# King Lear — Character guide

> Key figures in King Lear by William Shakespeare.

- [King Lear](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/king_lear.md): Lear commands Britain and its court, a king whose word has always been law and whose temper has never been tested. When he divides the kingdom by asking his daughters to quantify their love, he reveals the flaw that will
- [Edmund](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/edmund.md): Edmund moves through the court as a gentleman's natural son, charming, capable, and permanently outside the inheritance he believes he deserves. His grievance hardens into a philosophy: that nature, not custom, licenses 
- [Edgar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/edgar.md): Edgar begins as the trusting legitimate son, heir to Gloucester's title and estate, and loses everything to Edmund's forged evidence in a single afternoon. Disguised as a mad Bedlam beggar, he keeps his father alive thro
- [Goneril](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/goneril.md): Goneril rules the northern half of Britain beside Albany and quickly tires of hosting Lear and his hundred knights, seeing in his retinue a threat to her authority rather than a father's comfort. Her contempt for his dem
- [Regan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/regan.md): Regan shares the kingdom with Goneril and Cornwall, and her hospitality proves even narrower than her sister's, whittling Lear's retinue from a hundred to none. She is cool, calculating, and quick to align herself with w
- [Cordelia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/cordelia.md): Cordelia stands before the court as the daughter Lear loved most, expected to outdo her sisters in declarations of devotion. Instead she offers only what she owes, love according to her bond, and is cast off in a fury th
- [Kent](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/kent.md): Kent belongs to the old order of sworn service: he speaks truth to power even when it costs him his lands and his name. Banished for defending Cordelia, he reinvents himself as the rough-spoken servant Caius and follows 
- [Gloucester](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/gloucester.md): Gloucester is a great lord caught between two sons: the legitimate Edgar he barely knows and the bastard Edmund he foolishly trusts. His weakness for flattery and his habit of joking about Edmund's birth give treachery i
- [Albany](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/albany.md): Albany occupies an awkward position: he is married to Goneril yet increasingly appalled by what she and her sister are willing to do. Early on he seems passive, almost irrelevant, but his revulsion at their treatment of 
- [Fool](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/fool.md): The Fool is the only person permitted to mock Lear to his face, and he uses that license relentlessly, calling the king a fool for giving away his power. His banter about eggshells, snails, and daughters who devour fathe
- [Oswald](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/oswald.md): Oswald is the face of Goneril's household: he carries her letters, enforces her slights against Lear, and treats the king's retainers with sneering contempt. His pride is entirely secondhand, drawn from the mistress he f
- [Cornwall](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/cornwall.md): Cornwall is the muscle behind Regan's ambition, a man who puts Kent in the stocks and later commits the play's most horrifying act without hesitation. He shares his wife's appetite for power but lacks even her thin venee
- [Curan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/curan.md): A courtier who informs Edmund of impending conflict between Albany and Cornwall.
- [Doctor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/doctor.md): Physician who attends to the mad King Lear and advises Cordelia.
- [Servants](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters/servants.md): Attendants who witness and react to the blinding of Gloucester.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/king_lear_se/characters