King Lear opens with Lear disowning his favorite daughter for her honesty and rewarding the empty flattery of her older sisters. Lear also rejects Kent, a loyal man who seeks to help Lear realize his error. Shakespeare examined the problems of valuing the appearance of the virtues and morality in many of his plays. Angelo in Measure for Measure and Macbeth are examples of powerful men who display the appearance of virtue but are secretly great criminals. Lear goes mad rather than face the truth that his daughters’ protestation of love was only empty flattery. Lear as a king holds the appearance of virtue but acts in a manner that directly opposes morality. It is only when he ventures into the heath with the Fool and Kent and is faced with the storm that he begins to understand the world as it really is. The irony is that the play’s most moral men all end up on the run in the heath. Each holds an appearance that is at odds with their character. They hold the likeness of the mad and the poor while the wicked live in opulence.