king lear themes

King lear Themes

Justice

King Lear is a brutal play, filled with human cruelty and awful, seemingly meaningless disasters. The play’s succession of terrible events raises an obvious question for the characters—namely, whether there is any possibility of justice in the world, or whether the world is fundamentally indifferent لا or even hostile ّto humankind. Various characters offer their opinions: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport,” Gloucester muses, realizing it foolish for humankind to assume that the natural world works in parallel with socially or morally convenient notions of justice Edgar, on the other hand, insists that “the gods are just,” believing that individuals get what they deserve But, in the end, we are left with only a terrifying uncertainty—although the wicked die, the good die along with them, culminating inthe awful image of Lear cradling Cornelia’s body in his arms. There is goodness in the world of the play, but there is also madness and death, and it is difficult to tell which triumphs in the end

Authority versus Chaos
King Lear is about political authority as much as it is about family dynamics. Lear is not only a father but also a king, and when he gives away his authority to the unworthy and evil Goneril and Regan, he delivers not only himself and his family but all of Britain into chaos and cruelty. As the two wicked sisters indulge their appetite for power and Edmund begins his own ascension, the kingdom descends into civil strife , and we realize that Lear has destroyed not only his own authority but all authority in Britain. The stable, hierarchal order that Lear initially represents falls apart and disorder engulfs the realm.
The failure of authority in the face of chaos recurs in Lear’s wanderings on the heathمduring the storm. Witnessing the powerful forces of the natural world, Lear comes to understand that he, like the rest of humankind, is insignificant in the world. This realization proves much more important than the realization of his loss of political control, as it compels him to re-prioritize  his values and become humble and caring. With this newfound understanding of himself, Lear hopes to be able to confront  the chaos in the political realm as well.

 

Reconciliation

Darkness and unhappiness pervade King Lear, and the devastating Act 5 represents one of the most tragic endings in all of literature. Nevertheless, the play presents the central relationship—that between Lear and Cornelia—as a dramatic embodiment of true, self-sacrificing love. Rather than despising أَ Lear for banishing her, Cornelia remains devoted, even from afar, and eventually brings an army from a foreign country to rescue him from his tormentors. Lear, meanwhile, learns a tremendously cruel lesson in humility  and eventually reaches the point where he can reunite joyfully with Cornelia and experience the balm  of her forgiving love. Lear’s recognition of the error of his ways is an ingredient vital to reconciliation with Cornelia, not because Cornelia feels wronged by him but because he has understood the sincerity and depth of her love for him. His maturation enables him to bring Cornelia back into his good graces, a testament to love’s ability to flourish, even if only fleetingly, amid the horror and chaos that engulf the rest of the play.

Madness

According to the Paperback Canadian Oxford Dictionary, to be mad is to be "insane" and to have "a disordered mind."   Throughout King Lear, there are several different characters who one would question if they are in an orderly state of mind.   The Earl of Kent, Edgar, the Fool, and King Lear all portray varying degrees of madness.   Some have alternative choicemotives behind their madness while others are simply losing touch with reality around them.
The Earl of Kent is a close advisor to King Lear.   Lear decides to split up his kingdom between his two daughters, Regan and Goneril, and to banish his youngest daughter, Cordelia, from the kingdom.   Kent strongly advises Lear to keep reign  over his own kingdom and insists that Cordelia should not be renounced. With these displeasing remarks to Lear, Kent is banished from the kingdom as well.   Instead of leaving the kingdom, Kent returns under a disguise to continue to watch over Lear.   While trying to gain a place in the king's company, Kent plays

the role of a somewhat senile old man who has extreme loyalty to his king.   Take, for instance, Kent physically and verbally attacking the servant, Oswald, for no more reason than to gain a laugh from the king and reinforce his loyalty to the king.   These acts, while they do have good reason behind them, lead to Kent being put in the stocks.   Some will say that to risk being caught while banished from the kingdom is mad.   It is an even madder deed to take company with the one who has banished you in the first place.  

Edgar is the son of the Earl of Gloucester.   Edgar is framed by his brother, Edmund, for conspiring to kill their father.   He is banished from the kingdom and Gloucester wishes him to be captured, dead or alive.   Despite the reward on his life, Edgar takes on the disguise of Tom O'Bedlam...

Loyalty

In the harsh world of King Lear, loyalty is rare. Surviving in an unstable political situation means that many people focus on the bottom line: saving their own skins. But there are some characters in the play who demonstrate extraordinary loyalty, such as Kent and Cornelia. The play celebrates this virtue, but it also shows that it can be dangerous. Loyalty is not appreciated , but rather ignored. In some cases, loyalty means death, and in all cases, it means suffering.

