Essay/Term paper: Hamlet and king lear

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Shakespeare

There

are a lot of similarities in two Shakespeare stories HAMLET

and KING LEAR. I guess its because of the style in which

Shakes peare wrote. William Shakespeare wrote three

kinds of stories: comedy, tragedy and history. Both of these

books are tragedies and they are very similar tragedies. In

both of these stories there is a feud going on within the

family. And in both the feud is between the children and their

parents or relatives. Hamlet is looking for the revenge on his

uncle for killing Hamlets father and hes upset with his mother

marrying the murderer. Here Lears evil daughters try to

completely destroy their father. Lear calls his daughters and

asks them who loves the most. Regan and Goneril lie just to

get Lears land and power. Cordelia honestly answers Lear

and for that is given away to France, because Lear has gone

out of his mind. After Lear gives out almost all his land he

realizes his wrongdoing and tries to restore his power. But

now its too late, because his daughters already took away all

the land. He sees how evil his daughters really are and they

dont love him at all, so he curses them. Now Lear appears

to be crazy from his actions, but in reality he exactly knows

what is going on. Hamlet saw the ghost of his father and it

told Hamlet that his uncle killed him to become the king. This

shows that the person will even commit murder to get

control of the country, just like we see in KING LEAR.

After the ghost appeared to Hamlet, he started to act like he

was crazy. But just like Lear, in reality he wasnt crazy, he

was thinking of how to get back at his uncle. The endings of

both stories are very similar. Besides the fact that all the

main characters in both stories die, its how they die thats

interesting. Because Goneril wants to get Edmund, she

poisons her sister Regan. Hamlets uncle wants to poison

Hamlet, but by mistake he poisoned his wife, Hamlets

mother. Hamlet by mistake kills his uncle servant Polonius.

Because of the death of her father Ophelia (Polonius

daughter) goes insane and later kills herself. Because

Gonerils plan didnt work, she kills herself. At the end there

is a duel between Edgar and Edmund, where Edgar kills his

bastard brother. At the end of HAMLET there is a duel

between Hamlet and Polonius son, where Hamlet wins but in

process gets cut by a poisonous sword; He dies. And finally

during the duel Hamlet also kills his uncle getting his revenge,

but loosing his life. After Polonia is found dead, Lear totally

goes insane and thinking that his daughter is still alive he dies.

And at the very end Kent says, My master is dead I have no

reason to live, and kills himself. Just like at the end of

HAMLET, Hamlets servant and friend also says the same

and also kills himself. In conclusion: both of these plays are

tragedies, a very close connections throughout the play, and

a very similar endings.