Character Analyses - King Lear

Character Analyses
King Lear

Lear is the protagonist, whose willingness to believe his older daughters’ empty flattery leads to the deaths of many people. In relying on the test of his daughters’ love, Lear demonstrates that he lacks common sense or the ability to detect his older daughters’ falseness. Lear cannot recognize Cordelia’s honesty amid the flattery, which he craves. The depth of Lear’s anger toward Kent, his devoted follower, suggests excessive pride—Lear refuses to be wrong. Hubris leads Lear to make a serious mistake in judgment, while Lear’s excessive anger toward Kent also suggests the fragility of his emotional state. Hubris is a Greek term referring to excessive and destructive pride. In the ancient Greek world, hubris often resulted in the death of the tragic, heroic figure. This is clearly the case with Lear, who allows his excessive pride to destroy his family.

Throughout the play, the audience is permitted to see how Lear deals with problems. He is shocked when people do not obey as they have in the past, since Lear is king and he expects to be obeyed. However, instead of dealing with issues, Lear looks to the Fool to distract him with entertainment, to help him forget his problems. He has been insulted and demeaned as king, but he is not prepared to face those who are responsible. Instead, Lear often responds to problems with anger and outbursts of cursing, even a physical attack when provoked. When confronted with insults, Lear is helpless, at the mercy of his daughter and her servants, and he often succumbs to despair and self-pity. The once-omnipotent king struggles to find an effective means of dealing with his loss of power.

Eventually, the king reveals that he is frightened and apprehensive for his future, but he refuses to submit to another’s decisions. Lear wants to remain in charge of his destiny, even though the choices he makes are poor or filled with danger. Thus, Lear chooses to go out into the storm because he must retain some element of control. The only other choice is to acquiesce to his daughters’ control, and for Lear, that option is not worth considering. Lear is stubborn, like a willful child, and this is just one additional way in which he tries to deal with the events controlling his life. Lear flees into the storm, as a child flees a reality too harsh to accept.

In spite of his despair and self-pity, Lear is revealed as a complex man, one whose punishment far exceeds his foolish errors, and thus, Lear is deserving of the audience’s sympathy. Eventually, Lear displays regret, remorse, empathy, and compassion for the poor, a population that Lear has not noticed before. Lear focuses on the parallels he sees to his own life, and so in a real sense, his pity for the poor is also a reflection of the pity he feels for his own situation.

Lear is the anointed king, God’s representative, and thus, he shares the responsibility for dispensing justice on earth. He recognizes that he bears responsibility for both his own problems and for those of others, who suffer equally. His understanding of his complicity in the events that followed is a major step in accepting responsibility and in acknowledging that he is not infallible. Because of his own suffering, Lear has also learned that even he is not above God’s justice.

Character Analyses
Goneril

Goneril is Lear’s eldest daughter. After professing her deep love for her father and receiving half of his kingdom, she betrays him and plots his murder. Goneril’s expressions of love are extreme and reveal the inherent dishonesty of her nature. Goneril reveals her true character when she defies the hierarchy of nature, which calls for daughters to respect and honor their fathers, and lays the groundwork for the torment she will set in motion for the remainder of her father’s life.

Goneril leads her father to believe that her love for him extends beyond any evidence of poor behavior, and so ultimately, she is responsible for Lear’s actions, having earlier endorsed them. Later, both Goneril and Regan are depicted as especially cruel and bloodthirsty, as they call for Gloucester’s punishment. Throughout most of the play, having power has been most important to Goneril, but by its conclusion, she is willing to lose the battle, and thus the kingdom, rather than lose a man.

Character Analyses
Regan

Regan is Lear’s second daughter. Regan is as villainous as Goneril. In the beginning, both Regan and Cornwall appear to be conscientious and reasonable people. Regan appears genuinely upset to learn of Edgar’s betrayal. Thus, Regan initially appears as the more sympathetic and gentler sister. She greets her father with politeness, but her deportment is deceptive. Regan has no real reverence for her father and king, as her subsequent actions reveal, but Regan is more competent than Goneril at deception, more easily assuming the mantle of deference and politeness that a gracious daughter is expected to exhibit.

