The beginning of a work often sets the tone for the rest of the entire endeavor. In drama especially, the first scene of a play generally sets up the basic themes and situations that the remainder will work with. In king lear's very first scene, we see many of the play's fundamental themes and images presented. The recurrent imagery of human senses and of "nothing", the distortion of familial and social ties, the gradual dissolution of lear's kingship, all make their first appearances in the first line of shakespeare's tragedy.

Much of the imagery in king lears first scene presages what is to come in the play. Often characters refer to senses, particularly sight, whether as a comment on the neccesity of sensing consequences before acting (as Lear does not), or as yet another of shakespeares comments on "seeming" (see Hamlet).the destruction of Gloucesters eyes and his subsequent musings,

(I stumbled when I saw,(v.i.19)) are a more graphical presentation of this key theme which originally appears in lears first scene. Goneril declares lear is "dearer than eyesight"(I.i.56) to her (however Goneril is the one who later suggests putting Gloucesters

Shakespeare borrowed from a very convenient contemporary true story of a gentleman pensioner of Queen Elizabeth, Sir Brian Annesley, whose daughters tried to get him declared insane in late 1603 so that they could legally take control of his estate.The youngest daughter, named Cordell, intervened on his behalf.

have my sisters husbands, if they say/ they love you all " (I.i.99-100). Lear's response to Cordelia's inability to flatter him as her sisters have done is to "disclaim all my paternal care,/propinquity and property of blood,/ and as a stranger to my heart and me/ hold thee from this forever" (I.i.113-116). The angry king uses in his renunciation the image of "he that makes his eneration messes to gorge his appetite" (I.i.117-118)- the reverse, ironically, of what happens to Lear later on in the play: he does not devour his children so much as they do to him.

Lear's dialogue with Cordelia on "nothing" introduces yet another theme in the plays imagery, echoing, among other scenes, some of his later conversations with the Fool ("can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?" (I.iv.130)) and others. Indeed, King Lear is, in many ways about "nothing". Regan and Goneril seem to offer much in the beginning, but after whittling down the number of Lear's knights, they leave him with nothing, and in the end their "natural" affection comes down to nothing as well. Lear is progressively brought to nothing, stripped of everything- kingdom, knights, dignity, sanity, clothes, his last loving daughter, and finally life itself.

Within King Lear the two tragic characters, a king and an earl, are not ordinary men. To have a man who is conspicuous endure suffering brought about because of his own error is striking. The fear aroused for this man is of great importance because of his exalted position. His fall is awesome and overwhelming. When tragedy, as in Lear, happens to two such men, the effect is even greater. To intensify the tragedy of King Lear, Shakespeare has not one but two tragic characters and four villains. As we have seen, the sub-plot - concerning Gloucester, Edmund, and Edgar - augments the main plot. Gloucester undergoes physical and mental torment because he makes the same mistake that Lear does. These two tragic stories unfolding at the same time give the play a great eminence.

In it's imagery and it's portrayals of the beginnings of social chaos and the dissolution of Lear's kingship, King Lear's first scene foreshadows the more ample treatments the rest of the play will bring. As Lear realises in horror what he has done, the Fool continually harks back to the insane partition of the kingdom that took place at the very beginning of the tradgedy, and Lear , persued by both fool and conscience, decends to the depths of madness with Edgar/Poor Tom. Lear partially returns to sanity through gentle ministrations of Cordelia and her physician, only to be utterly undone by Edmund's machinations. All Lear's grief seems to be caused by mistakes in t

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