King Lear's Days of Agreement Essay

How did Lear spend his days of agreement with Regan and Goneril?

After King foolishly disowned and banished Cordelia and gave her share of the kingdom to the older sisters, Goneril and Regan began scheming to rid themselves of their father. King Lear went to spend the first month by agreement with his eldest daughter Goneril. With Cordelia gone, both Goneril and Regan showed their true character. The old king found out the difference between promises and performances. Goneril criticized and stopped her father from enjoying whatever luxuries and comforts he had left. She could not bear to see him and his hundred knights. She always met him with a frown on her face and pretended to be sick to avoid him. She treated him as a useless burden and considered his attendants an unnecessary expense. The egoistical Lear realized the change in Gonerils behaviour, but quietly bore it because he knew he had only himself to blame. Goneril plainly told Lear that his staying in her palace was inconvenient, useless and expensive.

Lear finally confronted and cursed her in anger and announced that would go to his other daughter, Regan and thus left for the Regans palace. Lear wept with remorse when he compared Cordelias behavior with that of Goneril. Regan and her husband lived with great comfort at their palace. Lear despatched his servant Caius with letters so that they might be prepared for his reception. Alas! Goneril had sent letters to Regan too, accusing her father of bad behavior, and advising her not to receive him with so many knights. Regan and her husband refused to welcome him.

Regan advised him to go home again with Goneril, live with her in peace, dismissing half his attendants and to ask her forgiveness. Lear insisted on staying with Regan in the false hope of better treatment from her. Regan treated him with even more disrespect than Goneril, declared that twenty five knights were enough for him. When Lear turned to Goneril willing to go back with her, for keeping fifty knights, Goneril refused him even one. These cruel and wicked daughters snatched his kingdom, his knights, all his respect and threw him out at night in the middle of a furious storm and made him go mad with their ill behavior.

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