Gender

In King Lear, women are often seen as, disloyal, promiscuous   and the root of all the problems in the world. King Lear in particular has serious issues with women – when his daughters, Goneril and Regan, betray him, he begins a diatribe against women, particularly female sexuality, that echoes  throughout the play.

Compassion and Forgiveness

King Lear is an incredibly cruel play, and many of the characters are absolutely pitiless. Yet a few characters show extraordinary sympathy towards others' suffering. The human capacity to feel for others survives even the most desperate of moments. Yet what we see in Lear is that compassion is usually based on some sort of obligation – such as loyalty or family ties. Interestingly, these loyalties and these ties are the same causes of the extensive treachery displayed in King Lear.

 

Power

Much like Shakespeare's famous history plays, King Lear offers a meditation on kingship and power or, more accurately, the loss of power. After retiring and divvying up his kingdom among his ungrateful daughters, Lear discovers what it's like to lose the power and authority that come with the responsibilities of active rule. In addition to being a monarch, King Lear is also a family patriarch and Shakespeare asks us to consider the similarities between a father's relationship with his children and a king's relationship with his subjects.

The Theme of Love in King Lear

True love or real love is a central element in the play and is established by Shakespeare in opposition to sexual love or love that can be bought. True love and loyalty are opposed by selfish love and treachery. The theme of love enters the play in its early stages when Lear in Act 1 Sc. 1 shows that he doesn’t understand the concept of real love. This is indicated by his setting up of verbal love test in the attempt to establish the extent of his daughters love for him. He places himself in the position of an auctioneer who will give most to the highest bidder. Cordelia, a symbol of true love, cannot take part in this bidding. In the ensuing ، discussion between Lear, France and Burgundy, love is also the theme and Cordelia is the subject of discussion. Both Lear and Burgundy perceive her as an object to be bargained for. Only France sees her in a different light and defines what he believes love is not, "Love is not love, when it is mingled with regards that stand aloof from the entire point". He goes on to say that her rejection by both Lear and Burgundy has added to his love for her and therefore France realizes the true meaning and value of love.

 Kent is another character who understands the concept of true love, for Kent’s love is mingled with loyalty. Kent proves his love by his willingness to accept banishment rather than to see Lear make a mistake. He confirms his love by staying with Lear in disguise and doing him services "improper  for a slave". The totality of Kent’s love is exemplified at the end of the play when he is willing to die rather than to live without Lear "I have a journey shortly to go, my master calls me, I must not say no".

Like Lear, Gloucester has a flawed  concept of love. His admissionof Edmund’s existence and the manner in which he relates to his conception, show Gloucester as one who considers sexual love on a par with real love. His willingness to accept Edmund’s lies without verification also reflects his flawed concept of love. As with Lear seeks no other proof than verbal, it is the same with Gloucester and Edgar who represents true love in the subplot is rejected like Cordelia and Kent in the main plot. Similarly his mistreatment by Gloucester doesn’t weaken his love for him and he provides the subplot reflection of Kent’s loyalty to Lear with his disguised loyalty to Gloucester. True love is therefore represented by three individuals, Cordelia, Kent and Edgar, and each of these suffer banishment, rejection and are forced to either adopt a disguise or leave the realm in order to maintain their love and loyalty. In contrast the notion of anti-love is demonstrated by Goneril, Regan and Edmund. Their concepts of love are primarily of self, associated with lust.

 

Family

When it comes down to it, family relationships, especially those between fathers and children, are at the center of the play. (Characters who are mothers, as several critics have pointed out, are noticeably absent in King Lear but there's plenty of talk about moms in this play.) Lear is not only a king, he's also a family patriarch رب عائلةwhose plans to divvy up his kingdom among his daughters backfiresأعطى نتائج عكسية, causing a civil war that gets played out as a large scale family crisis. Lear's family isn't the only dysfunctional crew in the play – the drama between Gloucester and his sons heightens the
sense that King Lear is a decidedly domestic tragedy.

