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Comments on Act I, scene i
For an introduction to Tragedy, see my essays on Aristotle and Greek Tragedy and Tragedy after Aristotle.
King Lear begins at a moment of crisis, defined as a crucial decision which affects the course of action to follow. This plot strategy is unusual for Shakespeare's tragedies, in which the turning point of the play more often falls toward the middle: Hamlet avoids killing Claudius (a fatal error) and then murders Polonius accidentally in Act III; Julius Caesar is assassinated in Act III; Macbeth kills Duncan late in Act II.
By placing the turning point at the beginning, Shakespeare focuses on the rash judgement of Lear, whose decision to divide up the kingdom would have appeared dangerous folly to Jacobean audiences (especially those who recalled Matt. 12:25: "Every kingdom divided against itself cannot stand"). They would have found it especially disturbing that Lear apparently intended to hand over a third of England to the king of France, if he married Cordelia. Lear's intentions may be good, "that future strife may be prevented now" (I.i), but soon there is noticeable rivalry in the kingdom: "Have you heard of no likely wars toward, twixt the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany?" (II.i)
On another note, Marianne Novy comments on the pitfalls of a patriarchal society: "As king, Lear is the source of all money and property; in their dependence on him the daughter resemble wives in a patriarchal marriage who can get money only by begging it from their husbands. ... It is this power imbalance behind Lear's offer that makes deception both more likely and more impenetrable." (Love's Argument: Gender Relations in Shakespeare, 1984)
