Essay on King Lear by Shakespeare

"Adversity is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher adversity to truth and decency." Putting one's faith in something that is not real is worse than putting one's faith in nothing at all. Cloudy thinking and unreasonable thoughts lead to such a thing. This is shown throughout Shakespeare's King Lear. Characters question the adversity of offspring with no evidence. Characters also are unreasonable in thoughts surrounding those true to them within the kingdom. As well, characters form an erroneous view of what love is, and that makes them unreasonably question loyalties. In Shakespeare's King Lear, when one is illogical in determining where loyalties lie, it leads to treachery and suffering, until one recognizes the error.

Adversity is the most important factor in shaping the character. Devotion from one's offspring is wrongly judged. In parenting, it is difficult to do what is right and wrong all the time, poor decisions will always be made. In the case of Gloucester, he chooses to favor his legitimate son, Edgar, over the illegitimate, Edmund. This is through no fault of Edmund's save birthright. That unfairness causes flaws in Edmund's character. After years of feeling inadequate, evil begins to manifest within him, or just misunderstanding. He feels the need to get even with his father and his brother for the easy life they have led. This caused him to come up with a ruse to convince Gloucester that Edgar was planning to kill Gloucester and claim his inheritance: It has nothing to do with truth; it is nothing more than professed emotions. The fact that Lear is giving away his kingdom; dividing his power based on words describing how much they unrealistically love him, reflects negatively on him.

Looking at this, one can see something is terribly wrong. Lear's definition of love is terribly distorted. His version of love is completely superficial. One can see how earnest he is in these endeavors, and how strongly he believes in this method to truly know how each of his daughters feel about him. From this, he almost seems deserving of the betrayal that is to come from his daughters. Through banishing Cordelier, he has committed one of the biggest wrongs it is possible to commit. He abandoned someone, and even more so, the daughter who was loyal. In contrast, for him to shower his ...