Like Father Like Daughter In King Lear

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Like father like daughter In King Lear by William Shakespeare
King Lear is one of Shakespeare’s most emotionally gruesome play. The play revolves around the family of King Lear and how it disintegrates leading to the death of all of them. It is a tragic end for a family that was royalty and the misfortune can be traced back to Lear himself. He set himself up for the problems he faced. He, like his daughters, enunciates some elements that are very similar to his daughters’ characters and cumulatively lead to the disaster that befalls them.
First, Lear seems to want love and attention all to himself. In the first scene, the king creates a ‘love test’ for his daughters to know how much they love him. This is a veiled plan to position himself as at the center of his daughters’ love. He intends to split the kingdom equally amongst his three daughters if they confess and shower him with affectionate words to him. His two eldest daughters, Regan and Goneril show him with empty words so as they can be catapulted to their respective thrones. From the scene, it is evident that the king is only concerned about how much his daughters show or say they love him rather than their authentic feelings towards him. All he wants is to feel loved and at the center of the stage as the man loved by his daughters. Goneril and Regan seem to be overly obsessed with being the sole recipient of love just like their father. They argue who has to have Edmund though both are married. Edmund is an illegitimate son of Gloucester. Goneril is married to Albany and Regan is married to Duke of Cornwall, and clearly, both of them do not have any reason to cheat on their husbands and or to pursue an affectionate relationship with Edmund. Goneril gets too jealousy such that she poisons her sister to have Edmund to herself. She also plans on killing her husband to have Edmund. In a bid to be the sole recipient of Edmund’s love, Goneril kills her sister. Goneril jealousy and pursuance of center-staging herself as Edmund’s sole recipient of his love leads to her death just like her father’s miscalculation on using a ‘love test’ on her daughters ultimately caused his death.
Secondly, King Lear and his daughters are mean. King Lear says mean things to her daughter Goneril, and they also say mean words to him. When Goneril attempts to stand up to his father to control his knights for bringing chaos and problems in her household, Lear speaks ill of her daughter. It is simply a curse that she may never have children for criticizing his father since his father takes it in the wrong way and seems to feel that her daughter is thankless and has ill intentions for him, albeit true. King Lear says ‘It may be so, my lord. Hear, Nature, hear, dear goddess, hear: Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend to make this creature fruitful. Into her womb convey sterility, dry up in her the organs of increase, and from her derogate body never spring A babe to honor her.&rsquo...