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Different deceptions in King Lear Background: King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, and is considered one of his greatest plays. Lear, who is old, wants to retire from power. He decides to divide his realm among his three daughters, and he offers the largest share to the one who loves him most. Goneril and Regan both proclaim in fulsome terms that they love him more than anything in the world, which pleases him. Cordelia speaks temperately and honestly, which annoys him. In his anger he disinherits her, and divides the kingdom between the other two. Kent objects to this unfair treatment. Lear is further enraged by Kent's defiance, and banishes him from the country. Cordelia's two suitors enter. Learning that she is disinherited, the Duke of Burgundy withdraws his suit, but the King of France is impressed by her honesty and marries her anyway. Lear announces that he will live alternately with Goneril and Regan, and their husbands, the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall. He reserves to himself a retinue of one hundred knights, to be supported by his daughters. Goneril and Regan speak privately, agreeing that Lear is old and foolish. Edmund resents his illegitimate status, and plots to supplant his legitimate older brother Edgar. He tricks their father Gloucester with a forged letter, prompting him to think that Edgar plans to usurp the estate. Kent returns from exile in disguise under the name of Caius, and Lear hires him as a servant. Lear discovers that now that Goneril has power, she no longer respects him. She orders him to behave better and reduces his retinue. Enraged, Lear departs for Regan's home. The Fool mocks Lear's misfortune. Edmund fakes an attack by Edgar, and Gloucester is completely taken in. He disinherits Edgar and announces him an outlaw. Kent meets Oswald at Gloucester's home. He quarrels with him, and is put in the stocks by Regan and her husband Cornwall. When Lear arrives, he objects, but Regan takes the same line as Goneril. Lear is enraged but impotent. Goneril arrives and echoes Regan. Lear yields completely to his rage. He rushes out into a storm to rant against his ungrateful daughters, accompanied by the mocking Fool. Kent later follows to protect him. Gloucester protests Lear's mistreatment. Wandering on the heath after the storm, Lear meets Edgar, in the guise of Tom o' Bedlam, that is, a madman. Edgar babbles madly while Lear denounces his daughters. Gloucester leads them all to shelter. Edmund betrays Gloucester to Cornwall, Regan, and Goneril. He shows a letter from his father to the King of France asking for help against them; and in fact a French army has landed in Britain. Gloucester is arrested, and Cornwall gouges out his eyes. But one of Cornwall's servants is so outraged by this that he attacks and fatally wounds Cornwall. Regan kills the mutinous servant, and tells Gloucester that Edmund tricked him; then she turns him out to wander the heath too. Edgar, in his madman's guise as Tom, meets blinded Gloucester on the heath. Gloucester begs Tom to lead him to a cliff, so that he may jump to his death. Goneril meets Edmund and discovers that she finds him more attractive than her honest husband Albany, whom she regards as milk-livered. Albany is disgusted by the sisters' treatment of Lear, and the mutilation of Gloucester, and denounces Goneril. Kent leads Lear to the French army, which is accompanied by Cordelia. But Lear is half-mad and terribly embarrassed by his earlier follies. Albany leads the British army to meet the French. Regan too is attracted to Edmund, and the two sisters become jealous. Goneril sends Oswald with letters to Edmund, and also tells Oswald to kill Gloucester if he sees him. Edgar pretends to lead Gloucester to a cliff, then changes his voice and tells Gloucester he has miraculously survived a great fall. They meet Lear, who is now completely mad. Lear rants that the whole world is corrupt and runs off. Oswald tries to kill Gloucester, but is slain by Edgar. In Oswald's pocket, Edgar finds a letter from Goneril to Edmund suggesting the murder of Albany. Kent and Cordelia take care of Lear, whose madness largely passes. Regan, Goneril, Albany, and Edmund meet with their forces. Albany insists that they fight the French invaders, but not harm Lear or Cordelia. The two sisters lust for Edmund, who has made promises to both. He considers the dilemma, and plots the deaths of Albany, Lear, and Cordelia. Edgar gives Goneril's letter to Albany. The armies meet in battle, the British defeat the French, and Lear and Cordelia are captured. Edmund sends them off with secret orders for execution. The victorious British leaders meet, and Regan now declares she will marry Edmund. But Albany exposes the intrigues of Edmund and Goneril, and proclaims Edmund a traitor. Regan collapses; Goneril has poisoned her. Edmund defies Albany, who calls for a trial by combat. Edgar appears to fight Edmund, and fatally stabs him in a duel. Albany shows Goneril's letter to her; she flees in shame and rage. Edgar reveals himself; Gloucester dies offstage from the overwhelming shock and joy of this revelation. Throughout the play we could see various deceptions since in the place palace, this could not be called unusual, and through the process of deception, the personality of each character can be vividly illustrated. The paper is mainly going to discuss with three main deceptions, and do some analysis. 