Act I King Lear

2. Consider the character of Goneril or Regan in this first act. Yes, they are monstrous, but what does that monstrosity look like from the inside? What drives them? What does the world inside their heads look like?
To put it in another way…. Jealousy and power-grabbing seem to be as much a part of families as they are of politics and business. Can you relate to either of these two sisters? Have you ever seen a situation similar to the one in the first act of this play? In your opinion, what drives this kind of behavior?


Goneril and Regan both want the same thing- power. They see other people only as a means to an end and use them to get what they want. This is what they do to Lear in the first act- first flattering him in order to get their share of the kingdom, then discarding him when he is no longer useful without any regard whatsoever for his feelings. I can’t relate personally to them- I don’t think I’m that kind of manipulative. However, I know that that kind of thing exists between people as much in real life as it does in the play, even when it is not between families. There are people who think only they matter and that others are only a way to get what they want by being manipulated. I think both an extreme form of ambition and some kind of skewed worldview drives this. There really isn’t any easy way to explain why some people want power so much other than the fact that they just do. (Like in 1984). Regan and Goneril also are extremely self-centered. They don’t care that their sister has been banished, or that they are causing their father misery, or (in Goneril’s case) that her husband does not approve. What matters to them is that they get what they want- and that is ruling their share of the kingdom without interference from Lear (so far in the play, anyway). In their specific case, they also probably did not have a very good role model in their father, either, since he seems to be a shallow, self-centered type as well. I suspect that he probably played other such games as the ‘whoever-loves-me-most-gets-everything’ one he does in the first scene when his children were younger and they got used to using flattery to get what they wanted. It always worked, so it just became their mode of getting what they wanted.

4. Leo Tolstoy tells us in the first line of his great novel Anna Karenina, “All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Lear’s is obviously an unhappy family, as is Gloucester’s. Explore the source of the unhappiness in both of the families. What is it that has torn each one apart? Some sin of the fathers? Or of the children? Human nature? What is wrong here? Are there any similarities between the two, or are they indeed “both unhappy in their own way?”

In the royal family, the source of the unhappiness is equally Lear and his daughters. Lear’s inability to understand love and to know insincere flattery from honesty causes a rift between him and Cordelia. It also probably had something to do with Regan and Goneril’s skewed view of the world and their contempt for their father. Their inability to be kind to him in return causes the rest of the misery.
It is much the same way in Gloucester’s family. Though he claims to love both his sons equally, it is Edgar who has all the advantages, and Gloucester’s early remarks to Kent about Edmund are not anything that would cause Edmund to love him in return. (Especially if Edmund hears them). This lack of a truly good relationship between them is much the same as Lear’s issues with Regan and Goneril: both fathers don’t express their love for their children as much as they could (less so in Gloucester’s case); and the children see their respective fathers only as a means to an end: their expanded power. In Edmund’s case, it is more than Gloucester’s shortcomings as a parent that contribute to his character- it is society’s restrictions that an illegitimate younger son is to get nothing, however.
Therefore, both families are unhappy for basically the same reasons. It is neither solely the father nor solely the children’s fault. It Gloucester and Edmund’s case, society is at fault as well. ‘Human nature’ cannot explain it either, because there isn’t one single character type that defines human nature. However, having the same self-centered type of personality in both father and child(ren) causes issues, since the children never learn to be good and caring. It is not entirely the father’s fault, either, for in both cases he has ‘good’ children (Cordelia and Edgar), proving that it is not entirely his fault that his other children turned out so badly.