King Lear

Lear is a mighty figure and a titan among Shakespeare’s tragic heroes. But he’s also a small-minded, ill-tempered, and self-involved old man—at least at the start. Lear’s initial bad decision to ask his daughters how much they love him before he’ll give them his kingdom sets the scene for the whole play. This demand suggests a world where love is nothing but an expression of power. Lear is fortunate to be truly loved by Cordelia, Kent, and his Fool, who refuse to play along with his manipulative game.

As his plan backfires, Lear rediscovers his connection to reality over the course of the play. When he goes mad in the midst of a terrible storm, his madness paradoxically reconnects him to reality: he remembers that he, like Edgar’s beggar “Poor Tom,” is a “poor, bare, forked animal” (3.4.108), a mortal being in a painful and unpredictable world. Over the rest of the play, he acts on what he’s learned, consoling the blinded Gloucester, humbling himself before the wronged Cordelia, and submitting to imprisonment with a wisdom that comes from a sense that there are things in this world more important than power and status.

But this isn’t a morality play—at least, not in the conventional sense—and Lear receives no reward for his education in harsh reality.