During this extract Goneril and Regan question why Lear need so many knights and they try to work the amount he has down from one hundred to fifty, then to twenty-five, which Regan suggests. Lear decided to go back to Goneril as she said fifty, then they ask him why does he even need one knight when they have servants to obey him. Lear decides to storm off into the night and Gloucester becomes concerned and Regan and Goneril tell him to lock his doors.
The refusal by the sisters’ to allow Lear to keep his one hundred knights and Regan’s constant refusal to let him to stay with her instead of Goneril makes Lear to start to understand that he can’t command like a king anymore as he has given away his power. But Lear is in denial of this loss of authority and this is because of the treatment he is receiving from his daughters; and this realization is powerful enough to make Lear go mad from his anger. There are parts where we can se this anger and one is when he curses Goneril and also when he says that he won’t live with either of them with his servants but he will live outside with nature. Lear’s servants do not just represent authority but his power as after Regan asks why he needs one, Lear bursts out saying, “O, reason not the need!” (II.iv.259), saying that he does not need to give a reason as he is the King and they are necessary to him. He then goes on to say we would be no different from animals if we did not have the essentials in life and he also needs them to show how important he his and so that he still has power over somebody. When Regan and Goneril refuse Lear his servants they also refuse their father of the essential power to be king and what he needs to separate him from the animals.
Lear’s attitude changes slightly during this extract, at the beginning of it, he says “do not make me mad” (II.iv.216), but he is already mad from how his daughters are treating him, at the beginning he has a sarcastic attitude, saying “I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell” (II.iv.217), meaning that he will leave them to do what they want, even though they are family. As the extract goes on, Lear gets angrier and angrier from what his daughters are saying with Regan saying “And in good time you gave it” (II.iv.248) Being sarcastic after Lear said, “I gave you all-” (II.iv.248), where he is talking about the land that he gave his daughters.
Lear is the only one using metaphors and his does this to make his daughters seem worse than they are, the first metaphor that Lear uses is when he says “thou art a boil, a plague-sore” (II.iv.221), where he describing what Goneril is like, by saying that Goneril is a pain, something you would hate to have and is also an eyesore. “In my corrupt blood” (II.iv.223) is saying that Goneril has made him impure and that she is a disgrace to the family by disrespecting her father. “But this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws” (II.iv.283), this is at the end of a little speech when Lear is saying that he doesn’t need a reason for why he needs knights. This quote tells us that what his daughters have done has broken his heart into many pieces and has broken his love for them and he will not cry, this is shown in the quote “this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere I’ll weep.” (II.iv.284).
In this extract Lear finally realizes what his daughters are trying to do with him and he has been blind to what has been going on all this time, as there are many references to blindness. The references to blindness are because Lear doesn’t realize that his daughters are degenerating him down from being King with power to a civilian. At the end of this extract Lear decided that he is not going to let them take advantage of him anymore and he keeps building up his anger because of his daughters and as his anger builds up so does a storm outside in relation with Lear, it is also the anger of God against Goneril and Regan as during that time, when the play was set, King’s had a divine right, this right was to keep control of the church and so in the end he storms off into the storm.
The extract is set in Gloucester’s castle and most of this play is set in different castles because they are Royal people who are considered important and so they live in spectacular buildings to show this, but after the extract Lear isn’t in a castle anymore he changes to being outside with poor people were his subjects and realizes what he has done by ignoring the poor after he meets Edgar who is pretending to be a beggar, so he gives Edgar his clothes. During the storm, when he is in a cave, he goes mad by putting his daughters on trial as if the are there when they are not.
After he meets Edgar, Lear goes down to Dover, where the French have landed and was caught by them, where Cordelia talks with Lear and they both forgive each other. They try to put things right again, but Cordelia gets hanged by the English and Lear dies of a broken heart because all of his daughters have died on the same day and so there is regicide as his daughters participated in his killing.
After Lear is throws himself out of the castle and into the elements he strips himself of the shame and everything that makes him a king down to the very basic person that we all have to be. Lear who is now becoming a more honourable man is still believing that love is an object and this is shown when he decided which daughter to live with, by how many knights they will allow him to have shown in this quote: “I'll go with thee [Goneril]. Thy fifty yet doth double five-and-twenty, And thou are twice her love” (II.4.253-255).
The moral of this story that Shakespeare could be trying to get across is that you should honour and respect you father even if they have done wrong, they can be forgiven. There could be many intentions that Shakespeare is trying to show us, it could be that he wants the show us how some people treat each other and how they exploit one another to get what they want and how they do anything to get it. It can also show how much power that some people want and how so many people want it and one little incident can switch the whole view around and a person loses all of their power.
The audience’s reaction to what has happened would be a shock, as they would never have thought that Goneril and Regan would overthrow their father and treat him as if he is a senile old man who doesn’t know what he is doing. Anyone would be shocked if they found out a child was taking away the power of their parents even if it is a civilian in the modern day. As Goneril, Regan and Lear are a Royal Family, it makes it seem much worse as they have followers who respect them and what they do just like people do to the Royal Family today.
