Reality in King Lear

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post detailing my observations about Reality and Illusion in Shakespeare's works. I hadn't  yet finished King Lear at the time, so I am now taking the opportunity to look at the same theme in that play.

Yet again, much of what happens in King Lear comes down to the concept of illusion versus reality. Lear perceives a greater amount of love from his daughters Regan and Goneril at the beginning of the play while believing his other daughter Cordelia to be lacking in love—this is an obvious mistake, one that is caused by Lear's decision to believe in the illusion of love regurgitated by his two wicked daughters rather than a declaration of love and honesty by the faithful Cordelia. So begins a play of great tragedy.

In Lear, much of the illusion comes about, at least initially, through the deceit of wicked characters. First the two wicked daughters mentioned above fool their father into banishing their sister and giving them his kingdom. Later, Edmund, an illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester, deceives his father into believing that his legitimate son, Edgar, is plotting to kill the Earl and has him banished.

Over the course of the play, however, both Lear and Gloucester come to an understanding of what was real and what was illusion. I think they were blinded by many things at the start of the play, self-centeredness certainly being one of them. But, as they experience the tragic events that occur throughout the play, they eventually realize both who they are as well as their own mistakes. They are changed and subscribe to reality and are eventually redeemed before dying. The tragedy of the tale, of course, is in the lack of realization of what truly is real until it is too late.

As I have read several plays over the course of this semester, it has been interesting to observe this ever-present them of illusion versus reality. I wonder why Shakespeare used this idea so prevalently. As I think about it, I do believe that it is one of the root causes of evil in the world. Often, people simply convince themselves of a reality that doesn't exist and then a spiritual awakening and sometimes redemption is required for them to throw off the illusion that they are living in and come to reality, to truth. Even in the smallest things, that is a realization that must be made. Perhaps we use unkind words toward someone and their feelings are hurt—was this not caused by some sort of subscription to an illusion by the purveyor of the unkind words? They either believed that their words would not cause harm, that causing harm was the right thing to do, or that the person they were directing their words toward deserved the unkindness. But in reality, that was merely illusion.

Religiously, often poor decisions are inspired by illusion created by the adversary, Satan. Much of the evil in the world can be attributed to his influence in spinning illusions and leading people to believe them and use them as a basis for judging their actions. This, again, is a mistake.

There is a lot of power in this observation. I think it is the most profound bit of learning one can gain from Shakespeare. And in this way, the importance and relevance of Shakespeare most certainly lives on.