King Lear

In the play King Lear, Shakespeare used the main characters to portray the main theme. The main theme in this play is blindness. King Lear, Gloucester and Albany are three examples Shakespeare used to incorporate this theme. Each of these characters were “blinded” in different ways because of the wrong decisions they’ve made and later on regretted.

The blindest of all was King Lear. Because of his high position as the king, people would think that he should be able to distinguish the good from the bad, but unfortunately, he was “blinded” by others. Lear’s first act of blindness came at the beginning of the play. He was fooled by his two eldest daughters’ sweet words, and then he was unable to see cordelia’s true love for him. There he gave away his kingdom to the two daughters who lied about loving him and banished cordelia-who really loved him from his kingdom.

“…For we have no such daughter, nor shall ever see that face of her again. Therefore be gone without our grace, our love, our benison.” (Act I, Sc. I)

Lear’s blindness also caused him to banish Kent. Kent was able to see Cordelia’s love for her father and tried to make Lear see the same thing. But instead he got punished for it.

As the play progressed, Lear slowly came to clear vision. he realized that that his two eldest daughter did not truly love him after they locked him out of the castle during a tremendous storm. He also finally saw through that Cordelia’s love for him was so tremendous that she was not able to put it in words. Unfortunately, his blindness caused the dearth of Cordelia and his own.

Gloucester was another example of character that suffered from blindness. His blindness prevented him from seeing the goodness of Edgar and the evil of Edmund.

His blindness began when Edmund convinced him by the forged letter that Edgar was planning to kill him. His lack of “sight” caused him to believe that Edmund was the good son although all he wanted to do is to take over his power. Near the end of the play, Gloucester finally regained his sight and realized that Edgar saved his life and loved him all this time and Edmund was the evil of the two. His inability to see occurred when he had physical sight, but when he finally could see things clearly is when he had his eyes plucked out by the Duke of Cornwall.