the feeble are more given to anger than the strong, and old men rather than the young. Other thinkers, contemporary with Shakespeare, such as Newton, emphasised also the pride that precedes anger and the shame that succeeds it. Newton also explained that while anger harms those against whom it is directed, it harms even more the person in whose heart the passion rises. He suggests that the mind must be reined by reason and curbed by temperance.
             There was, then, in Shakespeare's day an old and firmly founded philosophy of anger, based upon ancient philosophy and medieval reworkings of those ideas. According to this philosophy, pride or self-esteem is the condition in which anger takes its rise, vengeance becomes its immediate object, and some slight, real or imagined, is its cause. Anger is folly; shame its consequence. The sequence of passions is pride, anger, revenge, and, unless madness clouds the reason altogether, shame. Anger hurts him who feels it even more than it hurts the one on whom he seeks revenge. Its consequences are shame on the one hand and rage, fury, frenzy and madness on the other. It is the most destructive of passions; it has indeed something of the essence of all passions.
             Whilst the study of anger forms the central focus of King Lear, Shakespeare explores a number of related problems, such as old age. Plutarch argued that whilst many old men seek to escape from the burdens of public life, such an attitude is really the result of sloth. In reality the aged man should give his experience and wisdom to the state; and he is being led by " sloth and want of courage" when he lays down his burdens.
             When Lear enters with his explanation;
             In three our kingdom; and 'tis our fast intent
             To shake all cares and business of our age,
             Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
             and later concludes his speech by restating his intention and appealing to his daughters:
             Since now we will divest us both of ...