Like Goneril, Regan also proves herself to be unyielding and cruel. Regan’s plucking of Gloucester’s beard reinforces the point that she has no respect for age or rank. In contrast to her basic inhumanity, Regan shows some real humanity, though briefly, when Cornwall is wounded. Regan’s concerns that Gloucester should be relieved of his misery indicates that she is cognizant of public opinion and concerned that her subjects support her actions.

Character Analyses
Cordelia

Cordelia genuinely loves her father, but her refusal to flatter him leads to the tragedy that unfolds. Cordelia’s tears at the news of her father’s treatment prove her compassion and establish that she is, indeed, the opposite of her sisters. Cordelia has no desire for revenge, nor any need to make her father suffer for having misjudged her. Her virtue and purity make it easy to see why she is often described as Christ-like or representative of God’s goodness. Her response to her father’s capture, and her own capture, evokes the stoicism of kings, and reveals that Cordelia is as royal as her father is.

Character Analyses
Fool

The Fool assumes the role of Lear’s protector when Cordelia is banished. The Fool functions much as a Chorus would in a Greek tragedy, commenting upon events and the king’s actions and acting, in some ways, as the king’s conscience. The Fool is the king’s advocate, loyal and honest, but he is also able to point out the king’s faults, as no one else can. The Fool’s use of irony, sarcasm, and humor help to ease the truth, and allows him to moderate Lear’s behavior. The Fool shares his master’s fate, and this reinforces the impression that the Fool’s purpose is to protect Lear until Cordelia can arrive to help her father. Both Cordelia and the Fool are caretakers for Lear, and when one is present, the other need not be.

Character Analyses
Earl of Gloucester

Gloucester is depicted as a foolish old man, whose inability to see through Edmund’s lies parallels Lear’s own difficulties. By mistaking Edmund’s motives, Gloucester is blind to the events occurring around him, even before Cornwall gouges out his eyes. Clearly, he is not intuitive or quick enough to understand the plotting or undercurrents present around him. Gloucester blames events on the stars, and thus, he absolves himself of any responsibility for his actions.

Later, Gloucester is willing to sacrifice his own life for the king. This heroic behavior sets Gloucester apart from his youngest son, Edmund, who is merely an opportunist. Like Lear, Gloucester feels despair and questions a god, and like Lear, Gloucester finds his humanity in the midst of his tragedy. The blinded old man who asks that clothing be brought, so that Bedlam Tom might be covered, is a very different man from the Gloucester of Act I, who in the play’s opening scene, bragged of the good sport to be had at Edmund’s conception. Instead of a thoughtless braggart, ...

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Character Analyses
Earl of Kent

Although banished, Kent disguises himself in an effort to stay close to his king. Kent is honest—he will not lie to his king—and he is truly selfless, devoted to Lear. When his attempts to protect Lear from his own impetuous nature fail, Kent assumes the guise of an ordinary man and resolves to protect his king. When queried by Lear as to his identity, Kent replies that he is “a man” (I.4.10). Thus, he is no one special, and yet, he stands apart from many other men. Kent is a man defined by integrity, whose goodness is immeasurable, as is his love for his king. Kent’s destiny is irrevocably connected to that of the king’s, as the final scene of the play reveals. In rejecting Albany’s offer to rule the kingdom with Edgar, Kent reveals that he will soon join his king in death. Clearly, Kent feels that his job on earth is to serve his king, and with that job now ended, he anticipates his own death.

Character Analyses
Edmund

Gloucester’s younger illegitimate son is an opportunist, whose ambitions lead him to form a union with Goneril and Regan. The injustice of Edmund’s situation fails to justify his subsequent actions. Edmund rejects the laws of state and society in favor of the laws he sees as eminently more practical and useful—the laws of superior cunning and strength.

