you peer pressure me closer to reading king lear every day
Good you should read it
Let me tell you all about it (or more specifically, all about Act 1 Scene 1) to motivate you:
So there’s this king, right? His name is Lear. He’s kinda crazy. He comes up with the brilliant idea of dividing up his kingdom among his three daughters.
Now you’re probably wondering, how will he choose which daughter gets which part? Well, his ego is hungry, so he decides to have a “who can praise me the most” contest to determine who gets what.
His two oldest daughters are like “yeah. We totally love you. Also we’re not sus at all.” And to that Lear said “wow! You must really love me! You’re also not sus at all!”
But his youngest daughter was like “dad. Does this really seem like the greatest way to decide the fate of your empire?” And to that Lear said “EXCUSE ME. Did you just say that you don’t love me?!? That’s it, you’re banished from here!”
So she’s banished. The king of France marries her literally 2 seconds after this happens though, so she’s ok.
Lear also banishes this other guy who was like “heyyyy maybe banishing your youngest daughter wasn’t the greatest idea?”
Meanwhile, you also have the Earl of Gloucester walking around with his son Edmund (who you keep seeing me post about because I love him) (actually pretty much everyone other than Gloucester loves him tbh). And Gloucester thinks that the greatest way to introduce Edmund to people is by going “heyyy you have you seen my bastard child Edmund?! He’s a bastard! Yup, he was born very much out of wedlock. Oops. But his mom was hot though! So it was worth it!!” (I’m not even kidding he literally says this) (*give me a sec and I’ll post a picture of the actual script of him saying it)
ANYWAY. The scene ends with Lear’s oldest two daughters being like “lol we actually don’t love dad. He actually kinda crazy. Who woulda thought. Anyway, we’re the antagonists now. We’ve decided to take up that role” (meanwhile Edmund’s about 2 seconds away from soliloquizing about how he too decided to take up that role).
So that’s that. That’s Act 1 Scene 1 of King Lear.
Please go read it it’s fantastic
*(Ok here’s the start of act one scene 1)