Language and Communication

In King Lear, honest speech is admirable but language often falls short of being able to accurately express human emotion – a theme Shakespeare also explores in Sonnet 18 and Twelfth Night. King Lear opens with a "love test" staged by the aging monarch to determine which of his three daughters can say she loves him "most." This turns out to be a huge mistake—the daughters who say they love their father more than anything in life end up mistreating him, while the daughter who says her love cannot be expressed with mere words, turns out to be Lear's only loving and loyal daughter. King Lear, who has spent a lifetime being sweet talked by courtiers  and subjects can't tell the difference between the truth and empty flattery. At other times, he simply does not want to hear the truth, as when he banishes the loyal Kent for speaking up about Lear's wicked daughters.

 

Society and Class

King Lear offers some pretty  insightful social commentary on everything from class and politics, homelessness, mental illness, the system of primogeniture the tensions between youth and the older generation, and so on. For many, the play seems to challenge and critique some existing (sixteenth and seventeenth century) social and political structures while offering some radical solutions. For others, the play takes a good hard look at England's social ills but eventually winds up supporting the status quo.

Reason In Madness”
Like many great works of literary fiction, King Lear contains a scene which captures many if not all of the work’s thematic interests in one place, packed in perhaps like canned fish, but nevertheless accessible to an examining eye.  Much can be learned about the play by tearing apart Lear’s madcap reunion with a blinded Gloucester somewhere on the road to Dover (middle part of Act IV, Scene 6).  It begins with an ironic allusion to royalty and patriarchy—Lear says, “I am the king himself.”  It ends with Lear’s own take on royalty and patriarchy—“kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.”  In between, Lear and Gloucester discourse on family, state, nature, sex, corruption, justice, blindness and insight, reality and illusion, and fate, what Lear describes as “this great stage of fools.”  They are mad and blind, but in some ways clear as a bell; Edgar, a witness, calls it “reason in madness.”  And this scene can be acted as the play’s most intense moment of affection and warmth.  Making sense of this scene makes sense of the play as a whole.  It would be our recommendation of a place to start.

Theme of love

Cornelia’s Love for Lear

The conflict begins when Cornelia is unable to "heave [her] heart into [her] mouth" and although her love for Lear is true, she is unable to verbalise it. Lear’s mistake is that despite knowing Cornelia’s love for him, he refuses to acknowledge or reciprocate it, banishing her for her silence.
Marjorie Garber has identified Cornelia’s inability to express her love as "the rhetoric of silence", where the limitations of language to express heighten dramatic tension, in the way her silence is tragically and "radically misunderstood".
Cornelia does overcome her silence by the time she is united with Lear, and calls out to him: "Oh my dear father, let restoration hang/thy medicine on my lips", and the image of her lips finally achieving expression is a beautiful, hopeful moment. Nevertheless, tragedy looms over the both of them, and the final moments of the play overcomes and crushing their love.

Lear’s Misappropriation of Love

Lear’s mistake results in him being denied the love of the faithful Cornelia, but the source of his anger and madness derive from the harm his other two daughters, Regan and Goneril, inflict upon him, as they repay his hopes for their love with wickedness. Love is the bedrock of King Lear's suffering, and a key to understanding the play as Shakespeare’s "perfection in poetics of outrage." (Bloom)

Edgar’s Love for Gloucester
In the parallel storyline of Gloucester, love is seen in Edgar’s care for his father under disguise. Garber observes the image of the hand, which Edgar offers to Gloucester to lead him, as an "emblem of humanity" and sign of kinship and love.
This is best shown in the episode where Edgar saves the blind Gloucester from committing suicide, tricking him that to believing he has jumped off the Dover cliffs, though in reality he has merely jumped on a flat plain. Edgar’s saving of Gloucester’s physical life is accompanied by a lifting of his spirits, and draws allusion to a Christian resurrection:
Therefore, thou happy father
Think that the clearest gods, who make them honors
Of men’s impossibilies, have preserved thee.
At this juncture sheds his old persona of Tom that Gloucester now identifies as a ‘fiend’, and adopts the disguise of a new character who is stronger, more mentally stable who addresses Gloucester as ‘father’. Edgar moves closer to Gloucester in this manner.
Nevertheless, there are disturbing aspects in Edgar’s expression of love. For unknown reasons, Edgar never resolves the dramatic tension in his disguises by revealing his true identity and securing the original father-son bond that his bastard brother, Edmond, destroyed. Instead, the moment where he identifies himself is cut from the stage, only being obliquely referred in the final scene. Gloucester’s reaction, in how his damaged heart "Burst smilingly", enforces the sense that love here, like the rest of the play, reaches no fruition.


