In King Lear Shakespeare demonstrates the consequences of our actions in the in a few ways. In the first act King Lear, who is old wants to divide his kingdom between his daughters Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. He decides that he will give out portions of land according to who loves him the best “Which of you shall we say doth love us most?/ That we our largest bounty may extend? Where nature doth with merit challenge” (Shakespeare I.I. 50-52). Both Regan and Goneril are more than willing to profess their love for him even though they are lying.
On the other hand, while his intent with the game was to ensure that his favorite daughter Cordelia receives the biggest portion of land. Cordelia refuses to play the game saying, “Happily, when I shall wed/ The lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry? Half my love with him, half my care and duty. Sure I shall never marry like my sisters/ To love my father all” (I.I. 99-103). and he disowns her. The consequence of the test and King Lear’s decision to disown Cordelia set the course for the events of the play, which ends with King Lear and all of his daughters dead, as well as a number of members of the House of Gloucester.
The immediate consequences of the love test are Cordelia’s disownment and subsequent banishing, the banishing of Kent, who defends Cordelia. King Lear divides Cordelia’s share of land between Goneril and Regan. This results in them having more power than he had originally intended. King Lear decides that he is going to alternate between living with them. This does not make Regan or Goneril happy “You see how full of changes his age is; the observation we have made of it hath not been little he always/ lov’d our sister most; and with what peer judgment he hath now/ cast her off appears too grossly” (I.I 286-289).
Eventually Regan and Goneril refuse to shelter King Lear and his hundred nights. They both request that he gets rid of a portion of them. This is mainly because they fear that King Lear may decide to retake their kingdoms. When he does not dismiss his knight they do so and kick him out of their homes. King Lear ends up alone in the rain. Now of course had he not played his game at the beginning of the play Cordelia would have been around to help her father out.
The biggest consequence of the love test come from the death of Cordelia. Cordelia hearing of how her sisters have treated their father raises an army to go against them. When they arrive the army is defeated and Cordelia and King Lear are imprisoned. Edmund orders them to be executed. Edmund later rescinds this order, but it is too late as Cordelia has already been hung. After Cordelia dies King Lear rapidly loses his sanity as he starts to believe that Cordelia is still alive and does not realize that Kent has been with him the entire time.
In conclusion, while many of the events in the play were exacerbated by the love trial. They probably would have still occurred. Goneril and Regan would have still betrayed King Lear, but Cordelia would have been there to help him. Cordelia may have not married a king of France, so she may have not had an army to attack her sisters, and if she did have an army the events of the battle could have turned out differently.
Works Cited
Gaull, Marilyn. "Love and Order in "King Lear"" Educational Theatre Journal 19.3 (1967): 333. Web. 2 May 2016.
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Schafer, Roy. "Curse and Consequence: King Lear’s Destructive Narcissism." The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 91.6 (2010): 1503-521. Web. 2 May 2016.
