The Love Tests In King Lear and Macbeth

This essay forms Chapters 3 and 4 of my ebook: A Christian Pattern In Shakespeare’s Tragedies: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, and Othello, available at Lulu. Lastly and most importantly, the action of both plays is structured around a pair of love tests: one at or near the beginning of each play, and the other at or near its end. In both plays the first love test illuminates the personality of the female deuteragonist and the quality of her love for the male protagonist; in both the second love test illuminates the character of the male protagonist, the quality of his love for the female deuteragonist, and the nature of her effect on him. In both the second love test consists of the male protagonist’s reaction to the death of the female deuteragonist. In both the results of the love tests are mutually illuminating: they help to explain each other and much else in these plays.