King Lear Free Will

King Lear is a story of tragedy written by the play guru, William Shakespeare. The play revolves around the gradual entry into madness of the lead character after he gives off his territory to two of his three daughters bringing misfortune to them all. The play is a derivation of the legendary Lear of Britain, a mythological pre-Roman leader, and has been widely used both on stage and motion pictures with the title role being acted by most of the world’s renowned actors. First performed a St. Stephen Day in 1606, Shakespeare was first given recognition for the play in 1608 and more performances followed. However, due to audience preference, later on, the subsequent plays were revised to conform to a jovial, non-tragic ending.
The lead character,
King Lear still remains the focal point regarding fate, chance and free will. Gloucester believes that fete would never go wrong with him. Furthermore, he has a firm belief that it is the gods who determine someone’s fate. The king equally seems to share in this belief. Therefore, he dismisses the results of his freewill and refuses to take responsibility of his actions. The same is shown when Lear uses his freewill to give power to his two daughters leaving out the youngest who actually loved him most (Bullough 54). The book depicts him as one who does not intelligently use his free will to make informed decisions. The same causes him a lot of pain in the end as the family gets into unending conflict because of his decision. Similarly, the other two daughters use their free will to misuse the powers given to them by their fathers in indulging in greed and corruption. Their power of choose overwhelms them and brings more harm than good to the family. The King defines fate as a force that is determinant of all occurrences in the universe. He believes that fate can either bring one’s fortunes or their fall. Moreover he say that fate is such a powerful force that no one apart from God can control. It is probably because of such beliefs that his uses fate to take undue opportunity and exercises freewill to gain power in a society that has been rendered lawless by “fate”. Through various characters, and Lear in particular fate is used to either disrupt or restore the balance of nature. To define it, balance of nature is when power is in the right hands and where it is not abused or used to bring conflict into the society. However Lear the central character together with, Edmund, the son, Goneril and fellow villains through freewill, create conflict to take control of or maintain power. Luckily, in the end, they all suffer and meet their end as fate would