1. The Deception of the two elder daughters of King Lear “Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter; Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty; Beyond what can be valued, rich or rate; No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; As much as child ever loved, or father found; A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.” By Goneril This seems quite a perfect eulogy, with splendid and magnificent words, and hardly can any one escape from the feeling of pleasure upon hearing this, especially when after the speech another yet more compelling complementary by a younger sister, Regan, is made. No wonder when King Lear heard the bare heartfelt words from Cordelia, he immediately had the emotional tendency to drive her out of the palace and distribute the land allotted to her to her two sisters instead. As far as I am concerned, the action of Cordelia’s two sisters are typical deception in order to gain power and wealth. This can be seen right after the fact that hardly had they reached their goal when they abandoned King Lear. The deception, from one side, directly showed the evil spirit of the two sisters, yet from the other side, showed a human nature of the desires for power and flattery. King Lear will be a good example from the case where he chose to distribute his land to his daughters according to their complimentary on his accomplishments. And being between these two natures, Cordelia, on the contrary, became the victim in the competition for power and wealth. Cordelia is the image of pure honesty and justice, always showing bare, honest but not flattering words in expressing her love for her father, but this indeed contributed to her plight of receiving nothing from whom she deeply loved, as well as her final death. However, King Lear also lost all his power in believing his two daughters’ words, ranting in the storm in order to reduce the pain in his heart, going into the black hole of madness as an escape to the reality; and his two daughters as well died in envy and doubt. In my opinion, constructing the plot in this way, Shakespeare not only added a desperate tragic tone to the whole play according to the old saying that “the tragedy is to break beautiful things right before people’s eyes”, but also illustrated the final ending of people who deceive and who believe in deception, which is related to the final sentence: “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” 2. The Deception of Edmund “This policy and reverence of age makes the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish them. I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny, who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered. Come to me, that of this I may speak more. If our father would sleep till I waked him, you should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your brother. EGDAR.” It is easy to imagine, when Gloucester received this letter, how outraged he would become and what would he do to Edgar. However, this was in fact only the evil plan of Edgar’s brother, Edmund, who Edgar deeply trusted and treated him with every ounce of love he could give. Yet this was just one of Edmund’s deceptions, including letting Cornwall blind his father, trying to have good relationship with his three sisters, all for his final goal to reach on top of every one else. We could say that Edmund’s excessive thirst for power was nurtured by his background and the destiny he was born with. Only a few months younger than his brother, yet also the son of another wife of Gloucester, Edmund could not enjoy the power as his brother Edgar did. Feeling this as the constraint, Edmund regarded that he had no other choice but to gain power, and only by deceiving and competing could he reach his goal. It is agreed by the majority that Edmund was the product of every piece of impiety that we could find in the world, cheating, cruelty, hurting people even his dearest relatives, yet we should also acknowledge that even so, we could see the sadness lying deep behind his actions. To Edmund, he thought that life did not give him things he deserved, so he was going to earn them by himself. However, the route to power was tough and difficult, and his death finally brought all these to ground zero no matter how hard he had tried to come all this way. “Sir, I shall study deserving.” At the beginning of the play, Edmund had already shown his ambition to stand at the very top of the kingdom, and I would conclude that Edmund himself was a perfect example of deceiving. Life composed of deception may bring the power and wealth he needed, yet far behind we could see the emptiness and disparity in it. 3. The deception of Edgar “Why I do trifle thus with his despair is done to cure it.” By Edgar Edgar’s deception, rare in Shakespeare’s whole play Kind Lear, was deception for purpose of pure love and for the sake of others, not for himself. He deceived his father in order to save him out of despair and grief. Upon seeing Edgar’s tenderness and effort when guiding his father and convincing him that he was standing on the cliff, I could hardly disagree that like Cordelia, in the play Edgar represented totally the virtue of honesty, though he’s invariably called foolish by his brother. Some people may state that because of the honesty and belief in others Edgar was deceived by his brother and lost his original power, yet we could not deny that by the end of the play, Egdar survived, sticking to his discipline from the beginning to the end, and thus he could be regarded as the winner. This to some extent showed Shakespeare’s agreement in honesty and virtue. But even so, Shakespeare did not leave an easy life for Edgar, for his survival was followed by a trial of dead people, and he was the person who was going to endure the heavy sadness left behind. But if the characters had learned the lesson from the very beginning the tragedy would not have happened, and this was indeed the spirit of what tragedy was. Conclusion: “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” This was said by Edgar at the end of the play, yet deception can be seen everywhere in the play. Through the representative deceptions, Shakespeare successfully bent the humanity, and stated both the bright and dark sides of the world. From the case of Cordelia we saw that the reality usually harmed beauty and purity, yet at the end we could also see hope lying in the survival of Edgar, that the humanity would finally achieved victory, which was how we were impressed by the profound meaning and graceful language of King Lear.