Analyzing the Themes of Power and Authority from King Lear
Power and authority are addictive, and when a person loses hold of them, adapting to the ordinary environment becomes hard. William Shakespeare, in his play, King Lear, demonstrates how power and authority can blind a person to make thoughtless decisions. In the tragedy, King Lear decides to hand over leadership powers to his daughters. However, he demands that the daughters confess their love for him. When Lear notices that Cordelia, whom he also loves the most, dos do not reciprocate the same in words, he rushes to divide the power between Goneril and Regan. Therefore, the rushed decision by Lear when handing powers and authority shows that emotions can cause a person to make irrational decisions.
When King Lear decides to hand powers, he disregards the right procedure and follows emotions. He coerces the daughters to confess their love for him in order to get a share of his power, which is a misuse of his powers. Goneril and Regan lie to their father that they love him a lot, with each one of them giving a detailed version of their commitment, in order to win his trust. However, Cordelia does not use the same approach as his sisters. Failure to appease his father with praises angers him and uses the powers that reserved for her to her sisters (Holiday, 2018). Besides, Lear decides to degrade Cordelia before men who express their interest in marrying her. As a result, she loses the chance to marry the Duke of Burgundy. On the other hand, the two sisters are not qualified to lead the kingdom, and they use the power for their own interests.
The demand for praises causes Lear to accept the wrong suitors for his two daughters, which leads to the downfall of the kingdom. Lear marries off Goneril to the Duke of Albany, and Regan to the Duke of Cornwall, who are cunning. After the Duke of Burgundy withdraws after finding out that Cordelia does not have a single inheritance, the King of France marries her due to her honesty. However, Lear does not recognize the King of France as a respectable person. Therefore, he leaves his place to live with the family of Goneril. After spending some time, he notices that none of Goneril’s family respects him and his authority, which is no longer applicable (Tate, 2014). In an attempt to claim back his power, Lear is chased away and becomes mad, which signifies the fall of order in the British kingdom.
Dividing the powers does not only put the family of Lear in the hands of Goneril and Regan but also those of Britons. When Cordelia fails to massage the ego of his father through a declaration of love, the father disregards the interests of his subjects and follows what his emotions tell him. As a result, other kingdoms plan to overthrow the British kingdom by using Edmund, a close aide to the Earls of Gloucester and Kent (Woods, 2014). The cunning nature of Edmund makes it hard for Goneril and Regan to notice, and this gives him the chance to impose strict measures to control the kingdom. Before Lear realizes that the kingdom is under siege, it is too late, and his mental health has significantly deteriorated. Therefore, the use of authority in the wrong way causes King Earl to make misleading decisions in the quest to show his authority to his “defiant” daughter, Cordelia.