Edmond’s Coldness in Love
From his entrance, Edmond focuses only on a hunger for power: "Edmond the base/Shall to th’legitimate. I grow, I prosper." His sentences are clipped, factual and emotionless, and parallel the methodical manner he wrecks Gloucester’s and Edgar’s lives without a shred of guilt.
For Edmond, love is impossible, given his coldness and lack of emotion. In a soliloquy, he wonders whether he should accept Goneril or Regan’s love: "Both?-one?-or neither? Neither can be enjoyed/If both remain alive", revealing an apathy which is an ironic contrast to the sister’s passions and contest for his love in various conniving and poisonous means which finally end in mutual murder and death.
Edmond is a character that is, "amazingly free of all connection"(Bloom) to any character, and is important, thematically and dramatically, as an antithesis to love and emotion in the play.

King Lear focuses on the Sundering of Love

The play moves to an end where bonds of affection are sundered, the finale bloody, and the future bleak. In King Lear, the focus is not on love as a new hope or mode to convey meaning, but in its rendering. Shakespeare has left us a play which, in Harold Bloom’s words, serves to "Express love at its darkest, its most unacceptable, yet also at its most inevitable."

 

Filial ingratitude in King Lear!

Filial ingratitude is a dominant theme in King Lear. It is a universal theme in the sense that it is common to find many sons and daughters who show much ingratitude and cruelty towards their parents. In the play, there are two fathers (Lear and Gloucester) who suffer because of favoring certain kids to others. Their tragedy is caused by those whom they have already favored and preferred. The play gives us incidents which connect one father (King Lear) with his two ungrateful daughters (Goneril and Regan) on one hand, and another father (the Earl of Gloucester) with his son (Edmund). Those two lines of relationships display the issue of ingratitude on a very deep and comprehensive level.

What made this play a tragedy was the evil children's "filial ingratitude," for the "blindness" of Lear and the Earl was so great that only through suffering from the "monster ingratitude" of Goneril, Regan, and Edmund did they learn to distinguish the good children from the evil ones. It was "filial ingratitude" which opened Lear's eyes to the "painful truth": he had disinherited his good daughter and had given power to his evil daughters.

Lear expresses his great shock addressing ingratitude as an enemy that has occupied the heart of his daughter. He says:

"Ingratitude, though marble-hearted fiend,

More hidcous when thou showe'st thee in a child

Than the sea-monster!"



The traditional values that make the parent-child relationship natural and wholesome are distorted and destroyed in this play. The order and harmony that usually characterize a stable family are disrupted by the evil designs of the greedy Edmund, Goneril, and Regan. Lear and Gloucester are both trusting fathers. They foolishly believe the words of their evil children and banish the offspring that truly love them. As a result of their lack of judgment, both fathers are made poor by their unthankful children. The filial greed and ingratitude shown by Edmund, Regan, and Goneril bring immense suffering to all.
The play begins by an unusual incident. King Lear wants to divide his kingdom among his three daughters because he has become too old to rule. Therefore, he asks each one to express her love to him. The first two daughters (Goneril and Regan) choose very passionate and poetic terms to flatter their father which reflect how hypocritic they are. Goneril says:

"Sir. I love you more than words can wield the matter;

Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty;

Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare;

No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour."
The most horrible moment occurs when it is Cordelia's turn to speak. Lear is shocked when Cordelia has not said what he expects from her as his most beloved and dearest child. She says that she loves him as any dutiful daughter should love her father:

"…I love your majesty

According to my bond; nor more nor less…

You have begot me, bred me; I

Return those duties back as are right fit

Obey you, love you, and most honor you."
She is very realistic in her expression which indirectly expose the exaggeration and hypocrisy displayed by her sisters. But her father is too emotional and rash to get her point; he misunderstands her considering her ungrateful and cruel, and consequenly, punishes her.
The first sign of ingratitude is displayed immediately after the two sisters receive their share in the same session. Goneril and Regan have a private conversation in which they reveal their real identities. They begin to conspire against their father whom they regard as very rash and emotional. They plan to treat him in the way that they think he deserves. Goneril comments on her father state saying:

"You see how full of changes his age is;

The observation we have made of it hath not been little:

He always loved our sister most;

And with what poor judgment he hath now cast her off."
The development of the action in the play shows that the two daughters prove to be ungrateful and Villain. The reality of Goneril is revealed to Lear when he visits her. She does not want him to behave as a king anymore because she thinks that if he still has his title (as a king) and the royal accompaniment (represented in the one hundred knights), he will remain the real king the eyes of the public. In this way, she with her husband will do their dirty work without much recognition. She wants to dismiss 50 knights and give orders to her steward to ignore her father and treat him badly:

"Put on what weary negligence you please,

You and your fellows. I'd have it come to question.

