Sam Lien asked Sally Kilpatrick:

In your opinions, how are family relationships portrayed differently in King Lear and Hamlet? Thank you!

Sally Kilpatrick With this question I had a flashback to college and my Shakespeare class, and for that I thank you! I have to confess that I had not read Lear in its entirety so I stopped to do so. Now let me see what I can do with the question itself:

One of the first things that jumps out at me is that Hamlet is an only child. Polonius only has two children. In Lear we have five children so there's more room for sibling rivalry? Hamlet is devoted to his mother, despite his anger that she so quickly married Claudius. I mean, he couldn't bring himself to kill his stepfather until his mother had already died. Similarly, Laertes and Ophelia seem to have genuine respect for their father--enough that Laertes must avenge his father's death. Gertrude and Polonius appear to love their children even if each has a personal agenda. The tragedy of Hamlet stems from Claudius. He's the one who kills the king and swoops in and marries the queen. Sure, Hamlet doesn't appear to be playing with a full deck, but his desire for revenge is justified.

That justification marks the biggest difference between Hamlet and Lear. King Lear is...all over the place, almost naturalist in its assumption that bad things happen to both the good and the bad. Lear's affections for his children are fickle. He banishes Cordelia in a heartbeat even though Regan and Goneril turn out to be manipulative flatterers and nothing more. Then there's the subplot with Gloucester and Edmund and Edgar. Edmund is pure evil with no regard for his father and manages to trick Gloucester into betraying the loyal Edgar. There's this nice parallel structure of Kent, Cordelia, and Edgar being turned out even though they are loyal.

One similarity is how closely aligned Claudius and Edmund are, both semi-outsiders taking advantage of familial relationships in order to achieve what they think are their due. Regan and Goneril, too, are primarily looking out for themselves to the point that they kill each other. I suppose the biggest differences is that characters in Hamlet (Laertes and Hamlet) tend to kill because their family members have been wronged. In Lear, the toxic family relationship leads to both the just and the unjust being killed. I'm kinda surprised Shakespeare didn't go ahead and finish off Edgar and Kent.

And that's a really long answer. I suppose the short answer would be that characters in both plays could've really used therapy.

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