King Lear Father And Daughter Analysis

Williams Shakespeare’s play entitled King Lear, is one of his best known and most widely read plays. The play provides the reader with both political and family aspects. When considering the analysis of King Lear provided by Lynda Boose’s From the Father and the Bride in Shakespeare compared to Margot Heinemans’s “Demystifing the Mystry of State”: King Lear and the world Upside Down, I agree with Boose’s rending of the reading. Her position and/or discussion is the most relevant to King Lear as she plays a significant attention to the relationship between father and daughter. The author discusses the bond that father and daughter possess. For instance, a daughter needs her father’s approval to marry. The father must approve of the

For instance he says “love like sugar sweetneth fear, and fear like salt seasoneth love: and thus, to join them both together, it is a loving-fear, or a fearing-love, which is ground of children’s duties” (428-430). He implies that love is both sweet and sour. Children love their parents while fearing them at the same time. King Lear’s eldest daughters feed his vanity by embellishing their love for him and thus, evading his wrath. While his youngest daughter, demonstrates, as witnessed in Of a child’s feare of his parent, “…/respect ariseth from an honourable esteem which a chld in his judgement and opinion hath of his parent, as he is his parent; and from it proceedeth on the one side, a desire and endeavor in all things to please the parent, and on the other side a loathness to offend him” (431-432). Cordelia loves her father. Yet, King Lear is truly offended because he loved her the most. He is so angry at her betrayal that he disowns

To watch-- for perdu---

With thin helm? Mine enemy dog.

Though he had bit me, should have stood that night

Against my fire; and waste go thou fain, poor father,

To hovel thee with swine, and rogues forlorn,

In short and musty straw? Alack, alack!

Tis wonder that thy life and wits at once

Had not concluded all. He wakes; speak to him (4.7. 30-42)

She is appalled at how fragil her father looks and angry that her sister would not care for him better. Cordelia wishes that she had tried to make her father see reason when he had disowned her. If she had, then he would not be in this horrible state.

King Lear was a play that drew the audience into a tragic family destruction. Although, a father’s had sovereignty over his household which included his wife, children, and servants, King Lear seemed to have none. Yet the audience is keenly aware of how much the king demands respect and loyalty from his daughter’s and when he feels betrayed he withdraws his support. Lear’s desire for love above all is his destruction. This is evidenced as he experiences a sense of betrayal by his children one by one and his most trusted servants. King Lear seeps into such a dark despair that he loses touch with