If he dislike it, let him to our sister,

Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one,

Not to be overruled. Idle old man,

That still would manage those authorities

That he hath given away!"
These words reflect how bad and ungrateful this daughter is. She insults her father calling him an 'idle old man' who still wants to enjoy his lost glory. It seems that she accuses him of being fool when he willingly gives up his power. In addition, they indicate the two sisters' conspiracy against their father; Goneril is sure that when her father goes to Regan, she will treat him badly.

Lear is hurt by his evil daughters' ingratitude, which is made obvious by their great disrespect and intolerance toward him. Goneril's meanness towards him prompts him to say, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is/To have a thankless child!" Leaving Goneril's home in anger, Lear exclaimed, "Monster ingratitude!"

Therefore, he heads to Regan expecting her to take his side and criticize her sister. Unfortunately, the sign of ingratitude shown by the second daughter is worse than that shown by the first one; Lear is badly received by his daughter, Regan, who apologizes for not meeting him, claiming that she has been tired. He becomes angry and says:

"Deny to speak with me? They are sick?...Mere fetches.

Fetch me a better answer."

Lear becomes furious as a result of this strange attitude of his daughter. He cannot believe what happens to him, and therefore, he asks the elements of nature to avenge his humiliation:

"We are not ourselves when nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind.

To suffer with the body. I'll forbear."

He will "forbear" because he can no longer restore what he has lost as a result of his rashness and injustice.



Regan is crueler than her sister. In addition to sharing her sister in treating her father badly, she dismisses him from the palace making him face the outside storm alone. Devoid of love for him, the two sisters show that they are ungrateful, insulting, and threatening to the father who gave them both land and power. It is not proper on all scales of morality to dismiss a father in such bad whether. Therefore, Lear speaks to Kent expressing the internal storm which goes inside him. He states that Goneril's and Regan's villain actions leads him to madness:

" The body's delicate: the tempest in my mind

Doth from my senses take all feeling else

Save what beats there. Filial ingratitude!

Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand

For lifting food to't? But I will punish home:

No, I will weep no more. In such a night

To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure."

In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!

Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,--

O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;

No more of that.



Following the other line of ingratitude (Edmund's ingratitude towards his father), we find that Gloucester does not choose to abdicate his role, as Lear has already done. Therefore, his ruthless son Edmund schemes and plots against him to replace Edger (Gloucester's legitimate son) as heir, and then seek an opportunity to depose his father. Edmund plans to make his father read a letter that contains a conspiracy against him by Edger. When he speaks to himself, we realize that he is, not only ungrateful son, but also a real devil. He displays his hatred of both his father and brother saying:

"I do serve you in this business.

A credulous father, and a brother noble,

Whose nature is so far from doing harms,

That he suspects none; on his foolish honesty

My practices ride easily! I see the business.

Let me, if not by birth, have hands by wit:

All with me's meet that I can fashion fit."



His vicious scheme succeeds and Gloucester rejects his son, Edger. Then, Edmund humiliates his father by revealing his sympathy with Lear to his daughters and a secret letter which his father has received regarding the landing of French forces. These incidents lead Gloucester to blind himself saying:

"O you mighty gods!

This world I do renounce, and in your sights

Shake patiently my great affliction of."



Gloucester's life is saved by his son, Edgar, whom he has already deserted. This action is completely contrary to the villain actions and vicious schemes made by Edmund who is regarded as the "fiend".



In a moment of enlightenment, Gloucester, after becoming blind, that Edmund has deceived him and that his ingratitude has been so intense. He discovers that his son has sacrificed him in return of some worldly benefits. It is quite clear that Edmund ingratitude is motivated by achieving his personal interests and his wicked nature.



In the same way, Lear reaches the same stage of enlightenment when he is provided with care and concern by Cordelia, the daughter whom he has already deserted. She comes to him to mend and cure him. She wants to be a relief that my wipe her sisters' ingratitude. When she sees him in his miserable state, she says:

"O my dear father! Restoration hang

Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss

Repair those violent harms that my two sisters

Have in thy reverence made!"



Now he is able to realize the sharp contrast between Cordelia, as a dutiful daughter, and her two ingrateful sisters. At the end he says some very passionate words to Cordelia indicating that she is the only one with whom he feels happy and satisfied even in prison. He asks her to forgive him for his injustice towards her:

"…Come, let's away to prison

We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage.