Edmund’s desire to use any means possible to secure his own needs makes him appear initially as a villain without a conscience. But Edmund has some solid economic impetus for his actions, and he acts from a complexity of reasons, many of which are similar to those of Goneril and Regan. To rid himself of his father, Edmund feigns regret and laments that his nature, which is to honor his father, must be subordinate to the loyalty he feels for his country. Thus, Edmund excuses the betrayal of his own father, having willingly and easily left his father vulnerable to Cornwall’s anger. Later, Edmund shows no hesitation, nor any concern about killing the king or Cordelia. Yet in the end, Edmund repents and tries to rescind his order to execute Cordelia and Lear, and in this small measure, he does prove himself worthy of Gloucester’s blood.

Character Analyses
Edgar / Poor Tom

Edgar is Gloucester’s only legitimate heir, but he must flee and hide from his father when he comes under suspicion. Edgar’s innate honesty and dignity lets him believe that his brother, Edmund, would never lie to him, since Edgar would not lie to his brother. Edgar’s stoic belief that he has survived the worst that fortune can throw at him is tested when Edgar discovers his father, now blinded. The manner in which Edgar addresses his father indicates compassion, understanding, and an acceptance of his father’s flaws.

Character Analyses
Duke of Albany

As Goneril’s husband, Albany grows in stature during the play and ultimately finds the strength to resist his wife’s efforts to have Lear killed. Early in the play, Albany lacks the strength to stand up to his wife, and thus, he cannot control her. Albany is Goneril’s opposite, gentle and kind to his wife’s cruel and self-serving demeanor. But later, Albany’s attack on Goneril’s integrity demonstrates that Albany is a highly moral and humane individual, the antithesis of his wife.

Where Goneril has created chaos, Albany endorses nature’s design and a view of nature’s work within an organic framework. Albany accepts that nature’s pattern is essential for survival. Early on, Albany hesitates to confront Goneril when he thinks she’s wrong, but he is not the willing participant in evil that Cornwall is. Albany is genuinely shocked when he learns of Gloucester’s blinding, while Cornwall easily succumbs to this depravity.

With a new resistance to his wife, Albany joins the ranks of characters who undergo dramatic change during the course of the play; he grows and evolves into a stronger and more compassionate individual by the end of the drama. Albany leads his army in defense of the kingdom, although with great reluctance. The audience witnesses his personal growth, and the culmination of change is clear when he assumes control of the kingdom following the battle’s conclusion.

Character Analyses
Duke of Cornwall

Cornwall is Regan’s brutal husband, vicious and savage when thwarted in his efforts to seize ambition. Cornwall’s easy acceptance of Edmund’s story and his welcoming of Edmund into his clique foreshadows the evil that will later emerge from Cornwall and provides a hint to the audience that Cornwall is not what he appears. Cornwall responds to Kent’s truthful declarations by placing Kent in the stocks. This action indicates that Cornwall, who himself uses artifice as a substitute for honesty in his own speech, cannot recognize truth when he hears it. Later in the play, Cornwall will make no attempt to control his actions or behave in a civilized manner as he gouges out Gloucester’s eyes and grinds them under the heel of his boot.

Character Analyses
Oswald

Oswald, Goneril’s steward, is a willing accomplice to Goneril’s plotting and a henchman without honor. Oswald adds to this negative perception by failing to defend himself against Kent’s attack and by lying that he spared Kent’s life because Kent is an old man. These events paint Oswald as weak and dishonest. Oswald is, as Kent suggests, a parasite who thrives off Goneril’s evil machinations and who makes her deceit easier to maintain. As Goneril’s servant, he accepts her orders without question. Although he is warned, he refuses to abandon his orders to murder Gloucester, since obedience and position are everything to this servant. Oswald’s sense of obedience is so great that he even asks the man who has killed him to deliver Goneril’s letter to Edmund.

Critical Essays
Divine Justice in King Lear

King Lear inspires many philosophical questions; chief among them is the existence of divine justice. This concept was particularly important during the Elizabethan era, because religion played such a significant role in everyday life. Religious leaders directed people to expect that they would have to answer to a higher authority, expressing some hope that good would triumph and be rewarded over evil. But throughout King Lear, good does not triumph without honorable characters suffering terrible loss. In fact, at the play’s conclusion, many of the good characters lie dead on the stage—Lear, Gloucester, and Cordelia. In addition, the audience hears that Kent will soon die, and the Fool has earlier disappeared, presumably to die. Of course, the evil characters are also dead, but their punishment is to be expected according to the laws of divine justice. But how then does the audience account for the punishment and, finally, the death of the good characters in King Lear?

