By: Maggie Kiernan, Cole Kominiarek, Sarah Lyons, Jordan Welker, Nyna Garduño, Abbigail Woodworth
King Lear is a Shakespeare play that is a tale of power, love, deception, and mental rage. It all starts when King Lear decides to divide his kingdom among his 3 daughters; Regan, Goneril, Cordelia. However, these divisions aren’t of equal amounts of land and he must decide which daughter is more worthy of the biggest plot of land. King Lear determines that he’ll divide his land by simply having the girls express their love to him, and whoever loves Lear the most gets the biggest piece of land. Regan and Goneril are first and second to express their love. Their expressions are extravagant and feel a bit scripted. However, Lear loves their expressions and hopes Cordelia’s expression will be similar to that of her sisters. Cordelia is quick to disappoint her father as she says she doesn’t need words to show how much love she has for her father. She expresses that her love for her father is more than a scripted extravagant tale. Lear is enraged by her response and expels her from the kingdom to never return. With Lear’s beloved Cordelia expelled he is left to divide the kingdom among the 2 remaining daughters; Regan and Goneril. Regan and Goneril love their newfound power and kingdoms. However, they don’t enjoy their father being around. So they each expel their father from their kingdoms, giving Lear to the outside and casting him out of his own and known society. During Lear’s time in the elements, side character Edmund the bastard child of Gloucester is up to his own scheme. There’s someone in Edmunds way; Edgar. Edmund falsifies a letter from Edgar which gets Edgar expelled. Edgar becomes unrecognizable and is referred to as Poor Tom to the community. As the storyline continues Lear’s mental state continues to deteriorate and war breaks out. Regan and Goneril start to fight over Edmund. Edmund and Edgar fight because of Edgar’s need for revenge on his brother for what he did to their father. Then in true Shakespeare fashion the ending is bloody and full of death.
In King Lear the concepts of liquidity and swapping are apparent. Liquidity can be defined in multiple ways. One definition that correlates to King Lear is liquidity in relation to how efficiently assets can be turned into cash. The more general definition is liquidity in the sense of a free-flowing substance, like water. Another concept that is important to the play is swapping, which can be defined as the exchanging of something.
Liquidity and swapping interact with King Lear. Throughout the play, swapping represents the multiple shifts in power from inferior to superior or vice versa, as well as swapping of characters, and swapping of emotions. Swapping is shown when Edmund forges a note and pretends to be Edgar, which concludes in Edgar getting expelled. Another example of swapping of characters is when Edgar swaps to poor Tom when he gets expelled. King Lear’s position of king gets swapped to nothing when he is expelled by his daughters. Swapping is also shown in the play as a swap of powers. For instance, Lear’s power is swapped into the hands of his two daughters, Reagan and Goneril. Swapping of emotions is shown by King Lear and Cordelia. Cordelia is the favorite daughter at the beginning of the play, but once she says she does not need to express her love through words, she turns into the least favorite. The swap of emotions also occurs with the daughters and King Lear. The daughters express their love for Lear to inherit his power, but once they gain his power, they kick him out. It seems as though the love they verbalized is swapped to nothing when they allow Lear to be expelled. As there are many examples of swapping in King Lear, liquid(ity) is also a key concept expressed in the play. Liquid or liquidity can have a literal or metaphorical meaning and both can be seen and expressed throughout the King Lear play. There are specific ties to the literal meaning of liquid in many scenes throughout the play. Some of these examples can be found when Cordelia cries when she receives news that she was being expelled by King Lear as well as Gloucester crying over Edgar and losing his eyesight. Another example of the literal definition of liquid in use would be the big storm in Act 3. All of these interactions seem to be tying back in the concept of physical liquid representing either a change or sadness in the storyline. The metaphorical meaning of liquid is also often referenced through examples in the play. Specifically from the beginning of the story to the end there is an ever-changing shift in the mental state and thinking of King Lear. We believe this is a representation of the concept of liquid being unpredictable and ever-changing.
Both liquidity and swapping interact with expulsion throughout King Lear. Throughout the play, swapping interacts with expulsion in many ways. The extreme situation of the swapping of powers between the daughters, Reagan and Goneril and King Lear results in the expulsion of Lear from his once owned kingdom. Lear begins the play with all of the power. As Lear divides the power between his two daughters, he is left with none. Expulsion connects to swapping as Lear gets expelled by his daughters when he no longer holds power. Lear gets expelled and left in the storm outside with no power remaining. Liquidity has a connection with expulsion throughout many instances in the play. But a major concept of the play being the division of King Lear’s kingdom between his daughters ties into liquidity. According to investopedia liquidity refers to the efficiency in which an asset can be converted into cash. This has a connection to expulsion because the division of the kingdom can be viewed as Lear’s way of getting rid of his assets and responsibilities and in turn expelling himself from the kingdom and his duties as king. Another way this connects to expulsion is one of the daughters will not be receiving the kingdom therefore being expelled.
This exercise raised many questions relating to the similarities between King Lear and the 2008 housing crisis. During the 2008 housing crisis big banks were carelessly granting loans to under qualified people, this led to a housing bubble that collapsed and ended up backfiring on both sides. Due to King Lear’s carelessness when dividing his kingdom to his daughters who were under-qualified, he ended up alone with no resources. We can relate this to the swiftness of homeowners when applying for a NINA (no income, no assets) loan. These homeowners were granted loans that they knew they would never be able to pay off inorder to delay being foreclosed upon. After reading King Lear we were able to relate these loans to the two daughters of Lear having no true love for their father, but with a simple short talk where they lied about how much they loved him, they were given half of the kingdom. This again brings up the NINA loans where people who normally wouldn’t qualify for large loans were getting them with no questions asked. As the play continued King Lear’s mental state continued to decline due to his expulsion not only from the “love” of his daughters but also his power. We can also relate his declining mental state and his distress to how residents of homes reacted when they were being foreclosed upon. When reading future texts that may seem like they have no similarities to the housing crisis, we can think of the questions raised in this exercise and use them while reading to help us spot the similarities right away. After this exercise, anytime someone in power acts a certain way we can be conscious of how his or her decisions will affect their outcomes.