King Lear | Good and Evil Children in King Lear and Henry IV
R. Moore discusses the role of children in both works, including Regan, Goneril, Cordelia, Hotspur, and Hal.
William Shakespeare takes his attack on the notion of the divine right of kings one step further in King Lear, as he shows that even kings are infallible when it comes to judging their children. Lear's banishment of Cordelia is the prime illustration of the notion that parents tend to project their own expectations on to their children, sometimes with dire results. While Shakespeare may have imbued his royal tragedies with themes of history and duty and divine right (or lack of it), his characters, like Lear, and Henry IV, were above all individuals, with individual choices to make...
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- - Read the King Lear text online.
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