King Lear: The Rise of Evil King Lear, the main character of Shakespeare's play of the same name, is a dominant and imperious king. Although he takes the initiative to disinherit his youngest daughter and exile his faithful friend, there is not in him the capacity for conscious and intentional harm that is prevalent in his two eldest daughters as well as in Cornwall, Edmund and Oswald. However, there is a force in Lear that unleashes a movement of destruction in which evil emerges and momentarily takes over the course of events. When Lear decides to give up power in favor of emotions, the vital selfishness in him that feeds on power rises up and asserts itself against the movement. It is the drive for power, attention, recognition, revenge; the habit of assertion, anger, anger; the traits of pride and vanity that take possession of him and start a downward movement of destruction in opposition to the upward movement of the heart. The course of events that follows is an inevitable elaboration of these opposing movements. Vital egoism in Lear is a dominant force that allows the existence and expression of only himself and his own will. What subdues and satisfies survives, the rest must vanish unnoticed or remain unexpressed. Such an atmosphere stifles the natural growth of other personalities who need freedom of self-expression in order to overcome what is primitive and childish in favor of what is mature and cultured. These psychological circumstances almost inevitably result in suppression and repression rather than growth. Instead of being expressed and overcome, man's capacities for selfishness, cruelty and perversity are organized beneath the surface of the paper. Evil in Goneril is organized in a developed mind, it is more self-conscious and more absolute. The undeveloped evil vibration in Regan attracts a mate who can bring out its further development while the mature evil in Goneril attracts a mate to destroy it. Life sustains each vibration until it reaches its full stature and then provides the circumstances necessary for its destruction or transformation. Bibliography Casebook: King Lear, edited by Frank Kermode, Macmillan & Co., 1969 Shakespearean Tragedy, AC Bradley, Macmillan & Co., 1965, Prefaces to Shakespeare vol. II, Granville-Barker, BT Batsford Ltd., London, 1963 Shakespearean Tragedy, AC Bradley, Macmillan & Co., 1965 Casebook: King Lear, edited by Frank Kermode, Macmillan & Co., 1969, p. 175. Shakespearean Tragedy, AC Bradley, Macmillan & Co., 1965, p.. 231.