One of the central themes in William Shakespeare's King Lear centers on the loyalty owed by children to their parents , a theme explicated in the relationships between Lear and his three daughters (Cordelia, Goneril, and Regan), and the Earl of Gloucester and his sons (Edgar and Edmund, the bastard) (King Lear: An Analysis, 1). While superficially the play deals with the loyalty of children, it also addresses the loyalty of parents û or the respect that parents owe to their children and the obligation of parents to behave wisely, fairly and justly with respect to their children. This brief essay will consider this theme as Shakespeare presented it in what critic John Dover Wilson (124) describes as a play that revealed the human spirit as of greater sublimity than we could otherwise have dreamed.
Lear, requiring his three daughters to express the depth of their love for him in return for a share of his kingdom, foolishly assumes that CordeliaÆs (his favorite child) failure to sue the excessive language used by her sisters indicates that she is disloyal. As Lear tells her in his anger and disappointment, ôBetter thou/Hadst not been born than not tÆ have pleased me better (Shakespeare, 40).ö What Lear learns in relatively short order, of course, is that Goneril and Regan (to whom he has given his kingdom and in whose homes he lives) are not loving and dutiful daughters; rather, they are liars who want only his power and are disloyal. Similarly, Gloucester rejects his legitimate son Edgar and chooses to favor and trust his disloyal illegitimate son, Edmund. Both fathers are fooled by appearances and incapable of determining which of their children are truly loving and loyal and therefore worthy. As John Masefield (109) put it, ôThe stupidity of two fathers is the cause of the evil that makes the play.ö
Loyalty is, of course, a necessity in a family and in the relationships that are created between
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