King Lear

• King Lear is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare
• King Leir


  The legendary British king who was the historical source for Shakespeare's play
• In Shakespeare's day, the roles of Cordelia and the Fool were often "doubled" - played by the same actor - since the two characters are never on stage at the same time
• He explains that he killed the Captain who hung her but was too late to save her life. Lear dies of his sorrow on the spot. Only Albany and Edgar remain to pick up the pieces, as Kent concludes that he soon must follow his master (i.e., kill himself, too).
• King Lear


  The aging king of Britain and tragic hero of the play. Lear, who is used to complete obedience from everyone around him, makes two related major errors: giving up of political responsibility by transferring power to his daughters; and trusting the flattering Goneril and Regan over the plainspoken, but true, Cordelia. Despite his flaws he is able to maintain the loyalty of certain subjects, particularly Kent and Gloucester. However, these will not be enough to save him from madness and death.
• Cordelia


  Lear's youngest daughter, whom he disowns when she refuses to flatter him, as her sisters do, during the ceremony in which he hands over power. Cordelia remains loyal to Lear despite his unjust harshness to her at the beginning of the play and even seems prepared to forgive her treacherous sisters at the end. Other characters who do not betray Lear—particularly Kent—admire Cordelia for her virtue and mildness.
• Goneril


  Lear's vicious older daughter, who is the first to flatter him in the power-transfer ceremony and the first to insult him afterwards, throwing him and his knights out of her house. Goneril's ruthless temperament contrasts with that of her husband, the Duke of Albany. In the end, she plots against Albany, and even against her former ally, her sister Regan, out of lust for Edmund.
• Edmund


  Gloucester's younger, illegitimate son. Edmund resents the fact that the accident of his birth has deprived him of legal status (and, therefore, an inheritance). He schemes to turn Gloucester against his legitimate son, Edgar, and eventually usurp his title. Eloquent and seductively wicked, Edmund almost succeeds in carrying out his malign plots to fruition.
• Edgar


  Gloucester's elder, legitimate son. Although at first Edgar comes across as a bit naïve, easily duped by Edmund, he later disguises himself successfully as a madman beggar and manages not only to save himself from the death sentence his misled father has pronounced on him, but also to help Gloucester and Lear and to avenge the wrongs committed by his traitorous half-brother.
• Kent


  A nobleman of the same rank as Gloucester, banished by Lear in the first scene when he attempts to intercede with the king on Cordelia's behalf. Kent spends most of the play disguised as Caius, a disguise he takes on so that he can continue to serve Lear even after being thrown out of his kingdom.
• Fool


  Lear's jester, who accompanies him through much of the play. Although his statements come out as riddles, the Fool offers insight into Lear's mistakes and their consequences. Insofar as he stays with Lear, despite all his mockery and criticisms (and at his peril, during the violent storm in Act 3), the Fool, like Kent, Gloucester, and Cordelia, proves himself loyal.
• Albany


  The husband of Lear's older daughter, Goneril, and a Duke. Albany is kind and generous, in contrast to his malicious wife, and criticizes her for her treacherous behavior toward her father. However, he realizes the viciousness of the other characters he is aligned with (namely, Edmund and Regan) too late in the play to prevent the evil that they cause.
• France


  The husband of Cordelia. France is a benevolent character, who takes Cordelia as his wife without a dowry, when she has been rejected by her father, and even sends her back to England with the French army to rectify the wrongs carried out by Goneril and Regan against Lear. However, France only appears in the first scene.
• Regan


  Lear's middle daughter, who shares the vicious traits of Goneril, also flattering him in the power-transfer scene and abusing him thereafter. Regan shows her particularly brutal nature when she aids her husband, the Duke of Cornwall, in blinding Gloucester.
• Gloucester


  An earl, or nobleman, who is loyal to Lear and similar to him in many ways. Like Lear, Gloucester misjudges his children, trusting his scheming illegitimate son, Edmund, over his honest and good child from his legal marriage, Edgar.
• Cornwall


  Cornwall is the husband of Lear's middle daughter, Regan, and just as vicious as she is. He disrespects Lear by putting his man Kent in the stocks and, later, violently blinds Gloucester.
• Oswald


  Goneril's steward, or chief servant. Oswald's blind obedience to the evil Goneril earns him contempt from the "good" characters Kent and Edgar, and eventually costs him his life.
• The personal drama of King Lear revolves around the destruction of family relationships. Tragedy emerges from bonds broken between parents and children—and, at a secondary level, from the loss of ties among siblings.
• Lear, misreading Cordelia's understated, but true, devotion to him renounces his "parental care" (1.1.127) of her. This rejection is twofold. Lear withdraws his "father's heart" (1.1.142); he also strips Cordelia of the financial and political support that formerly made her attractive to her suitors.
• Driven by greed and ambition, Goneril and Regan fail to show any solidarity with their sister in 1.1. And later, despite their strong professions of love for Lear, they both betray him in order to consolidate their political authority.
• At the beginning of the play, Lear is an authority figure, embodying order in his own person and commanding it from his family and followers.
• Throughout the tragedy, Lear and other characters also repeatedly invoke the ideas of natural and divine order.
• When Lear gives up his power and Goneril and Regan turn against him, he falls apart, going mad. Moreover, his personal decline parallels a farther-reaching dissolution of order and justice in the British state.
• The repetition of the word "nothing" highlights the theme of nothingness, and of the complete lack of meaning that results from nothingness.
• Lear wishes to free himself of the burdens of ruling his kingdom because he is aware of his old age and wishes to "crawl unburdened toward death" (1.1.42).
• The Fool is probably the character with the greatest insight into what the consequences of Lear's misjudgments of his daughters will be.
• Celestial bodies are thus both symbols of the order that the characters seek and a kind of audience watching the tragic events unfold.
• The gods also become a kind of audience, and like the audience they both see the story of what is happening more completely than the individual characters on stage and can't seem to do anything to stop it
• Symbols appear in teal text throughout the Summary and Analysis sections of this LitChart
• The stars, heavens, and the gods

  In Shakespeare's time there was a particularly strong belief that order on earth depended on order in the heavens
• Celestial bodies are both a metaphor of order and a potential source of disorder, when they go awry
• Multiple characters in King Lear make references to eclipses that have taken place
• Gloucester attributes the chaos in Lear's court to "these late eclipses of the sun and moon"
• Edmund then mockingly takes up the theme of "what should follow these eclipses"
• Lear and Gloucester both appeal to the stars and gods together as benevolent spectators of their sad plights, and as forces for justice
• Animals


  From start to finish, King Lear is full of references to animals, usually incorporated into insults and curses or used to describe states of maximum human degradation
• Lear observes "Allow not nature more than nature needs,/ Man's life is cheap as beast's"
• Animals present a vision of brutal nature to which men can descend, and yet the animals are also held up as less corrupt than men
• Clothing and costumes


  Complementing the many references to animals throughout the play are mentions of clothing and instances of disguise
• Kent, banished by Lear, disguises himself as the commoner Caius