King Lear (version 2)

An aging king, desperate to escape the burdens of power, makes a fatal error: he asks his three daughters to declare their love for him publicly. The two eldest shower him with extravagant flattery and receive vast kingdoms. Cordelia, his youngest and most devoted, refuses to perform such false devotion. Lear, furious, disowns her and banishes her to nothing. He soon discovers the terrible cost of his blindness. His treacherous daughters strip him of his dignity, his sanity, and his very sense of self. Left wandering a savage storm, the former king confronts the naked truth of what he has done. What follows is one of the most devastating explorations of human cruelty and redemption in Western literature. Shakespeare strips away the illusions of power to reveal something raw and unflinching about love, betrayal, and the fragility of the human condition.