Madness is seen as an essenential gradual developed growth throughout some characters in Skakespeare's King Lear. The characters who were most affected or who most developed mad characteristics throughout the play were King Lear, Edgar and the Fool. These three characters were consumed with an immense change of character throughout the play that ended up drastically changing their personality and ideals. In order for one to understand the real causes and effects of these gradual drastic changes one must analyze each character in depth and explore the causes and consequences that lead each of these three characters to insanity.
Of all Shakespeare's great tragic heroes, Lear is perhaps the least typical. As I have already read Macbeth and Hamlet, I can compare and distinguish Lear from them to make this assumed statement. Macbeth was a middle-aged man, tough in appearence and of noble bearing. Hamlet was a young man, we can say fine of feature, noble also in bearing, and often played as an intelectual. The difference between them two and King Lear is that Lear; when we first see him he is already an old man, his best days have probably passed. He comes on stage dressed as a king, looking the part of a royal ruler, but as soon as he speaks we discover that he is a petulant, old man. That is essential to understand why Lear goes through a almost "metamorphosis" throughout the play. Lear's old age is critical to the undergoing of his madness. Lear wears the proper king cloak, the outward features of royalty are clear, but the inward and spiritual features that make a king are absent. His petulant behavior betrays him, and soon when he engages his three daughters in the dreadful game of compliments, where Goneril and Regan swear the whole allegiance of their hearts to their father, leaving nothing for a husband, it becomes clear that Lear is losing track of his sanity. When Cordelia, the daughter closest to his heart, refuses to engage in the awful process and answers him "nothing", he banishes her.
