Love and betrayal, order and disorder, truth and appearance; Shakespeare’s Tragedy “King Lear” illustrates the oscillations between these dichotomies, yet through its parallel plots, Shakespeare intimates that beneath the blindness and mendacity that plague both Lear and Gloucester’s relationships with their children, the base of everything is simply love.

Gloucester’s insensitive blindness is established immediately at the play’s opening, as he announces the “good sport” that went into Edmund’s “making”. Not only does he almost brag of how “his mother was fair”, he is audacious enough to ask whether Kent “smell[s] a fault?”. The mention of Edmund’s “mother” here keeps her identity anonymous, perhaps as a sign that Gloucester is ashamed to some degree for his adultery, but more plausibly as a sort of degradation, where “fair[ness]” poses as a quasi-synecdoche for the woman. Indeed, Edmund is the fruit of Gloucester’s lust, and the fornication was only the result of the mother’s “fair[ness]”, and John H.Arrington would further support this in revealing that “fault” was also a colloquial term for female genitalia. Thus, Gloucester not only speaks of his adulterous behaviour with licentious levity, but also goes as far as turning it into a bawdy pun before Edmund himself. His repeated bragging of his adultery facilitates the stigmatisation of bastardy, for while the Elizabethan society would frown upon his adultery, it is ultimately Edmund who bears its ramifications. Even when he claims to love both Edmund and Edgar equally, by allowing himself the lustful indulgence in sensual pleasures, Gloucester gave Edmund nothing but a life prejudiced under the laws of primogeniture, and in turn weaponises, though unwittingly, the bastardy that dictates Edmund’s life. Certainly such insensitivity is condemnable, yet it is also a reflection of his blindness, and the fact that the next scene is Lear’s notorious love test immediately establishes the doubling between the two fathers.

Just as with Gloucester, Lear’s blindness is clearly exemplified in the beginning of the play. As he opens up a grand, ceremonial display of ‘love’ by asking his daughters to, in essence, flatter him (“which of you shall we say doth love us most?”), we realise that Lear is just as Thomas Moisian posits, an old man who is attempting to “put on a grand display of fatherly importance” yet, in doing so only “demonstrates his impotence”. Such an observation certainly manifests in the pleasure Lear derives from Goneril and Regan’s hyperbolic adulations as they claim to love him more than “eyesight, space, and liberty”, or “more than words could wield the matter”. In contrast to such fulsome flattery, however, Cordelia presents herself as a dramatic foil. While Goneril and Regan spew flatteries inundated with comparatives and superlatives, Cordelia simply states that she “love[s]” her father “according to [her] bond, no more, nor less”, and expresses her gratitude for how Lear “begot [her], bred [her], loved [her]”. In spite of how natural and honest her praise is, Lear’s response is one of shock and apoplexy as he not only deems her sincerity “nothing”, but also labels the daughter who, thus far was his “favourite”, as “untender”, claiming that it would be “better [she had] not been born than not t’ have pleased [him] better”. To think that such bitter sentiment stems merely from Cordelia’s refusal to flatter him, in combination with the fact that he attempted to measure love according to the grandeur of his daughters’ adulations, only reveals how Lear’s view of love was warped in the first place. Rather than see the truth in Cordelia’s appropriate extent of praise, Lear opted for the pufferies that attempted to deify him. Even in the face of Kent’s fervent pleas for him to “see better”, he stubbornly refused to acknowledge that his “youngest daughter does not love [him] least; nor are they empty-hearted whose low-sound reverbs no hollowness”. The use of chiasmus here is almost periphrastic, for the former part of the sentence holds the same message as the latter, in much the same way as everyone who truly cares about Lear has tried to advise him again and again against the “hideous rashness” of his decision, yet he wilfully disregards their advice each time. Just as Lear fails to recognise the genuineness of Cordelia’s love and the specious nature of Regan and Goneril’s flattery, he also fails to appreciate Kent’s sincerity. Thus, the semantics of emptiness connoted in “empty-hearted” and “hollowness” are of increasing pertinence, for as Lear bestows Cordelia only with the “benison” of being “marr[ied]” to “pride”, once again he hypocritically fails at Kent’s advice to “see better”. His ego, like a balloon, has been blown larger and larger, inflated by the honeyed words of his daughters, but just as a balloon only becomes more “empty-hearted” as it grows in size, Lear only craves more validation as he lets his ego feed on the honeyed yet vapid flatteries of his daughters.

