Foolishness and Betrayal in King Lear If that the heavens do not
their visible spirits / send quickly down to tame these vile
offenses, / It will come, / Humanity must perforce prey on
itself, / Like monsters of the deep.1 Shakespeare has set two
major forces at work against King Lear in this play. The first
is King Lear’s own pride and ignorance. The second is the
willing betrayal of his daughters, Goneril and Regan. While the
lines above foretell the consequences of this lack of respect
toward authority, they also present a deeper idea, that the
folly of our existence is self-imposed suffering. Not only in
the sense of the individual submitting himself to it, either
willingly or unwillingly. But also by the values of power and
corruption that society imposes upon itself and the people
within it. In her criticism, Shakespeare’s Division of
Experience, Marilyn French wrote that “the tragedy [of King
Lear] presents an agonizing picture of the consequences of such
a morality.”2 Irrespective of the fact that the