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- Ms. Long,LA IV Class
- Shakespeare
- KING LEAR
-
- There are a lot of similarities in two Shakespeare stories HAMLET
- and KING LEAR. I guess its because of the style in which Shakes
- peare
- wrote. William Shakespeare wrote three kinds of stories: comedy,
- tragedy and history. Both of these books are tragedies and they are
- very similar tragedies. In both of these stories there is a feud going
- on within the family. And in both the feud is between the children and
- their parents or relatives. Hamlet is looking for the revenge on his
- uncle for killing Hamlets father and hes upset with his mother
- marrying the murderer. Here Lears evil daughters try to completely
- destroy their father.
-
- Lear calls his daughters and asks them who loves the most. Regan and
- Goneril lie just to get Lears land and power. Cordelia honestly
- answers Lear and for that is given away to France, because Lear has
- gone out of his mind. After Lear gives out almost all his land he
- realizes his wrongdoing and tries to restore his power. But now its
- too late, because his daughters already took away all the land. He sees
- how evil his daughters really are and they dont love him at all, so he
- curses them. Now Lear appears to be crazy from his actions, but in
- reality he exactly knows what is going on.
-
- Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and it told Hamlet that his uncle
- killed him to become the king. This shows that the person will even
- commit murder to get control of the country, just like we see in KING
- LEAR. After the ghost appeared to Hamlet, he started to act like he
- was crazy. But just like Lear, in reality he wasnt crazy, he was
- thinking of how to get back at his uncle.
-
- The endings of both stories are very similar. Besides the fact that
- all the main characters in both stories die, its how they die thats
- interesting. Because Goneril wants to get Edmund, she poisons her
- sister Regan. Hamlets uncle wants to poison Hamlet, but by mistake he
- poisoned his wife, Hamlets mother. Hamlet by mistake kills his uncle
- servant Polonius. Because of the death of her father Ophelia (Polonius
- daughter) goes insane and later kills herself. Because Gonerils plan
- didnt work, she kills herself. At the end there is a duel between
- Edgar and Edmund, where Edgar kills his bastard brother. At the end of
- HAMLET there is a duel between Hamlet and Polonius son, where Hamlet
- wins but in process gets cut by a poisonous sword; He dies. And finally
- during the duel Hamlet also kills his uncle getting his revenge, but
- loosing his life. After Polonia is found dead, Lear totally goes insane
- and thinking that his daughter is still alive he dies. And at the very
- end Kent says, My master is dead I have no reason to live, and kills
- himself. Just like at the end of HAMLET, Hamlets servant and friend
- also says the same and also kills himself.
- In conclusion: both of these plays are tragedies, a very close
- connections throughout the play, and a very similar endings.
-