What Themes Can Be Found in William Shakespeare's Complex Play King Lear That Are Still Relevant to This Time?

Jean Carlos Irizarry Ayala

April 13, 2018

INGL3212-016

Prof. Billy R. Woodall

What themes can be found in William Shakespeare's complex play King Lear that are still relevant to this time?

        We understand by theme as the central topic or main idea that is found in a literary work. It’s important to say that what makes William Shakespeare’s plays so powerful is that they have moral lessons in them that are still relevant to our time. Between the themes that can be found in this complex play, it can be said that one of these themes is love. We can appreciate this universal theme throughout the whole play. The play itself starts with some kind of love test from part of King Lear. The attitude of Lear is demanding and angered. In this love test, King Lear is commanding his daughters to express him how much they love him. With this said, it can be assumed that Lear have internal conflicts about how King Lear felt insecure and feared that he wasn’t as relevant as he used to be and to be reassure that he still was important. The person who really loved King Lear was Cordelia was the only daughter who truly loved him. She wasn’t led by greed or ambition, unlike her sisters. This theme is relevant to today because now days we still have people who truly love their family, not caring about stuff like money or power. Like stated before, Cordelia’s sisters didn’t genuinely love their father. They just wanted to take away his power over the kingdom, which brings out another universal theme that can be found in this Shakespearean play, greed and betrayal. The greed of King Lear’s daughters was the motor for their betrayal.

It is important to establish that throughout the play, it’s depicted not only how power can be quickly gained but also, how it can be lost. The betrayal of the sisters to their father consequently leads them to obtaining more power than King Lear and this gives them the control of what they desired from the beginning. Like it was stated before, Shakespeare uses betrayal to portrait the rise and down fall of power of those greedy enough to betray their love ones and how they end up with nothing and ruined. There’s another insight that Shakespeare give us while using betrayal in his plays. The act of betrayal is also used to give us an insight about how a character feels towards something in particular. The first example that could be used to prove this point is Edmund. The reader finds hidden emotions throughout the play. Edmund reveals to the audience hatred and desire to take down his brother and his father. During his soliloquy, he expresses his hatred towards the way he is treated and how he wishes he was treated differently. The fact that he isn’t going to receive nothing of his father’s wealth because he was a bastard son, fuel his angered towards not only his father and brother but also towards society.

Justice is another universal theme that can be found in this complex play. In this play, the reader is left uncertain if really there was any justice. This is because at the end the reader is left with an agonizing uncertainty. Even though the antagonists of this play pay for their sins at the end with death, along with them, went the loyal and sincere character, Cordelia. The reader is left with the image of King Lear holding Cordelia’s corpse in his own hands. So, in this play, there’s a clash between the characters who acted rightfully and those who were led by hatred and greed. At the end, it’s difficult to be certain while identifying which triumphs at the end. The ending of this play can be applied to our reality because now days people who act wrongfully towards society usually is apprehended but also sometimes people who haven’t done anything wrong, are punished for things they haven’t done so, at the end, we have a uncertainty if it’s really worth it doing things the right way. One important theme that’s really relevant to how things go down in this play is the social classes. The two greedy daughters wanted to overcome their father’s throne in order to have the highest social status and all of the benefits this status brought with. The need of improving their social status was one of the motives that made the two sisters to betray their own father in order to obtain what they wanted. Another important aspect of this theme throughout the play can be seen specially in the character called Edmund. The motives of this character, besides desiring the wealth of his father, was the way society treated him because he was bastard. He still was his father’s son but in the eyes of society he didn’t had the same social standing in comparison to his brother, that was a legitimate son. His brother was going to inherit everything that his father had just because he was “the real son” in the eyes of society. This frustration that Edmund felt not only towards his family but also towards society made him embark his journey of revenge to his father and brother. This universal theme can be applied to today because sometimes society misjudges certain conducts or certain people due to their faith, sex, ethnicity and other characteristics that creates differences between social groups. In Edmund, the reader can perceive the frustration and the injustice that sometimes people can experience when they are misjudged and treated unjustly by the rules that our society dictates.

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