Role Reversal in King Lear King Lear, known as one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, profoundly affects its audience by staging the destruction of two families. At the end of this play two of the protagonists, King Lear and his faithful friend, the Earl of Gloucester, die after suffering serious injustices at the hands of their children. The deaths of these characters are incredibly tragic because they are caused by their own actions rather than the circumstances surrounding them. Lear and Gloucester are not bad men but rather good men who make the fatal mistake of not acting on their station in life. In doing so, they ultimately force their children, Cordelia and Edgar respectively, to take on the roles they had abandoned. Lear is a king, but from the beginning of the play he chooses to avoid this role. He acts in a manner unworthy of a king by forcing his daughters into a bizarre love contest in front of the entire court, thus setting in motion a chain of events that lead to his madness and ultimately his death. It is evident that Cordelia is Lear's most beloved daughter because he says "I loved her best and thought to rest in her kind nursery" (1.1.137-138). But he is the child who then, in a fit of unexpected anger, disinherits and banishes from his kingdom. After giving Cordelia's inheritance to her sisters, Lear says that he will "...keep the name and all additions to a king" (1.1.151-152). He later says “This crown is part among you” (1.1.155) to Cornwall and Albany. These two statements are contradictory and show Lear's internal conflict with his role in life. There is only one crown in a kingdom, and the person who wears it has the last... half of the card... at the end of this play, all hope is not lost for the future because the one left standing will ensure that a tragedy like this will not happen again. Works cited and consulted Barish, Jonas A. and Marshall Waingrow. "Service to King Lear." _SQ_ 9 (1958), 347-57.Brooke, Nicholas. "The End of King Lear." _Shakespeare 1564-1964_. Ed. Edward A. Bloom. Providence: Brown UP, 1964. 71-87. Kott, Jan. "King Lear or Endgame (1964)." _Shakespeare, King Lear: a casebook_. Ed. Frank Kermode.London and Basingstoke: Macmillan P, 1975.Leggatt, Alexander. _King Lear_. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988. Mack, Maynard. _King Lear in our times_. Berkeley: U of California P, 1965.Shakespeare, William. "King Lear". _The bank of the Shakespeare river_. Ed. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.