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King Lear, a la Shmoop. You may be young, but we're sure you've already

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experienced the pain of heartbreak.

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Like when your pet goldfish "Swimmy" died.

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The agony of loss, no matter the specifics, can be almost unbearable.

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You might feel like you're going to die.

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But... can you imagine actually, physically dying?

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Did Swimmy really mean that much to you? In Shakespeare's play, the title character,

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King Lear, dies at the end...

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...simply because his heart had a boo-boo. Considering how cold, callous and calculating

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he had been the entire rest of the play...

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...is this too hard a sell?

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Can Lear possibly have died from a broken heart? Assuming he even had one?

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The final straw for Lear is seeing his daughter, Cordelia (cor-dee-lee-uh), dead in his arms.

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But closer to the beginning of the story, he had disowned her and refused to give her

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a dowry...

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...because he had mistakenly interpreted her actions as an expression of disdain toward

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him.

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So... seems like his love came with some conditions.

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If he could so quickly and heartlessly cut her out of his life like that...

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...could their bond really have been so strong that his ticker would stop ticking when hers

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did? Then there's the question of whether Lear

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was even capable of love at all.

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The guy was kind of a monster. No offense to Godzilla.

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He pitted his daughters against each other...

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...disowned one of them...

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...and banished his right-hand man, Kent, for no good reason.

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If a guy like that had a broken heart, would he even feel it?

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Depends on whether or not you believe people can fundamentally change.

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Much of this play is about the transformation that takes place in Lear's head and heart.

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He gradually comes to regret wronging those who cared about him most...

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...and starts to see people in a different light than ever before... like when he takes

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pity on Poor Tom, the beggar.

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So while Lear wasn't in the running for any humanitarian awards early in the play...

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...did he soften up enough toward the end to make the "death by sadness" storyline plausible?

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So why did King Lear die?

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Was his 180 with Cordelia too radical a swing?

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Was he a heartless monster?

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Or was he a monster... who grew a heart? Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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