A Hard Reign's Gonna Fall.

The play King Lear is a storm. Not only does a literal storm come about, marking the key moments, but the entire play is a tempest of love and hate, betrayal and loyalty, cruelty and tenderness. I play can be seen as the cataclysmic fall of three different reigns of power-Lear's, Gloucester's, and Edmund's. The play is set on a backbone of honesty and trust and people, trusting those have no honesty about them and banishing those who would have been your truest friends. I think much of the play's tragedy comes from those who desperately want to be loved and try to achieve this by false and sometimes cruel ways.

Edmund's reign of power is brief yet so explosive it falls as hard as any of the others. Edmund is a bastard son so already born into a world that sees him as unlovable and despicable. So why should he not be that way? I think Shakespeare makes Edmund an evil enough character that you despise him as you want to, but he instills in his existence a tragic note that one cannot help but see so by the end of the play you both hate him and pity him. Edmund wants to be loved. But he is not and he never will be. So he seeks to destroy his legitamately born and better loved brothed Edgar and his father. And he succeeds. He then sits as Earl of Gloucester for a brief shining moment, loved by Lear's two daughters, and called a hero by those around him. Even this time though he is not truly loved but a treacherous wretch who had to lie and decieve to be loved. So things begin to unravel, the women who professed to love him fade out violently, and Edmund is killed by his brother Edgar. What is interesting is that Edgar appears to Edmund, dirty and ragged while Edmund is in finest clothes with an army behind him. But even then Edgar is the better and Edmund knows it truly it his heart which prompts his line "The wheel has come full circle. I am here". Edmund's reign ends with him exactly where he always was.

Gloucester's reign ends because he would not extend his love to Edmund as well as Edgar. I don't think by any means that Gloucester deserved his trials but I wonder if Shakespeare is commenting who we cut off from our care or affection and what results from it. However, once he does begin to trust in Edmund he is immediatley betrayed and called a traitor to his own country. He believed Edmund over Edgar, and could not see Edmund's deceit so then literally lost his own eyes never to "see" again. But we talked about in class how he sees most clearly once blinded. Banished from his kingdom and blinded he says "I have no path and therefore want no eyes...Edgar might I live to see in my touch I'id say I had eyes again." Gloucester is lost until Edgar finds him and prevents him from suicide. He then can see again. He can see the son who truly loves him. So in a moment he may have peace in the tempest of play. And it is later revealed he dies out of shock and joy and Edgar revealing himself. But he dies blind no more.

King Lear's reign falls because he wants to be loved but does not see that he is and who he is loved by until the end. Lear is very old and with age I believe comes a deep insecurity. I believe elderly often feel useless and worthless in the world around them which has begun to lose need for them. Lear wants to know he is loved and needed. However he is decieved in what he thinks is love and systematically attempts to banish all those who truly did love him (Cordelia, Kent, etc). After being betrayed by those who professed to love him, he wanders through the tempests and storms outside and within himself until he drives himself mad. In the end though Cordelia comes back to him, she who truly loved him, and he is loved as he always was. The peaceful moment in the tempest comes from that brief reunion when reconciliation is found. However is it not to last. The world has gone too dark and Cordelia is killed. In losing Cordelia, Lear is then lost entirely. For as he goes to die Kent says "O let him pass! he hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer!". Amidst the raging storm of the play, amidst the fall of his reign, Lear can only find peace in death. And that is why the play is called a tragedy.