Family Feuds in Shakespeare
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, there are a few ways this post could go. Food and gratitude are both solid options, but let's go for something a little more juicy: family feuds. The Feud between King Lear & Goneril and Regan ( King Lear ) One of the most iconic family feuds in all of Shakespeare's canon, the growing feud between King Lear and his two elder daughters, Goneril and Regan, occupies most of the first two acts of the play. In Act I, Scene 1, Lear divides his kingdom evenly between Goneril and Regan and announces his plans to live with them in an alternating arrangement (one month with Goneril, the next with Regan). By the end of the scene, Goneril and Regan already express their displeasure at how his old age has exacerbated his uneven temper: "The best and soundest of his time hath been / but rash. Then we must look from his age to / receive not alone the imperfections of long-engraffed / condition, but therewithal the unruly waywardness / that in...
