The Lear described in many critical essays sounds less like Shakespeare's monarch than the middle-class recreations of Lear in the nineteenth-century fiction of writers like Balzac and Turgenev. ... In another essay on "King Lear," I have tried to extend Jaffa's analysis, analyzing the process of education the king undergoes when he loses power. ... In this essay, I will examine largely the second half of King Lear, and trace what happens to Lear when he learns the truths to which his position as king initially blinded him. ...

• Word Count: 8939
• Approx Pages: 36
• Grade Level: High School