https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahFtoCq6CHw

What I find interesting about this video is the way in which Ian McKellen describes his insight into the character of King Lear. The progression of King Lear’s character from the beginning of the play to the end is intriguing and McKellen discusses how it’s important to understand why Lear ends up the way he does. He says that by the end of the story, when Lear loses his faith in the divine, he then discovers his humanity. I find this in particular very interesting because it essentially highlights the paradox which Lear brings himself about. If he does indeed rule by divine right, then it is not “his” to divide or to separate authority from responsibility within it. Lear considers himself to be synonymous with the state rather than just one link in a chain of divinely-sanctioned succession, and he allows his ego to interfere with the natural order. So for Lear’s character to have such a drastic change in values and ideas by the end of the story, it shows how much he was able to realize his faults in the way that he lived his entire life. Although this realization may be too late since Cordelia, the daughter who loved him the most is dead, it shows how he was able to come to an understanding of what he did wrong throughout his life. Lear acts like a child who tries to measure the love that his daughters have for him as if it’s quantifiable. This causes the rest of the tragic events to occur in the play. It isn’t until the very end where Lear, blinded, is ironically able to see the fault in the way in which he carried out his actions.