Global Sharing With King Lear

Per the course objectives, I'm trying to continue to share Shakespeare globally. In order to facilitate this, I've written another Goodreads review, this time on King Lear. You can read it here. Once again, it doesn't cover anything you, my classmates, haven't heard me say before. I really feel like King Lear is a cautionary tale against bad parenting. If Lear and Gloucester alike had had a bit more compassion on certain of their children during various points in their lives, I think that much, if not all, of the conflict in King Lear could have been avoided. Edmund would have the validation he was seeking, so that would effectively cancel out his entire plot line. Cordelia would stay with Lear and care for him, so he wouldn't need to move in with Regan and Goneril. If he never moved in with Regan or Goneril, he would never be kicked out, he'd never lose his mind, and his life would probably be a great deal longer.

It wouldn't have made for a good play, but I can't help but think of these characters as real people. If these were real people, I would want Edmund to be loved by his father and accepted by his brother. I would want Lear to be kind to his daughters and to respect them as adults. I think that Lear is a very flawed individual as a whole (pompous, a poor leader, self-aggrandizing, etc). However, he could have cut down on his own suffering, not to mention Cordelia's, if he had wanted to be a father first, and God of the Universe second.

In Coppelia Kahn's paper "The Absent Mother in King Lear," Kahn asserts that the relationship between Cordelia and Lear is a reversal of the parent/child roles. Lear wants to be babied by his daughter, and his daughter wants to be an independent adult. Lear interprets this much in the same as a child interprets maternal abandonment. I'm not sure whether I agree with this interpretation, but I do think that Lear is a very childish man, and that he lacks the maturity to be a real father to his children.