan kills the servant from behind. Cornwall puts out the other eye. Gloucester calls for Edmund to avenge him, and Regan tells him that Edmund betrayed him. Gloucester understands, too late, that Edgar was innocent. They throw him out to smell his way to Dover.

Act 4: Dover

Edgar, still disguised as Poor Tom, meets his blind father, who does not recognize him. Gloucester says that as flies are to wanton boys, so people are to the gods: they kill us for their sport. He asks the beggar to lead him to a high cliff at Dover.

Goneril and Edmund are drawn to each other. Albany, her husband, has turned against her. He calls her and her sister tigers, not daughters, and learns of Gloucester's blinding. Word comes that Cornwall has died of his wound. Regan, now a widow, also wants Edmund.

Cordelia, in the French camp near Dover, hears that her father wanders the fields crowned with weeds. She sends soldiers to find him.

Edgar leads Gloucester to flat ground and tells him he stands at the edge of the cliff. Gloucester kneels, blesses Edgar, and falls forward. Edgar, now speaking as a stranger at the bottom, tells him he survived a great fall by a miracle. Gloucester resolves to bear his suffering until it ends on its own.

The mad Lear appears, decked in flowers. He talks of justice, sex and power, and says a dog obeyed in office is the great image of authority. He recognizes Gloucester and tells him that when we are born, we cry that we have come to this great stage of fools. Oswald arrives and tries to kill Gloucester for the reward. Edgar kills Oswald and finds on him a letter from Goneril asking Edmund to murder Albany.

Lear is brought to Cordelia's tent, asleep. When he wakes, he thinks he is in hell and she is a spirit in heaven. He calls himself a very foolish, fond old man and says she has cause to hate him. She answers that she has no cause.