King Lear

King Lear is a play about the crisis of succession. In other words: how can an older generation gracefully make way for the new generation? It deals with the gravest of wars, the generational war, when the younger generation feels the need to sacrifice the older generation because the latter refuses to step aside gracefully.

It is an intensely political play about the individual’s relationship with themselves, with other members of their family, and with the state. It is about how the family is not only the place where one learns to love but also the place where one learns to hate. It is about sibling rivalry. There are three sisters and two brothers pitted against one another. Above all, the play articulates the great theme of nothingness that looms like a huge rock over Shakespeare’s work, particularly his later plays. “Nothing comes from nothing,” says Lear, when Cordelia remains silent when asked to express her love. Shakespeare addresses our central fear that perhaps there is nothing: a prospect far more terrifying than that of damnation or evil itself.