King Lear Essay, Research Paper
Shakespeare
KING LEAR
There are a lot of similarities in two Shakespeare stories HAMLET
and KING LEAR. I guess its because of the style in which Shakes
peare
wrote. William Shakespeare wrote three kinds of stories: comedy,
tragedy and history. Both of these books are tragedies and they are
very similar tragedies. In both of these stories there is a feud going
on within the family. And in both the feud is between the children and
their parents or relatives. Hamlet is looking for the revenge on his
uncle for killing Hamlets father and hes upset with his mother
marrying the murderer. Here Lears evil daughters try to completely
destroy their father.
Lear calls his daughters and asks them who loves the most. Regan and
Goneril lie just to get Lears land and power. Cordelia honestly
answers Lear and for that is given away to France, because Lear has
gone out of his mind. After Lear gives out almost all his land he
realizes his wrongdoing and tries to restore his power. But now its
too late, because his daughters already took away all the land. He sees
how evil his daughters really are and they dont love him at all, so he
curses them. Now Lear appears to be crazy from his actions, but in
reality he exactly knows what is going on.
Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and it told Hamlet that his uncle
killed him to become the king. This shows that the person will even
commit murder to get control of the country, just like we see in KING
LEAR. After the ghost appeared to Hamlet, he started to act like he
was crazy. But just like Lear, in reality he wasnt crazy, he was
thinking of how to get back at his uncle.
The endings of both stories are very similar. Besides the fact that
all the main characters in both stories die, its how they die thats
interesting. Because Goneril wants to get Edmund, she poisons her
sister Regan. Hamlets uncle wants to poison Hamlet, but by mistake he
poisoned his wife, Hamlets mother. Hamlet by mistake kills his uncle
servant Polonius. Because of the death of her father Ophelia (Polonius
daughter) goes insane and later kills herself. Because Gonerils plan
didnt work, she kills herself. At the end there is a duel between
Edgar and Edmund, where Edgar kills his bastard brother. At the end of
HAMLET there is a duel between Hamlet and Polonius son, where Hamlet
wins but in process gets cut by a poisonous sword; He dies. And finally
during the duel Hamlet also kills his uncle getting his revenge, but
loosing his life. After Polonia is found dead, Lear totally goes insane
and thinking that his daughter is still alive he dies. And at the very
end Kent says, My master is dead I have no reason to live, and kills
himself. Just like at the end of HAMLET, Hamlets servant and friend
also says the same and also kills himself.
In conclusion: both of these plays are tragedies, a very close
connections throughout the play, and a very similar endings.