Lear's Story in brief:
Feeling he is becoming of old, aging King Lear desires to step down from his throne and divide his kingdom among his three daughters. He decides to give each of his daughters a share of the land in accordance with her amount of love for him. While Goneril and Regan flatter their father, the youngest, Cordelia, tells him she loves him the love every daughter has for a father. Cordelia's words so infuriate Lear that he disowns her and deprives her of her share in the inheritance. He then divides the kingdom between the other two and discharges his loyal counselor, who advises him not to haste in judgment. Living at his daughters' estates, King Lear gets insulted and humiliated by the first daughter, then the second. Becoming a helpless, desolate old man, Lear roams in the wilderness. Meanwhile, Cordelia, who gets married to the King of France, launches war against her two sisters to retrieve her father's usurped power. The war ends with the death of the two ungrateful daughters, while Lear is holding the breathless body of his Cordelia in his arms at a moment of bitter realization of the immensity of the tragedy caused by his arrogance and foolishness.


(Translated by Buthaina Bishara)