Lear makes several poor choices, most importantly in misjudging the sincerity of his daughters’ words; but when he flees out into the open heath during a storm, his madness seems a painful and excessive punishment to witness. Parallel to Lear’s punishment is that which Gloucester suffers. The plucking of Gloucester’s eyes can be perceived as another instance in which divine justice is lacking. Gloucester has made several errors in judgment, as has Lear; but the brutal nature of Gloucester’s blinding—the plucking out of his eyes and the crushing of them under Cornwall’s boots—is surely in excess of any errors he might have made.

Both Lear and Gloucester endure terrible physical and mental suffering as punishment for their misjudgment, but before dying, both men are reunited with the child each earlier rejected. This resolution of the child-parent conflict, which earlier tore apart both families, may be seen as an element of divine justice, although it offers little gratification for the audience.

Throughout King Lear, the audience has witnessed Edmund’s growing success as a reward for his evil machinations. But when Edgar and Edmund meet in Act V, the duel between these two brothers is very different from the traditional match for sport. Christian tradition recalls several biblical battles between good and evil, as divine justice is an important component of trial by combat. The duel between Edgar and Edmund is really a conflict that replays this ongoing battle between good and evil, with Edgar’s defeat of Edmund obviously signaling the triumph of righteousness over corruption. Edgar’s victory, as well as his succession of Lear, as king of Britain, points to an intervention of divine justice.

And yet, when Lear enters with Cordelia’s body, any immediate ideas about divine justice vanish. The deaths of Cornwall, Edmund, Regan, and Goneril have lulled the audience into a belief that the gods would restore order to this chaotic world. But Cordelia’s death creates new questions about the role of divine justice; a just god could not account for the death of this faithful and loving daughter.

In spite of the seemingly senseless death of this young woman, Shakespeare never intended for his audience to escape the painful questions that Cordelia’s death creates. Instead, the audience is expected to struggle with the question of why such tragedies occur. The deaths of Gloucester and Lear are acceptable. Both have made serious errors in judgment, and although both came to recognize their complicity in the destruction that they caused, the natural resolution of this change was an acceptance of their future, whatever it held. But Cordelia is young and blameless. She is completely good and pure.

At the play’s conclusion, the stage is littered with bodies, some deserving of death and some the innocent victims of evil. Cornwall has been destroyed by his own honest servant; Edmund is killed by the brother he sought to usurp; both Goneril and Regan are dead, one murdered and the other a suicide; the obedient steward, Oswald, is dead, a victim of his own compulsion to obey. In the end, no easy answer surfaces to the question of divine justice, except that perhaps man must live as if divine justice exists, even if it’s only a product of rich and wishful imaginations.

Critical Essays
Parent-Child Relationships in King Lear: The Neglect of Natural Law

At the heart of King Lear lies the relationship between father and child. Central to this filial theme is the conflict between man’s law and nature’s law. Natural law is synonymous with the moral authority usually associated with divine justice. Those who adhere to the tenets of natural law are those characters in the text who act instinctively for the common good—Kent, Albany, Edgar, and Cordelia.

Eventually, Gloucester and Lear learn the importance of natural law when they recognize that they have violated these basic tenets, with both finally turning to nature to find answers for why their children have betrayed them. Their counterparts, Edmund, Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall, represent the evil that functions in violation of natural law. All four conspirators are without conscience and lack recognition of higher moral authority, since they never consider divine justice as they plot their evil. Their law is man-made, and it focuses on the individual, not the good of the community. Tragedy unfolds as two carefully interwoven and parallel stories explore the abandonment of natural order and the unnatural betrayal of parent and child.

In the primary plot, Lear betrays his youngest daughter and is betrayed by his two oldest daughters. In almost identical fashion, the subplot reveals another father, Gloucester, who betrays his older legitimate son and who is betrayed by his younger illegitimate son. In both cases, the natural filial relationship between father and children is destroyed through a lack of awareness, a renunciation of basic fairness and natural order, and hasty judgment based on emotions. By the play’s end, the abandonment of natural order leaves the stage littered with the dead bodies of fathers and their children.

