“Lear’s kingdom is a tyranny." How far do you agree with this statement?

Lear’s kingdom could be considered to a tyranny due to his ignorance about the suffering of those at the bottom of feudal hierarchical order, such as servants and “Bedlam beggars”. His contempt for those he considers to be his lessers is evident from his treatment of Oswald, whom he calls “slave!” and “cur”. Interestingly, he spews these insults after Oswald fails to acknowledge Lear’s higher social position, humiliating him, and as a result Lear attacks his low social status, because Lear seems to equate status with worth. Arnold Kettle argues that Lear’s story “is the story of his progress from being a king to being a man”, and the text seems to support this interpretation; initially, Lear is full of hubris, defined by his role as the patriarch of his family and his country, and only when he gives away his land does he become a human and sympathetic figure. A.C. Bradley agreed, suggesting that the play should be retitled “The Redemption of King Lear”. Shakespeare’s use of verse reflects this change: at the beginning of the play, when Lear is still comfortable in his kingship, he uses blank verse, which was expected of high-status characters, however when Lear begins to lose his wits and identify with characters at the lower end of the social order, such as the Fool and Poor Tom, he begins to address them in prose. Although the purpose of this could be simply to emphasise his fall from power and to portray him as foolish (prose was often associated with comic characters), it is in prose that he has a nihilistic epiphany about the wretchedness of humanity (“Is man no more than this?”), suggesting that he finally understands the suffering of the “houseless heads” and “unfed sides”. The play was first intended to be performed on St Stephen’s Day, when people are reminded of the poor, perhaps suggesting that Shakespeare was subtly criticising King James’ rule. King James, like Lear, believed in the Divine Right of Kings, the view that kings were God’s representatives and had his permission to rule, however the increased social mobility of the early 17th Century posed a threat to this belief. Shakespeare represented this threat with his suave villain Edmund, whose machiavellian panache makes him surprisingly charming, perhaps suggesting that Shakespeare privately supported the challenge to hierarchy, as Edmund considers himself oppressed by “plague of custom”. By the denouement of the play, Lear has evidently grown aware of his ill-treatment of the poor (“I have ta’en too little care of this”), and so redeemed himself, however his initial abuse of those at the bottom of the social order and the fact that this oppression motivated Edmund’s betrayal of his family suggests that Lear’s kingdom was a tyranny.