Lear as a dying breed

Shakespeare's Lear seems to represent a dying form of government, one in which the individual is venerated above all; above the good of the people and the community. Lear, like Titus, is oblivious to anything going on that is not in his sphere of being. When chaos does break out, when his divided kingdom begins warring, he does not know how to handle it; because until then, the only allegiance he ever knew was to himself. So when it comes to saving his kingdom, he has no faithful followers, because he never put any faith in his people. Shakespeare seems to be criticizing the British monarchy by showing how it divides its people through their want of power and their lack of care for the good of one another. In effect, the selfishness, ignorance, and egotism trickles down from the head of the state to all of its citizens; not creating a strong bond between them, but rather dividing them by example.

All Shakespeare characters are longing or yearning for something as a result of their solitude. Hamlet is not so concerned with his mother's misdoing in marrying his uncle as he is with self-love and how her actions disagree with his own idealist philosophy. He doesn't truly know love, he only has a notion of what it's supposed to be. Romeo, dejected by his singular identity contrary to his family's, isn't looking for love so much as he's looking to forge his singular identity away from his family. It is self-love that inspires all of Shakespeare's characters, and is essentially, their greatest flaw. Tom Chaplin sings, "When we fall in love, we're just falling in love with ourselves." I think Shakespeare understood this, and also saw it as our greatest human weakness. This is not to say his texts don't bleed with want of love - in fact they are saturated with that sentiment - but he seems to suggest that a pure love is very hard to find. Furthermore, one cannot truly love someone else until they are completely self-aware. Unfortunately, all of his characters don't achieve that self awareness until they're dying. Maybe he's trying to say that love is both are greatest human achievement, and that is why it's also the most dangerous.