In the opening act, Lear creates a love test to justify giving Cordelia a larger share of his kingdom. Although his kingdom should be divided equally, Lear clearly loves Cordelia more and wants to give her the largest, choice section of his wealth. In return, Lear expects excessive flattery and gushing confessions of love. But instead, Cordelia’s reply is tempered, honest, and reasonable—custom dictates that she share her love between her husband and her father.

Just as soon as Cordelia fails to meet her father’s expectations, Lear disinherits her. At Cordelia’s loss, Goneril and Regan are quick to take advantage. They may have genuinely loved their father at one time, but they now seem tired of having been passed over in favor of their younger sister. After Lear states his obvious preference for Cordelia, the older sisters feel free to seek their revenge, turning the family’s natural order on its ear. At the same time, Lear fails to see the strength and justice in natural law, and disinherits his youngest child, thus setting in motion the disaster that follows. Lear puts in place a competition between sisters that will carry them to their graves.

In a similar father-child relationship, the opening scene of King Lear positions Gloucester as a thoughtless parent. The audience’s introduction to this second father has him speaking of Edmund’s birth in a derogatory manner. Although Gloucester says that he loves both Edmund and Edgar equally, society does not regard the two as equal—and neither does Gloucester, whose love is limited to words and not actions of equality. According to nature’s law, Edmund is as much Gloucester’s son as Edgar is; but according to man’s law of primogeniture, Edmund is not recognized as Gloucester’s heir.

In one of the initial pieces of information offered about Edmund, Gloucester tells Kent that Edmund has been away seeking his fortune, but he has now returned. Under English law, Edmund has no fortune at home, nor any entitlement. Edmund’s return in search of family fortune provides the first hint that he will seize what English laws will not give him. Clearly, Edmund’s actions are a result of his father’s preference—both legal and filial—for Edgar, his older and legitimate son. This favoritism leads to Edmund’s plan to destroy his father in an attempt to gain legitimacy and Gloucester’s estate. Again, the natural order of family is ignored.

Gloucester rejects natural law and a parent’s love for his child when he is easily convinced that Edgar—the son he claims to love so much—has betrayed him. Gloucester also puts his faith in Edmund’s command of persuasive language, when he rejects the love his eldest son has always shown him. With this move, the earl demonstrates that he can be swayed by eloquence, a man-made construct for easy persuasion, which causes him to reject natural law and the bond between father and child.

Edmund both ignores and embraces natural law. By betraying his father to Cornwall and Regan, Edmund’s self-serving course of action abandons nature’s order and instead foreshadows the neo-Darwinist argument for survival of the strongest individual. His ability to survive and win is not based on competitive strategies or healthy family relationships; instead, Edmund will take what he desires by deceiving those who trust and love him.

Edmund’s greed favors natural law over man’s law because natural law doesn’t care that Edmund is illegitimate. He claims nature as his ally because he is a “natural” offspring, and because man’s law neglects to recognize his rights of inheritance. But, nature only serves Edmund as a convenient excuse for his actions. His actions against his brother and father are more a facet of greed than any reliance on natural law.

One might argue that Gloucester’s cavalier attitude toward Edmund’s conception mitigates Edmund’s actions. When combining this possibility with Edmund’s final scene, in which he tries to save Cordelia and Lear, Edmund clearly shows himself to be of different fabric than Goneril, Regan, and Cornwall. In many ways, Gloucester is responsible for what Edmund becomes. Edmund is as much Gloucester’s son as is Edgar. In embracing the man-made laws that reject Edmund’s legal rights, Gloucester is denying natural laws that would make Edmund and Edgar equal.

Gloucester also acts against nature in rejecting Edgar without sufficient proof of his wrongdoing; thus Gloucester shares responsibility for the actions that follow, just as Lear’s love test results in his rejection of Cordelia. Both men are easily fooled and consequently, they both reject natural law and their children. Both act without deliberation, with hasty responses that ultimately betray their descendants.

