Connection: King Lear and The Power of Love

In King Lear, characters like Lear and Edmund made decisions that influence the play. These decisions were driven by love, and I want to connect these decisions to the power love has. Edmund tricks his brother Edgar and betrays his father to Cornwall all so that he can become Earl of Gloucester. His love for power was powerful enough to make him think that turning his back on his own family was okay.

Edmund was also torn between the love of Regan and of Goneril. Their "interests" in him caused him to lose his way and to act in a manner that pleases one or both of them. In turn, their intimate love for him caused them, or at least Goneril, to "lose" her husband. Also, their love for themselves was what drove them to lie to Lear and proclaim their "love" for him; they tried to outdo eachother in order to recieve the better half of England.

Cordelia is another story. Her love for Lear was so real that she would not make a spectacle of it in front of his court. She thought that it was silly to proclaim her love for her father in order to inherit what she deserved. Later in the play, she showed her love for Lear again when she went back to England with the French army in order to search for him.

As for love, it is a noun, a verb, an adjective and most importantly, it is an emotion. It can drive the happiest people to deep depression, and vice versa. It can cause people to kill for the right or wrong reasons and to make decisions blindly. A two person relationship full of love, or lust, can harm so many people. Love can do so many more things, but I only listed those that are directly related to King Lear.

We as readers can see that all of these aspects of love are very prominent in King Lear. Lear's love for himself took him from bliss to complete sadness because he was so self important and so vile to others and those actions caught up to him. He put himself before his daughters and in turn, they plotted against him for their own reasons. Edmund betrayed his brother and turned his father agains his brother, which is just appalling. He also gave up his father to Cornwall, Regan and Goneril so that he could achieve power and respect, but in the end, he died and his actions were all in vain. Regan killed the servant because she was too proud to have someone so low directly oppose her belief of what is right and because she had the same twisted views as her husband. So, we can see exactly how Shakespeare's characters use and abuse love in this play.