Can I just say- and I know I’ve said stuff like this before but can I just say- Edmund of Gloucester and Andrea Cavalcanti would get along so well. They wouldn’t even try to scam each other. They would just respect each other. They’d be like “hey my dad kinda sucks”
“haha yeah same- he hates me because I’m literally and figuratively a bastard”
“huh. Same. what did you do about it?”
“Oh, so I framed my brother for plotting against him so that he’d make me the heir, and then I accused him of treason and nearly got him killed.”
“woah that’s awesome! all I did was, oh, I don’t know, pretend to be nobility- which by birthright I practically am, my mother was a baroness- to gain the trust of the people of Paris. I kinda stabbed a guy and got caught though. Luckily that father of mine that I mentioned before happened to be the crown prosecutor. So after he was done accusing me of all my crimes, I accused him of his- basically just how he tried to murder me when I was an infant. No big deal. I think he lost his job after that.”
“His job and any respect anyone had for him, right? Yeah, same happened with my dad. I got his title of Earl after he was accused of treason and my brother was out of the picture as well”
“Nice.”
“Nice.”
talk to me about how the villains of lear are actually kinda valid
I WAS JUST TELLING SOMEONE ABOUT THIS YESTERDAY!
OK SO (time to turn off capslock I guess) Normally in Shakespeare’s plays you have the protagonist who’s normally morally grey, and then the antagonist, who’s normally just an absolutely horrible person, so that when you compare the two, the protagonist seems like a better option to root for.
For example, in Othello, Othello’s a morally meh guy. He killed his wife because his friend suggested that his wife maybe might be cheating on him. But Iago? Iago’s just evil. (Not saying I don’t think he’s an interesting character, just saying he has practically no valid reason for doing what he’s doing and just seems to enjoy the chaos he causes). Sure, there’s a rumor that his wife cheated on him with Othello, but it’s very unlikely that that’s actually true. Iago’s a smart guy. He could have figured that out. So when you compare Othello to Iago, you clearly want Othello to figure out that he’s being lied to, rather than hope that Iago succeeds in ruining everyone’s lives.
HOWEVER, King Lear is unique in the way that it doesn’t have to SAY an excuse for these characters doing what they’re doing. In Othello, there had to be some reason for Iago’s actions- even if the reason wasn’t a very good one. But in King Lear, the play doesn’t need to tell you a reason. You know why? Well I don’t care if you know or not- I’m gonna tell you anyway.
King Lear starts off showing you the mistreatment of certain characters. It opens up with Gloucester’s mistreatment of Edmund (ie how he introduces him to Kent by saying “ah yes this is my bastard son who I don’t like. I like his brother more.”), and Lear’s mistreatment of his daughters (ie how he comes up with the most egotistical way to divide up his land). At the end of that scene, you see 2/3 of Lear’s daughters deciding that they’ve had enough of said mistreatment, and that they’re going to put an end to it. Same goes for Edmund, who at the beginning of the next scene decides he’s had enough.
We don’t know how long or how often Goneril, Regan, and Edmund had to put up with their fathers, but considering how none of them were surprised by how their fathers were acting in Act 1 Scene 1, you can assume that that was the way they normally acted. And if that’s the case, I’d say that although we don’t know for sure, we can assume their actions were justified to an extent. They weren’t acting out of jealously or anger or greed, they were acting in vengeance. They were wronged countless times before the start of the play, and now it’s finally time for them to get back to the ones who’ve wronged them.
Often times we see stories where the protagonist is driven by vengeance.Those stories often end with the protagonist harming/killing the person responsible for their suffering, and then either being satisfied with it or deciding they went too far and repenting in some way. Technically, King Lear written from a different point of view could be like that- especially considering how both Lear and Gloucester die at the end. It’s Edmund, Goneril, and Regan’s bad luck that they were written as the antagonists, and therefore had to be killed off too.