In William Shakespeare's play "King Lear", several problems answer questions about our duty to our fathers and our kings, as well as there are every circumstance where we should disobey them in order to do our duty to them. Our duty to our fathers and our kings is not only to love and obey them, to show them respect and honor them, but it is also to humble them, to keep them honest when necessary, to keep them safe and protect them. You cannot have the praise without the discipline of being a good father or a good king. Being praised and adored as many kings and sometimes fathers are by their children, can engender a sense of entitlement that can harm their character. King Lear was so used to his praise that it was the only thing he lived for, he needed it to survive, his treatment as a king was his Achilles heel in this play. He wanted to step down as king and divide his kingdom into 3 sections, handing them over to his daughters to rule. Goneril and Regan were more than willing to comply with his request to demonstrate their love for their father and king by professing their love for him in a dramatic manner combined with a healthy dose of exaggeration. While Cordelia, for her part, struggled to profess what she thought was known to her father and king, she declares: "Unhappy with what I am, I cannot lift / My heart in my mouth." I love your majesty / According to my bond; neither more nor less (scene 1.1, lines 91-93). Cordeila chooses to speak honestly from her heart instead of stroking the king's ego with flattery like Goneril and Regan. She says she loves him “according to my bond,” meaning she understands and accepts her duty to love him as a father and a king. Cordelia... middle of paper... concerned about the honesty of humanity. There are several moments throughout the play where the characters give their views on the subject. “As flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport” (Scene 4.1, lines 37-38). Gloucester makes this statement when he believes that social and moral goodness do not affect things like justice. While his son Edgar believes the opposite, "the gods are just" (scene 5.3, line 170), insinuating that those who do evil will eventually get what they deserve and that justice will prevail. Ultimately, we find that even if morally unjust people die, morally righteous people will die alongside them. It's hard to say which side of the moral scale emerges victorious at the end of this play, but there is no doubt that the deceptions served to these two fathers were the beginning of the end for each of their families..