But Shakespeare’s play looks soberly at the tragic cost of this quite modest realization. Lear insists that he is “more sinned against than sinning,” but he cannot be held entirely innocent of the fact that his two older daughters are twisted monsters who seek to kill him. He is certainly not innocent of the disastrous fate of his youngest daughter, whose moral integrity he spurned and whose love he failed to understand. He has evidently failed, as well, to distinguish between the basic decency of Goneril’s husband, Albany, and the sadism of Regan’s husband, Cornwall, and he has split his
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