Two things surprised me when I about the play The first was how gory the blinding of Gloucaster was... 'Out Vile Jelly." The second was how relevant the intergenerational conflict was to my own thinking.
First, a quibble; I don't appreciate Shakespeare's perpetual use of the 'disguise' trope. Disguises are utilized over and over again, and frankly -to me- it makes the characters seem stupid. Lear didn't recognize Kent? Really? I bring up this reliance only because the rest of Shakespeare's writing holds up so well: characters make dumb mistakes, characters die accidentally and generally the characters feel like real people.
In the end, King Lear is not the kind of fatalist, predestined tragedy of 'Romeo and Juliet' or Oedipus. King Lear is -at its heart- a tragedy of escalation. The machinations of Edmund, playing the role of low rent Iago, have their role in the various downfalls, but the root of the various disasters is the gradually increasing animosity between Lear and his daughters. Cordelia is good not so much because she tells the truth, but because she is willing to forgive and keep loving a father despite his declining faculties. Alternately, her sisters manipulate and eventually spurn their father because they are worried about his rages and his uncontrollability.
For another (exceedingly relevant) take on inter-generational conflict and the difficulties inherent in the diminishment of one generation and their children trying to cope, you can watch the 'Grey Dawn' episode of South Park. Link Much funnier than King Lear...