At the play’s conclusion, Goneril and Regan’s abandonment of natural order and their subscription to evil has finally destroyed them. The audience learns early in the final scene that Goneril has poisoned Regan and killed herself. Their deaths are a result of unnatural competition, both for power and for love. But Lear is the one who set in motion the need to establish strength through competition, when he pitted sister against sister in the love test.

For the audience, the generational conflict between parent and child is an expected part of life. We grow impatient with our parents and they with us. We attempt to control our children, and they rebel. When Goneril complains that Lear and his men are disruptive and out of control, we can empathize—recognizing that our own parent’s visits can extend too long or that our children’s friends can be quite noisy. Shakespeare’s examination of natural order is central to our own lives, and that is one of the enduring qualities of King Lear.

Critical Essays
Kingship and Lear

Integrity, compassion, and justice are important facets of an effective king. The king ismore than the physical evidence of a strong and united government. The king is God’s representative on earth, and as such, serves as a model of behavior for all his subjects, who look to their king for guidance, strength, and hope. If a king lacks the essential components of kingly behavior, and the authority that these traits embody, his subjects will, as Goneril and Regan demonstrate, turn increasingly to deception, treachery, and violence as a method of government. Does Shakespeare’s depiction of King Lear offer the audience a portrait of kingship, or in contrast, a portrait of kingly loss?

In his first scene, Lear initially comes across as a strong ruler, although his plan to divide his kingdom among his three daughters seems rather short-sighted and self-serving. This decision places his two strong sons-in-law, Albany and Cornwall, in charge of protecting the outlying areas of the kingdom. But the single benefit derived from this division creates many problems. Lear is abdicating his purpose and his responsibilities, and he is also creating chaos. To achieve his goal, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia are forced into a love test to determine their inheritance. The division of any kingdom is not without risk, but even before his action has the opportunity to create adversity, Lear establishes a competition, which complicates an already dangerous decision.

Competitions, by their very nature, result in winners and losers. Cordelia loses when she refuses to play the game, but Lear also loses when he “retires” and abdicates his kingly role. He cannot be king without a kingdom, and the country, which is to be divided into smaller principalities, will not have the unity and strength to long survive as separate units. Civil war and insurrection are the inevitable results of Lear’s actions. The love test forces Regan and Goneril into competing against the favored younger sister. Ultimately, deadly conflict arises between Lear and his older daughters, and the long-standing competition between sisters creates conflict between ruling factions, further dividing the kingdom.

Even before Cordelia’s return, dissent is in the air. In Act II, Curan’s report of strife between Albany and Cornwall helps illustrate that Lear’s division of his kingdom was a mistake (II.1.10). At this point, conflict doesn’t appear to exist between Goneril and Regan, and Cordelia is out of the immediate scene as a result of her banishment. Already, though, Cornwall and Albany show signs of uneasiness, a discord with the clear potential to evolve into conflict, and perhaps, civil war. Goneril and Regan soon unite against a common foe—their own father; but it is reasonable to assume that Goneril and Regan, having disposed of Cordelia, would have next turned their troops and anger against one another. Certainly, Edmund was counting on this event, since he indicates he will marry whichever one survives the struggle for absolute control (V.1.55–69).

Notably, King Lear was not always the ineffectual king represented in the middle and final acts of Shakespeare’s play. In the opening of the play, Lear is the absolute ruler, as any king was expected to be in a patriarchal society such as Renaissance England. Lear enters in Act I as the king, evoking grandeur and authority, representing God and the reigning patriarchy of kingship. The audience quickly forgets this initial impression because the love test, in all it absurdity, forces the audience into seeing Lear as a foolish, egotistical old man. But the evidence of his greatness is seen in Kent’s devotion, in the love of his Fool, and in Cordelia’s love, which is sustained, in spite of Lear’s rejection.