When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,

And ask of thee forgiveness. So, we'll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales and laugh."

Theme of Blindness

In Shakespearean terms, blinds means a whole different thing.

Blindness can normally be defined as the inability of the eye to see,

but according  to Shakespeare, blindness is not a physical quality,

but a mental flaw some people possess.  Shakespeare’s most dominant

theme in his play King Lear is that of blindness.  King Lear,

Gloucester, and Albany are three prime examples Shakespeare

incorporates this theme into.  Each of these character’s blindness was

the primary cause of the bad decisions they made; decisions which all

of them would eventually come to regret.

The blindest bat  of all was undoubtedly King Lear.  Because of

Lear’s high position in society, he was supposed to be able to

distinguish the good from the bad; unfortunately, his lack of  sight

prevented him to do so.  Lear’s first act of blindness came at the

beginning of the play. First, he was easily deceived by his two eldest

daughters’ lies, then, he was unable to see the reality of Cordelia’s

true love for him, and as a result, banished her from his kingdom with

the following words:

“..................................for we

Have no such daughter, nor shall ever see

That face of her again.  Therefore be gone

Without our grace, our love, our benison.”

(Act I, Sc I, Ln 265-267)

Lear’s blindness also caused him to banish one of his loyal followers,

Kent.  Kent was able to see Cordelia’s true love for her father, and

tried to protect her from her blind father’s irrationality.  After

Kent was banished, he created a disguise for himself and was

eventually hired by Lear as a servant.  Lear’s inability to determine

his servant’s true identity proved once again how blind Lear actually

was.  As the play progressed, Lear’s eyesight reached closer to 20/20

vision.  He realized how wicked his two eldest daughters really were

after they locked him out of the castle during a tremendous storm.

More importantly, Lear saw through Cordelia’s lack of flatterings and

realized that her love for him was so great that she couldn’t express

it into words.  Unfortunately, Lear’s blindness ended up costing

Cordelia her life and consequently the life of himself.

Gloucester  was another example of a character who suffered

from an awful case of blindness.  Gloucester’s blindness denied him of

the ability to see the goodness of Edgar and the evil of Edmund.

Although Edgar was the good and loving son, Gloucester all but

disowned him.  He wanted to kill the son that would later save his

life.  Gloucester’s blindness began when Edmund convinced him by the

means of a forged letter that Edgar was plotting to kill him.

Gloucester’s lack of sight caused him to believe Edmund was the good

son and prevented him from pondering the idea of Edmund being after

his earldom.  Near the end of the play, Gloucester finally regained

his sight and realized that Edgar saved his life disguised as Poor Tom

and loved him all along.  He realized that Edmund planned to take over

the earldom and that he was the evil son of the two.  Gloucester’s

famous line: “I stumbled when I saw” (Act IV, Sc I, Ln 20-21) was

ironic.  His inability to see the realities of his sons occurred when

he had his physical sight but was mentally blind; but his ability to

see the true nature of his sons occurred after having his eyes plucked

out by the Duke of Cornwall.  Fortunately, the consequences of

Gloucester’s blindness throughout the play was minimal, after all, he

was the only one to die as a result of his tragic flaw.

Albany was another character suffering from the classic case

of blindness, but luckily for him, he survived his battle.  Albany’s

case of blindness was purely a result of the love he had for Goneril.

Although he disapproved  of Goneril’s actions, he would only mildly

argue his case.  When Goneril forced Lear to reduce his army so that

he could stay in their castle, Albany protested:

“ I cannot be so partial, Goneril,

To the great love I bear You -”

(Act I, Sc IV, Ln 309-310)

Albany’s deep devotion to Goneril blinded him from the evil she

possessed.   His inability to realize how greedy and mean Goneril was

after she flattered Lear with a bunch of lies and then kicked him out

of their home, just goes to show you how much Albany loved Goneril.

Albany was also blind to the fact that Goneril was cheating on him and

that she was plotting to kill him. Fortunately, Edgar came across a

cure for Albany’s blindness.  A note outlining Goneril’s evil plans

was all Albany needed to see.  Finally, Albany recognized what a devil

he was married to and for once let out his emotions when he said:

“O Goneril,

You are not worth the dust which the rude wind

Blows in your face!”

(Act IV, Sc II, Ln 29-31)

Unlike Lear and Gloucester, Albany didn’t suffer much during his bout

with blindness.  Not only did he survive his battle, but he lived to

remain the ruler of what was once Lear’s kingdom.