by Shamma B S

Created on: May 27, 2007

First a summary of Shakespeare's King Lear: Edmund is the illegitimate son of the Duke of Gloucester, and he has a grudge. All of Gloucester's property will be inherited by Edgar, the legitimate son and heir. Edmund realizes that the law which denies the father's property to the illegitimate son is merely custom' it is a man-made rule. Thus Edmund has seen that the relationship between affection and property is purely arbitrary: there is no natural or essential reason why the amount of love a parent holds for a child, or a child holds for a parent, should have any connection with how much property that parent passes on to his children. Love is love and property is property. In a humane society, love is not love when it depends on external factors that have nothing to do with it as the king of France remarks in the first scene of the play.

This is an insight that has certainly escaped Lear in the same scene. The aged Lear has decided to retire' and divide up his territory between his three daughters. He invites each of them to say how much they love him so that ha can reward their affection accordingly. The two older sisters, Goneril and Regan, strive to outdo each other in their declarations of love; but the youngest, Cordelia, refuses to play along. She says she loves her father as much as she ought, in duty; she refuses to speak a great deal of words which she knows are bluster and exaggeration. Lear is furious, and disowns Cordelia, banishing her without a dowry to become the wife of the king of France, who is happy to accept her nevertheless. Thus he loses, simultaneously, that love' of his false daughters, which was his only for so long has he retained kingly power, and the company of her true daughter, who loves him simply because he is her father. Lear is trapped in a way of thinking that defines who he is but no longer fits the world in which he lives.

Lear thinks that he can give away all his property to his daughters Goneril and Regan and still retain the authority and respect due to a king and affection due to a father. He has not seen that all these things are the direct product of the land he possesses, which gives him economic power. He does not realize that in the world of the play love and respect flow towards possessions, but do not belong to people as individuals. He is loved as a king because he is powerful. Without his power, there is (apparently) nothing there to love. Cordelia tries to reveal this truth' to him, but the story he had told

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