by Maureen Cutajar

Created on: July 16, 2010

King Lear opens with the king announcing his decision to relinquish the power to rule and to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. The daughter professing the greatest love for him will get the largest part. The prescribed thirds are not equal and the king intends to offer his youngest daughter, Cordelia “A third most opulent” than those of her sisters.

Goneril and Regan speak flatteringly to their father and each is rewarded with her “ample third” ceremoniously bestowed by Lear himself. However, Cordelia refuses to sing her father’s song. Lear angered beyond endurance casts his daughter off and splits her part among her two sisters.

Kent urges Lear to “see better” right before he is roughly dismissed. But Lear at this stage cannot see. His passion has blinded him. As a king he is immature, he has surrounded himself by flatterers and he still does not know his kingdom. Everyone tells him what he wants to hear and that is the reason why he became so angry with Cordelia.

Soon Lear comes to the realisation that he relinquished his power as well as his land and he must now start on a process of reduction. The first step is neglect from his daughters. The King’s party is being treated with less respect and he comments that he has notices a “most faint neglect of late”.

In the first act we thus have this sudden shift from being everything to nothing. Lear has this premonition of madness that he repeats three times almost like a lament as if he sees madness approaching upon him.

O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven;
Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

In the exchanges with Goneril and Regan, Lear comes to the shocking realisation that his daughters are of the same mind. They treat him like a child and little by little all his companions are reduced until he has no one except Kent in disguise and The Fool. The king who had absolute power sees himself in a very vulnerable position. He realises the great mistake he has done.

A storm breaks, dramatically reflecting the passion Lear experiences. The storm is an occasion where the King learns social responsibility. He comes face to face with penury and poverty and he realises that as a powerful king he had not seen to the needs of his subjects. Lear’s anger in is becoming a disease, filial ingratitude is getting to him, and hysteria is becoming madness. Paradoxically when Lear is reduced to nothing he can see because he can now start to feel.

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