By the time Shakespeare was writing King Lear, the English had survived centuries of civil war and political upheaval. The English understood that a strong country needed an effective leader to protect it from civil war and potential foreign invasion. The strong leadership of Elizabeth I had saved England when the Spanish attempted an invasion in 1588, and much of the credit for her success was attributed to her earlier efforts to unite England and to end the religious dissention that was destroying the country. No ruler would have deliberately chosen to divide a kingdom, not after having witnessed the conflicts that had marked England’s recent history. The division of a country would have weakened it, leading to squabbles between petty lords and the absence of an effective central government and a capable means of defense. Having only recently achieved stability in their country, Shakespeare’s Elizabethan audience would have been horrified at Lear’s choice to divide his kingdom, and so, create disunity.

The audience would also have questioned the choice of the French king as a suitor, especially as Lear intended to give Cordelia the choice center section of his kingdom. The audience’s abject fear that a foreign king might weaken England (and a Catholic monarch made it worse) would have made Lear’s actions seem even more irresponsible. But Lear is doing more than creating political and social chaos; he is also giving his daughters complete responsibility for his happiness, and he will blame them later when he is not happy. All of these events create a picture of King Lear as a poor model of kingship, one who reacts emotionally and without reason.

Lear is very much loved by every good character in the play, with only those characters who are unworthy of kingship hating him and plotting against him. Goneril, Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund offer a contrasting image of kingship in their animosity and evil, behavior that is brutal and uncaring, rather than loving and paternal. One other important element of kingship is its connection to natural law and the image of kings as anointed by God. Kingship is directly connected to natural law, which is a central force in this play. A king has absolute authority and has no need to question natural law, and yet kings rule as God’s representative on earth; thus their very position creates a reciprocal agreement between the monarchy and natural law. A successful king works in concert with nature, as Lear does until the moment he disinherits his youngest daughter.

In King Lear, the King of France stands as a successful model of how a good and proper king should behave. In his acceptance of Cordelia—even without benefit of a dowry—France is conducting himself with reason and conscience. He is also acting within the confines of natural law, with generosity of spirit and a willingness to share his life and country. The model of France’s behavior recalls how Lear must have behaved before his decision to divide his land. But instead of seeing this kind father and patriarchal authority, the audience witnesses an absolute ruler, one who refuses questioning, or even the wisdom of his lords. Goneril and Regan equate their share of the land with absolute power of a monarch. They reject any allegiance to God or to any divine justice. Instead, they establish their own system of morality, one based on their father’s law rather than natural law. Goneril and Regan can be as absolute in their decisions as Lear chooses to be; their behavior echoes his.

In their choices, Cornwall and Regan remind the audience of Macbeth and his wife. Cornwall and Regan present a ruling couple,—perhaps even more ruthless, but just as ambitious as the Macbeths—willing to murder their way to absolute power. Goneril and Regan dismiss Lear’s 100 knights, who are really his small personal army. Their action is reasonable if they expect to seize rule and authority. Although the threat of losing a personal guard warrants remedy, Lear’s response to this move precipitates the crisis. No king should allow his army to be disbanded, and so Goneril and Regan’s actions are certainly dangerous to the king. But by this time, Lear has waited too late to reclaim the kingship that he has denied.

At the conclusion of the play, Albany appoints Kent and Edgar to restore order, although Albany’s rank places him above the other two. But Kent intends to follow his master in death and that leaves Edgar to inherit the kingdom. In spite of the recent events, Albany thinks that Kent and Edgar can rule jointly, but Kent is correct in choosing another future for himself.

Although traditionally, the highest-ranking individual speaks the last lines in a tragedy, Shakespeare gives Edgar the final lines, as Gloucester’s surviving son responds to Albany’s request. Edgar is clearly uncertain and reluctant to assume the crown. Kingship was never his goal, nor his intent. But circumstances have forced him to consider a position for which he is unprepared.

Shakespeare has not offered the audience much to appreciate about Edgar. For much of the play, Edgar was disguised as Poor Tom, and the audience saw only a poor creature from Bedlam. Edgar really steps forward when he challenges Edmund, revealing that he has the goodness and strength to defeat evil. In winning their duel, Edgar’s defeat of Edmund signals the triumph of righteousness over corruption and provides an assurance of God’s blessing on Edgar. This act signals his ability to assume the role of king. In Edgar, kingship is exemplified by integrity, compassion, and justice—all the elements that Lear once possessed but which were subordinated to his injured ego.

Character Analyses - King Lear

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