William Shakespeare, a renowned English playwright, wrote 'King Lear,' a tragic play depicting themes of justice, madness, and familial conflict. The story revolves around King Lear, who mistakenly disowns his loyal daughter Cordelia, leading to his descent into insanity as his other daughters, Goneril and Regan, undermine him. The play concludes with a series of tragic events, including the deaths of key characters, leaving a sorrowful aftermath in the hands of the surviving leaders.

1. - William Shakespeare
*A. Mohanraj M.A., M.Phil., CCFE., (Ph.D.)
Assistant Professor of English,
SBK College, Aruppukottai 626 101.
**P. Sangeetha II MA English,
SBK College, Aruppukottai 626 101.

2.  William Shakespeare (baptized on
April 26, 1564 to April 23, 1616) was
an English playwright, actor and
poet also known as the “Bard of
Avon”.
 Born in Stratford-upon-Avon,
England, he was an important
member of the Lord Chamberlain’s
Men company of theatrical
players from roughly 1594 onward.
 All that can be deduced is that, in
his 20 years as a playwright,
Shakespeare wrote plays that
capture the complete range of
human emotion and conflict.

3.  King Lear - The aging king of Britain and the
protagonist of the play.
 Lear is used to enjoying absolute power and to
being flattered, and he does not respond well to
being contradicted or challenged.
 At the beginning of the play, his values are
notably hollow—he prioritizes the appearance of
love over actual devotion and wishes to maintain
the power of a king while unburdening himself of
the responsibility.
 Nevertheless, he inspires loyalty in subjects such
as Gloucester, Kent, Cordelia, and Edgar, all of
whom risk their lives for him.
King Lear

4.  Goneril is a character
in Shakespeare’s tragic play King
Lear (1605). She is the eldest of King
Lear's three daughters.
 Along with her sister Regan, Goneril
is considered a villain, obsessed with
power and overthrowing her elderly
father as ruler of the kingdom of
Britain.
 Her aggressiveness is a rare trait for a
female character in Elizabethan
literature.
 Shakespeare based the character
on Gonorilla, a personage described
by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his
pseudohistorical chronicle Historia
regum Britanniae .

5.  Regan is a fictional character
in William Shakespeare's tragic
play, King Lear, named after a King of
the Britons recorded by the medieval
scribe Geoffrey of Monmouth.
 Shakespeare based the character
on Regan, a personage described
by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his
pseudohistorical chronicle Historia
regum Britanniae ("History of the
Kings of Britain", c. 1138) as one of
the British king Lear's three daughters,
alongside Goneril and Cordeilla (the
source for Cordelia), and the mother
of Cunedagius.

6.  Cordelia is a fictional
character in William
Shakespeare’s tragic play, King
Lear.
 She is the youngest of King
Lear's three daughters, and his
favourite.
 After her elderly father offers
her the opportunity to profess
her love to him in return for
one third of the land in his
kingdom, she refuses and is
banished for the majority of the
play.

7.  Edmund or Edmond is a fictional
character and the main antagonist
in William Shakespeare’s King
Lear .
 He is the illegitimate son of
the Earl of Gloucester, and the
younger brother of Edgar, the
Earl's legitimate son.
 Early on in the play, Edmund
resolves to get rid of his brother,
then his father, and become Earl in
his own right.
 He later flirts with
both Goneril and Regan and
attempts to play them off against
each other.

8.  Edgar begins the play as the rich
and clueless son of Gloucester,
one of the kingdom's most
powerful men.
 Edmund, Edgar's illegitimate
brother, easily manipulates the
trusting Edgar, and succeeds in
getting Edgar falsely accused of
plotting to kill their father.
 Now on the run from the law,
Edgar decides that the only way
to save himself is to disguise as a
“Poor Tom,” or “Tom
O’Bedlam,” a kind of crazy man
that wanders around begging for
food.

9. The King Lear themes covered here
include:
 Justice
 Appearance versus Reality
 Compassion and Reality
 Nature
 Madness
 Sight and Blindness

10.  Lear, the aging king of Britain, decides to step down
from the throne and divide his kingdom evenly among
his three daughters.
 First, however, he puts his daughters through a test,
asking each to tell him how much she loves him. Goneril
and Regan, Lear’s older daughters, give their father
flattering answers.
 But Cordelia, Lear’s youngest and favorite daughter,
remains silent, saying that she has no words to describe
how much she loves her father.
 Lear flies into a rage and disowns Cordelia.

11.  Lear quickly learns that he made a bad decision.
 Goneril and Regan swiftly begin to undermine the little
authority that Lear still holds.
 Unable to believe that his beloved daughters are betraying
him, Lear slowly goes insane.
 Meanwhile, an elderly nobleman named Gloucester also
experiences family problems. Fleeing the manhunt that his
father has set for him, Edgar disguises himself as a crazy
beggar and calls himself “Poor Tom.” Like Lear, he heads
out onto the heath.
 When the loyal Gloucester realizes that Lear’s daughters
have turned against their father, he decides to help Lear in
spite of the danger. Regan and her husband, Cornwall,
discover him helping Lear, accuse him of treason, blind
him, and turn him out to wander the countryside.

12.  In Dover, a French army lands as part of an invasion led by
Cordelia in an effort to save her father.
 Edmund apparently becomes romantically entangled with both
Regan and Goneril, whose husband, Albany, is increasingly
sympathetic to Lear’s cause. Goneril and Edmund conspire to
kill Albany.
 The despairing Gloucester tries to commit suicide, but Edgar saves
him by pulling the strange trick of leading him off an imaginary
cliff.
 In the climactic scene, Edgar duels with and kills Edmund; we
learn of the death of Gloucester; Goneril poisons Regan out of
jealousy over Edmund and then kills herself when her treachery is
revealed to Albany; Edmund’s betrayal of Cordelia leads to her
needless execution in prison; and Lear finally dies out of grief at
Cordelia’s passing.
 Albany, Edgar, and the elderly Kent are left to take care of the
country under a cloud of sorrow and regret.