ed his mother, Gertrude.
Both Hamlet and Lear have been unduly usurped. Hamlet’s right to the throne and Denmark have been usurped by his murderous uncle, Claudius. In King Lear, Lear is usurped by his own actions. He stubbornly refuses to accept Cordelia’s love and retaliates by giving her third of his kingdom two his daughters who already possess a third each. His other two daughters, Goneril and Regan, humiliate their father by refusing him his normal retinue, putting the loyal Kent in stocks, and eventually they will rob Gloucester of his eyes. King Lear is loved by Cordelia, Gloucester, Kent, Edgar and his Fool. However, the Fool understands Lear’s pride and foolishness have stripped him of his kingdom and his wits. As he tells the rash King:
Fool. –Nuncle, give me an egg, and I’ll give thee two crowns.
Lear. What two crowns shall they be?
Fool. Why, after I have cut the egg I’ the middle, and eat up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou clovest they crown I’ the middle, and gavest away both parts, thou borest thine ass on they back o’er the dirt: thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown when thou gavest thy golden one away. If I speak like myself in this, let him be whipped first finds it so.
Lear will descend into madness because, as the Fool tells him, “thou hast pared thy wit o’ both sides, and left nothing I’ the middle” (Shakespeare I.iv.980). Hamlet, on the other hand, has an excess of wits. He is self-reflection to the nth degree. He curses that he was ever born to set things right in a world so out of joint and so rotten as is the state of things in Denmark. Hamlet is a reflecting pool of thought, thoughts that threaten to overwhelm him with their burdensome complexity. Unlike Lear, if anything Hamlet is a little too aware of things, especially the difference between appearances and reality. His step-father uncle, the King, is a murderer. His mother, the Q...