William Shakespeare play “King Lear” is a dark tragedy surrounding two families of King Lear and his daughters, Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia, as well as Gloucester and his sons Edgar and Edmund. Like most of his plays, Shakespeare writes this play with a combination of poetry and prose. He is able to skillfully write in verse, yet still kept to a conversational tone.
“King Lear” is written in a blank verse, which follows an unrhymed iambic pentameter, with five stressed syllables and five unstressed syllables to each line. Shakespeare choses to write in blank verse when the nobles speak and he switches to a conversational tone when people of lower stature speak. Shakespeare also employs the use of a rhyming couplet at the end of some scenes, to bring in a thought or idea.
The play speaks on the disasters that happen when greed consumes the love children have for their parents. Lear’s
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Lear states, “How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is, To have a thankless child!” (1.4.302-303) Shakespeare uses strong animal imagery combined with metaphors and hyperboles to compare the betrayal of a child to the bite of a snake, which is considered evil. Shakespeare continues to use symbolism when he brings in the theme of blindness. King Lear and Gloucester are both blind in this play. King Lear is blind to the true motives that lay behind their love declarations for him, realizing that Cordelia is the only one who loves him in the end. Gloucester is blind both figuratively and literally. In the beginning, he is blinded to Edmund’s treachery. It only when he is truly blind that Gloucester is able to see the truth. “I have np way and therefore want no eyes. I stumbled when I saw.” (4.1.19-21) Readers are able to see the irony in Gloucester statement because his ability to see the reality of his sons only happened once the Duke of Cornwell had plucked out his