Notes

Who is King Lear? A king? A pawn? Or just a curious bystander?
King Lear perceives himself as a ‘demi-god’ blessed by all things holy, a divine gift to us all; to others, he is just a lucky bastard born with royal blood. In his own family, he is a simple pawn amongst the many futile chess pieces. To me? He is a human. A person who has committed regretful mistakes that have now come back to haunt him.
Shakespeare’s “King Lear” takes us on a king’s harrowing, yet insightful journey through later life. King Lear embarks on the unavoidable rollercoaster of self-discovery and self-revaluation the moment he gets shoved out of his heavenly realm into the bitter drizzle of reality. Nature shows no mercy towards ‘demi gods’, she is just. She teaches and shows him everything he has blandly avoided throughout his life; from the force of pure emotional suffering to the cruelty of mankind to the meaning of true love.
Together with Lear, we embark on the ride of our lives as we deal we the universal issues of disappointment, depression, desperation, discerning, development and unjust death.
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Every journey must start somewhere and unfortunately for Lear; his path is evidently dangerous from the very start, yet he is too blind to notice this.
King Lear was a man of great status; he was the proud King of Britain –a man born to rule and command. But everyone has an expiry date and Lear’s was rapidly nearing. After Cordelia brings Lear back to earth with her rejection of publicly expressing her love for Lear, he is left humiliated –disappointed.
Knowing he must give up his throne eventually he decided to split his land between his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. But there’s a twist; they must each profess their love to him to earn their share. When all the sisters, bar Cordelia his most loved daughter, commit to his nonsense and lavish him with empty professions of love, Lear explodes in fury.
Lear’s hubris fuels his rage and he disinherits her, his judgement was blinded by his hamartia. Cordelia made him suffer by tarnishing his ego and rejecting his proposal and Lear bitterly reminds her that “nothing will come of nothing”.
scorns;
“Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her”.
How ironic; Lear is too deafened by his own pride to hear himself speak. Because Cordelia tried to show her father the absolute ridicule of his command, she was thrown away, rejected and called proud. But of course, King Lear still suffered more than her. How could he not? The king – ex-king – was embarrassed after all and embarrassment causes endless suffering and torture.
But the start of his harrowing journey doesn’t end there. Kent, Lear’s most trusted man, speaks up to defend Cordelia, and Lear goes fully blind due to complete ‘humiliation’ and banishes him too. In his rampage of displeasure, he tells Kent;
“that thou hast sought to make us break our vows Which we durst never yet; and with strained pride”
I don’t think Lear is suffering from the pain of being hurt, I think he is suffering from being childish and irresponsible. He is just another person overwhelmed by his inhumane pride and thirst for authority. He chooses to moan melodramatically and blubber into a mess of hysteria making horrendous accusations and pointing fingers at everyone, bar himself. He hasn’t though about the true person to blame, because he knows it’s himself and although he hasn’t publicly admitted it, we all know that he is more disappointed in himself for his reaction, rather than Cordelia’s neutrality.
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Lear continues his trudging journey to come face to face with depression. He soon realises his fatal mistake, after the two royal sisters neglect him and tell him the truth.
“They flattered me like a dog, and told me I had white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there”
Lear continued to stumble even further into his blackhole of endless suffering without no sense of direction to his journey. He was treated the same way he had treated others. He was ignored, rejected and looked down upon. He faced his personal nightmare: truth. Being unable to stand the mental whirlwind inside his head he rushes outside into the thunderous storm, in hope that the physical world will out balance the spiritual world.
Although I detest the way Lear treated his daughter and loyal friend, I cannot help but pity him. His physical and mental suffering is torturous to watch. He is human, he made a mistake, but he is paying way too big of a price for his mistakes and unfortunately, he cannot afford it. Lear’s inner demons cruelly lure him to insanity and through his grief and heartache, he lets himself be dragged away.
“They told me I was everything ‘tis a lie, I am not ague proof”
In what I think is one of the saddest lines in the play, Lear admits that he has been fooled by ‘love’. It shows how much he has truly suffered throughout his life, up to the point that he doesn’t even know what true love is. He is completely oblivious to the concept of love.
In one of the most iconic scenes of the entire play, Lear comes face to face with the worst storm of his entire life. A raging battle between sanity and insanity with both sides camouflaged as each other.
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As Lear slowly picks himself up after his fall, he desperately wants to change his foreseen future. He pleas and begs, but Fate doesn’t waver.
Fate has worked against Lear from the very start, and we knew that. The second he announced his cursed ‘love test’ we knew Lear would continue to tumble downhill until he hits rock bottom. He starts to feel sorry for himself after seeing the state he has ended up in and yells into the suffocating night:
“O ere I’ll weep –O Fool, I shall go mad!”
And his prophecy became truth. It pains us to know Lear’s ending is not a happy one. How could one man suffer so much and still deserve to feel this inhumane pain? His suffering makes us suffer, because we can’t do anything…we are mere bystanders in this chaos of misfortune.
This endless suffering continues as none of Lear’s friends can help him either. Nature and justice are irrelevant when it comes to insanity and desperation. His fate is interchangeable and external influences are limited. Lear suffers from the knowledge that his fate has been written and that he should accept it. Lear has accepted and embraced his madness and never-ending suffering, and is now on a mission of self-torture and destruct to speed up what’s left of his life.
“who alone suffers, suffers most i’ the mind”
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But through this entire depression and suffering something sparks…something completely new and hopeful: realisation and acceptance.
Lear has accepted that he is not a ‘demi-god’ or special in any way, he has realised after painful suffering that he is in fact human. That he too makes mistakes, just like everyone else –but that it’s okay. Lear briefly steps off the course of his harrowing journey and decides that he wants forgiveness.
Lear has finally recognised his initial blindness to the evils and despicableness nature of Goneril and Regan and has realised that Cordelia has always loved him. Angry with himself for not realising this earlier he rages;
“Old fond eyes, Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out”
Lear has started showing a significant increase in self-knowledge and discerning. This time, Lear doesn’t blame other people for his suffering, he accepts that it was his own fault. In our eyes, he has slowly begun to evolve from a self-pitying old man to a better person. He now sees that he has been blinded too blinded by his hamartia and attitude to truly see the world that surrounds him. He gives us truly awestriking insights into the judicial system and the society we live in today.
“Through tattered clothes great vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all”

He starts to manifest a true perception of the society that he lives in; he realises that there’s more than what meets the eyes. That behind the elegant robes and powdered noses lurk creatures of pure despicableness and deception. His words of wisdom show that he has developed a strong sense of not only self-knowledge but also a deep understanding of the human hierarchy.

He has fully developed from a blinded fool, into a wise king at heart.
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As Lear’s path starts to diminish, his last few steps still remain blocked
He is the only one who can end his suffering because he has caused it.
Lear is a ‘demi-god’ fallen from the realm of heaven to the dirty pits of real life -the person who tripped him? Himself.

Through his long and harrowing rollercoaster of a journey King Lear has managed to earn many different titles


CONCLUSION
King Lear is a cruelly tragic play muddled with painful ironies and grotesque humour. The play takes us through the winding storm of a king who throws himself off his throne to freefall into the arms of the unknown. Together with Lear we taste the disgusting horrors of insanity that one can causes themselves, we see the types of monsters our own family members can morph into –right before our clouded eyes, we face the inhumane potential of self-destruction and feel the wrath of fate lash against us. But as the powerful storm draws to an end and we are finally allowed to breathe, we must begin to restore the fragile balance of peace that once existed.