Linking back to Moisian’s criticism, Seneca the Younger further brings a stoic perspective to the examination of Lear in propounding that “the virtue of prosperity is temperance”, and through this we can see that Lear fails not only by Renaissance standards, but also by Stoic ones. As not only the father of his three daughters, but also as the Monarch of a country, Lear’s selfish banishment of Cordelia and Kent violates Renaissance standards through a startling lack of wisdom, maturity, and perception. Simultaneously, Lear also fails to heed Seneca’s encouragement to “temperance” through a lack of moderation, namely by allowing himself to indulge in his daughters’ specious laudations- just as Gloucester did with sensual pleasures- and foolishly equating this ‘deification' to love. Grace Ioppolo would encourage us to view Lear with a psychoanalytic lens, however, in proposing that Lear so fervently seeks this external validation since the mother, or “nurturing, protective force is missing”, and he can only use “ his daughters to provide this love.” Indeed, the fool names this inversion of natural order in chiding Lear for making “ [his] daughters [his] mother”, and Goneril accosts it as she spits that “old fools are babes again”, the juxtaposition in which further highlights the reversed power dynamic. Lear himself accentuates his petulance as he “upbraids at every trifle” and “flashes into some gross crime or another” “every hour”, the repetition of “every” hyperbolically reflecting his volatility- redolent of the temper tantrums thrown by a young child. While Lear clearly lacks the composure that fits his regal title, and his disagreeable propensity enables us to “resist the play’s invitations to sympathise” with him as Thomas Moisian encourages, through psychoanalysis we can perhaps see that Lear’s capricious outbursts are more of a sign of vulnerability than anything else. Lear is experiencing the deterioration of not only his physical body but also his mental capacities, yet he is desperate to hold onto the respect and admiration he receives as King despite being incapable of fulfilling the responsibilities that earn such respect, so anger has become an outlet for his frustration. Though his intentions behind the handing over of his land to his daughters were partially selfish, perhaps he also did so to prevent familial conflict and potential usurpation of his throne. Lear’s intentions and the underlying vulnerability beneath his anger are all things which Goneril and Regan knew of, yet rather than advise their father in hopes of stabilising the country, they milk the fact that Lear has “ever but slenderly known himself” for their own gain. Further, Goneril’s imperative to “shut the doors” on her father despite knowing “there will be a storm” is an even more obvious instant of “filial ingratitude”, for even if Lear is capricious and overtly biased to Cordelia, he still gave Regan and Goneril life and wealth, yet in return they seem to be seeking his death.

It is ironic, however, that it is exactly the selfish nonchalance displayed by Goneril and Regan that allows Lear to eventually mitigate his blindness. Lear’s own catharsis becomes a microcosm for the howling winds during the famous storm scene- a storm which catalyses his anagnorisis until finally he recognises that beneath the glory of his regal title, he is nothing more than a “poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man” who has substituted genuine love with mere flatteries incapable of filling his void. In direct contrast to his despairing cries for his daughters to “reason not the need”, Lear comes to learn that the “art of our necessities is strange, it can make vile things precious”, as he finally realises that his own blindness is what banished Cordelia, whose sincerity was what he truly “need[ed]”. Interestingly, however, “vile” is also the same adjective used to describe Gloucester’s eyes (“vile jelly”), and in combination with Edgar’s comment that “the dark and vicious place where [Edmund] he got cost him his eyes”, it is apt to reflect back upon the “fair woman” that was Edmund’s mother. The “dark and vicious place” here is likely an allusion to the adulterous bed, and thus Glocuester who seemed blind to everything except this “fair[ness]” pays the price of physical blindness. Therefore, the insalubrious connotations of “vile”, though employed both times to describe things other than Lear and Gloucester themselves, ultimately point back to their failures as parents, as a sort of hypallage for their “vile” blindness which subsequently allows their transformations as human beings to be even more gratifying. Gloucester shares in Lear’s anagnorisis as he himself reveals that he paradoxically “stumbled when [he] saw”, for only after his blinding did he realise what a “wretched”, “superfluous, and lust-dieted man” he once was. While Lear gratified his lust for praise, Gloucester indulged in physical pleasures, yet both blind fathers, through their respective peripeteia come to condemn their own wrongdoings, and thus brings us to the second half of Seneca’s didactic precept: “The virtue of adversity is fortitude”. While it may be argued that neither Lear nor Gloucester deserved the extent of suffering to which they were subjected, we also cannot deny that suffering and adversity do indeed enable both men to transcend their former blindness. In Lear’s case, it allows him to empathise with, and indeed, love the “poor naked wretches” as he is forced to “bide the pelting of this pitiless storm” by their side, enabling him to recognise how “little care” he has “ta’an” of the “houseless poverty” he fathers as the king. Similarly, Gloucester seeks “clothes” for Poor Tom (Edgar) even in the height of his own despair. In both cases, beyond just a punishment, suffering was also in some ways a blessing, for just as Seneca suggested, it heightened their humanity, renewed their capacity for love, and therefore their capacities for true fortitude.

