Tragic Heroes In King Lear

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Cordelia’s honesty and sincerely is perceived by Lear as an affront to his royal dignity and he impulsively disowns her without a moment’s consideration: ‘Here I disclaim all my paternal care, propinquity and property of love / hold thee from this for ever’. The loyal Kent urges Lear to ‘check this hideous rashness’ but Lear is implacable: ‘I have sworn; I am firm’. Lear pays an inordinately high price for this implacability of character and he rightly becomes as he calls it a man ‘more sinned against than sinning’.

Lear suffers excruciatingly at the hands of his perfidious daughters. Once Lear has divested himself of his power, he is brutally exploited by his Machiavellian opportunistic daughters Goneril and Regan ‘Pray, you let us hit together’. They begin to denigrate their father and emasculate him, ‘Pray you father being weak seem so’. Goneril is determined to humiliate him and strip him of his royal dignity by reducing his retinue of ...

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Lear acquires ‘reason in madness’.

It is through suffering that Lear is redeemed as a character. Through his physical suffering Lear experiences moral regeneration. Lear gains self-awareness and acknowledges his vulnerability. ‘Unaccommodated man is no more but a poor, bare, forked animal’. He gains the capacity to empathise with others ‘poor fool and knave, I have one part of my heart that’s sorry yet for thee’. He acquires a keen sense of social justice: ‘O I have ta’en too little care of this’. He sheds his clothes and exposes himself to the elements in an attempt to identify with the most vulnerable in society: ‘Take physic pomp; expose thyself to feel ...

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