Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear also clearly exemplifies the nature of humans to cling to fantastical structure. Lear's descent into his own world dominated by a lack of sense and clarity, and his attempts at saving himself qualify the argument that a human without a unit of routine and certainty is flesh without a skeleton.
While not much is known about Lear before the play begins, an audience can sense something is wrong when as a king, he is giving his estates away long before he dies, or at least presumably. This in itself is puzzling, though he compounds his issue by assigning the only real power he holds into the hands of daughters who w
ill then refuse to care for him, whilst also banishing those he should be holding dear.Again, it is basically impossible to assume that Lear wouldn't have collapsed so completely had he simply kept his land, or even given it only to his loving daughter, Cordelia, but the venture is unlikely. Lear's inability to recognize his own errors in judgment on such a grand stage until the final minutes of his life are representation of something rather less picturesque. He has voted himself out of office without casting a ballot, one might say, by erasing everything that he requires to exist upon. Shakespeare discludes any real detail of the way King Lear rules his kingdom, and for good purpose: it is unimportant. King Lear could be anyone, really, and by the end of the play, Shakespeare has made him exactly that -- a nobody. He is illustrious in his account of the scourge of a king's power, but for no purpose other than to provide the thought that the king is not really 'the king'.
Lear's descention into madness upon a roundabout realization that he has stripped himself of his own being is nothing abruptly original. I don't wish to sell it short, but it is merely one more example of man's inability to live without boundary, without order, and especially without control.