While such suffering, in the case of both fathers, was catalysed by the filial ingratitude of Edmund, Goneril, and Regan, the disorder that ensued was ultimately dissipated by filial piety and love. Just as Edgar returns as the embodiment of “Childe Roland”- Childe being the archaic aristocratic term for an untested knight- Cordelia returns with the French forces as a beacon of hope. Though they were both subjected to overt injustice, they both chose to reciprocate their fathers’ blindness and misdirected harm with filial love. Indeed, the beauty of forgiveness perforates Lear’s immense transformation as he puts down his former pomp to “kneel down” before Cordelia and “ask of [her] forgiveness”, and in doing so, ironically he re-establishes order through an action that would normally disrupt it. Similarly, Edgar’s guidance of his blind father allows him to see past his despair and have hope that he is not just like a “fly to wanton boys” to the Gods, but rather a man who appreciates that “ripeness is all”- similar to Hamlet’s pre-death revelation that “readiness is all”. His last moments too are harmonised with forgiveness, for as testament to his newfound insight, his wish- so painfully simple- was only to “see [Edgar] in [his] touch”. Indeed, Edgar gave Gloucester “eyes again” by guiding him to spiritual sight.

As with Cordelia’s life, however, such experiences of redemption and forgiveness are short-lived. When Edgar recounts how his father’s “flaw’d heart” “‘twixt the extremes of joy and grief burst smilingly”, the antithesis of these antonymic emotions encapsulates our own ambivalence; our pathos at his death, but also our relief that he has received the forgiveness he so desperately longed for. The same ambivalence overshadows Lear’s death, as he fervently orders us to “look there, look there” at Cordelia’s “lips”, he dies in a self-constructed illusion that Cordelia is still alive. Lear has fallen back into delusion just as in the beginning of the play, when this very delusion allowed the banishment of those who truly cared about him, yet even when Lear has cycled back to blindness, Cordelia’s life has been irrevocably taken. Thus, we can also see the variation in Lear’s delusion; in the beginning it was selfish, yet here it is born of love, empathy and pain for his “poor fool” of a daughter; he once foolishly deemed her voice “empty-sound” which gave “nothing”, yet only now does he realise that it was “ever soft” and full of truth. Perhaps it would have been more rational for Cordelia to remain in the safety of France with her loving husband and a future filled with potential, yet her heartbreakingly “fool[ish]” choice to honour her filial obligations of piety cost her the gift of life; through Cordelia’s foolishness, Lear’s was undone. Thus, through his delusion, Lear’s grief is transformed into hope- albeit false- and he dies, just like Gloucester, amidst the oscillations between heartbreak and joy.

Through blindness, catharsis, forgiveness and tragedy, at its core, “King Lear” is a play about love; love of power, love of status, love of self, but also the love so vital to human relationships. Lear was blind, but so was Cordelia’s love; Gloucester was blind, but so was Edgar’s love- parallels that reflect the universality, and humanity of such blindness. Therefore Shakespeare’s message applies not only to the soon-to-be King James I, but also to us as the audience, simply that we should feel love as it comes, yet simultaneously give the same love we wish to receive.