King Lear Essay, Research Paper

Shakespeare

KING LEAR

There are a lot of similarities in two Shakespeare stories HAMLET

and KING LEAR. I guess its because of the style in which Shakes

peare

wrote. William Shakespeare wrote three kinds of stories: comedy,

tragedy and history. Both of these books are tragedies and they are

very similar tragedies. In both of these stories there is a feud going

on within the family. And in both the feud is between the children and

their parents or relatives. Hamlet is looking for the revenge on his

uncle for killing Hamlets father and hes upset with his mother

marrying the murderer. Here Lears evil daughters try to completely

destroy their father.

Lear calls his daughters and asks them who loves the most. Regan and

Goneril lie just to get Lears land and power. Cordelia honestly

answers Lear and for that is given away to France, because Lear has

gone out of his mind. After Lear gives out almost all his land he

realizes his wrongdoing and tries to restore his power. But now its

too late, because his daughters already took away all the land. He sees

how evil his daughters really are and they dont love him at all, so he

curses them. Now Lear appears to be crazy from his actions, but in

reality he exactly knows what is going on.

Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and it told Hamlet that his uncle

killed him to become the king. This shows that the person will even

commit murder to get control of the country, just like we see in KING

LEAR. After the ghost appeared to Hamlet, he started to act like he

was crazy. But just like Lear, in reality he wasnt crazy, he was

thinking of how to get back at his uncle.

The endings of both stories are very similar. Besides the fact that

all the main characters in both stories die, its how they die thats

interesting. Because Goneril wants to get Edmund, she poisons her

sister Regan. Hamlets uncle wants to poison Hamlet, but by mistake he

poisoned his wife, Hamlets mother. Hamlet by mistake kills his uncle

servant Polonius. Because of the death of her father Ophelia (Polonius

daughter) goes insane and later kills herself. Because Gonerils plan

didnt work, she kills herself. At the end there is a duel between

Edgar and Edmund, where Edgar kills his bastard brother. At the end of

HAMLET there is a duel between Hamlet and Polonius son, where Hamlet

wins but in process gets cut by a poisonous sword; He dies. And finally

during the duel Hamlet also kills his uncle getting his revenge, but

loosing his life. After Polonia is found dead, Lear totally goes insane

and thinking that his daughter is still alive he dies. And at the very

end Kent says, My master is dead I have no reason to live, and kills

himself. Just like at the end of HAMLET, Hamlets servant and friend

also says the same and also kills himself.

In conclusion: both of these plays are tragedies, a very close

connections throughout the play, and a very similar endings.