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  • Essay / A comparison of love in Othello and King Lear - 1513

    What is love? Love is the pinnacle of all emotions, it is the epicenter of life, what is the point of living if there is no love, ironically love is the cause of many falls . William Shakespeare single-handedly captured and embraced this necessary feeling and allowed us to visualize it through the characters of his two masterpieces, Othello and King Lear. Three different types of love explored in both Othello and King Lear, sharing both similarities and differences: love for a loved one, love a father has for his children, and love that a daughter brings to her father. By examining the outcomes of these loves, one can gain insight into the negative and positive effects of love, and how different traits of the loves play into the outcomes of the fates of Shakespeare's characters. Through the analysis of love in these two plays, you will become a more knowledgeable student of literature. The first love you might want to explore in Othello and King Lear is the love one can have for a loved one. This type of love is prevalent in Othello between Othello and Desdemona, and can be compared to King Lear through Goneril and Regan with their husbands and with Edmund in the mix. Desdemona's love for Othello is made very clear from the beginning when she fights for him against his father. This is seen when his father was so upset that he filed a complaint against Othello in an attempt to revoke their vows. She gives the reasons why her explanation of why she loves Othello defines her essential character as a woman loyal and faithful to him, and not simply to an image of him gleaned from a story he told (B. Long) . Later in the play, Desdemona's loves continue to shine until the very end, when Othello has become so enraged that he is on the verge of suicide, she begs her to continue to restore her love for him. According to critic B. Long, she is not only a scapegoat to save her life, but she actually loves him in a very genuine way; it may be difficult to find a text to prove the opposite. If Desdemona's love for Othello was a servile love, generated by the vision of his facade in her mind and fueled by her joy at his honors and heroic roles, Othello's love for Desdemona is rather different..