King Lear
In this essay I will analyze the friendships in Shakespeare's "King Lear" according to Aristotle's concepts of friendship. Although the play was a very dark and depressing one, I will use the few relationships that were truly friendships as well as those that were outright doomed to fail in order to explain Aristotle's views. In Shakespeare's "King Lear", death and killing are abundant. Friendships, perfect or imperfect are overshadowed by the destruction of relationship after relationship. King Lear is based on treason, jealousy, cruelty, betrayal, evil, love, forgiveness, and death. The final message of the play seems to be that in the end, the good or the virtuous are the victors, although it is hard to absorb that after such a display of wickedness. From the very beginning of the play King Lear himself unknowingly creates enemies. First he banishes Cordelia, the only daughter that is his true friend. Then he decides to split the kingdom between Reagan and Goneril, his two cunning other daughters who turn on him. Kent, Lear's loyal nobleman, is also a true friend. The two have a falling out because Kent is a wise man and he knows that what the king has done is a big mistake. He scolds the king and is sympathetic to Cordelia'
There were also a few relationships that seemed to be friendships at the beginning of the play but turn very quickly into associations full of deception and exploitation. He talks a lot about virtue, saying that if two people are equally virtuous then their friendship can be perfect, unless there is a large age difference like father and son, or a sex difference like husband and wife. There really is no friendship there. Good friends also wish good things on them rather than envying their successes. He just gets caught up in the evil of his wife and sister in law because he can't see the forest through the trees. Not imperfect because of inequality, but because they are defective. Within the two types of friendships he discusses the three main reasons why someone might become friendly with another. In King Lear I saw Kent and Cordelia's bond as the strongest. I assume that the king uses the jester for his advice and the jester would be nothing without the king so both receive something they need from this relationship. This is not an important friendship and the "fool" is not seen in the later acts of the play at all. Those that did not work were never real friendships to begin with. Aristotle describes as these as defective because there is no trust, there is constant fighting and basically no good will. Relationships are an extremely complicated subject as we can see from this play. From the beginning of the play Kent stood up for her advising the king of his mistake.
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