The theme of love, and of its' lack of strength in the real world, where violence and murder and callousness hold the keys to acquiring power, whether political or not, is very prominent in Shakespeare's play "King Lear". In fact, in the both main plot and subplot, there is the questioning of love and how much influence does it have in the world.
There are different kinds of love, and the one that permeates "King Lear" is primarily love between parents and children, the basic social bonds that differentiate men from beasts, not so much as "love" as "social empathy" in the modern society's lexicon. Consequently, when this love is rejected and discarded by Lear, and later by Gloucester, the ties of society begin to unravel, eventually culminating in war with France and later - social anarchy.
It begins in Act I, scene 1. No matter what admiration we feel towards Lear at the end of the play, at the beginning Lear shows complete absence of love in his own character, though he demands it from his daughters. However, what he actually demands is hollow flattery: Lear is unable to recognize when people feel real feelings for him, and he reacts with irritation, effectively exiling both Kent and Cordelia because they both loved him, yet not in the manner, he wanted them to.
Cordelia: Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave / My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty / According to my bond; no more nor less. (King Lear, I.1. 94-96)
Kent: Royal Lear, / Whom I have ever honor'd as my king, / Lov'd as my father, as my master follow'd, / As my great patron thought on in my prayers-- (I.1. 145-148)
At this beginning of the play, love has no power, because those who are in power, starting with Lear, have no real love for anybody who has - like Cordelia and Kent. Accordingly, Goneril and Regan treat Lear just to what he had earned - no love for him from no on, not until Cordelia returns from France at any rate. Lear, for his part, is also dimly aware of this karmic retribution - "O Lear, Lear, Lear! / Beat at this gate that let thy folly in [Striking at his head.] / And thy dear judgment out!" (I.4. 253-255) Lear belatedly tells himself, after it becomes clear that his elder daughters are not as how they seemed to him in the beginning. Rather, they appear to be just like Lear himself originally was. Initially egotistic and self-centered, as the tables have turned on him, Lear has finally begun understand what it means to be loved for real. Goneril and Regan show their lack of filial love, and eventually exile him, just as he exiled Cordelia and Kent, while Lear's initial actions apparently rendered Cordelia's love powerless to help him out of his predicament.
In the subplot, Gloucester repeats Lear's journey. Just like Lear, Gloucester's initial attitude is not all that loving either: Edmond is an illegitimate son, "whoreson" (I.1. 23) as Gloucester introduces him to Kent in public, after making some callous remarks about Edmond's mother. Undoubtedly, Gloucester has had a hand in the fact that Edmond is so detached from both him and Edgar; not unlike Goneril and Regan, Edmond may even elicit a bit of sympathy for his position in the start of the play. Of course, this changes when Gloucester's eyes are ripped-out and he is sent out to "smell his way to Dover", (III.4. 107-108) where the army of Cordelia is ready to avenge Lear's hurts.
Just like Lear's, Gloucester's situation is horrific, yet it is nothing more that what he had brought upon himself: just as he has turned first on his loving son Edgar, and now his unloving son Edmond has turned on him - on a certain level, Gloucester does deserve to be punished. On another level, though, Gloucester's fate reveals the greater evil - social empathy, the "love" of the play is quickly vanishing: not only family members are turning on each other, but everyone is turning on everyone else.
At the end of Act III, it appears as if love has completely lost any power to influence the characters of the play. All that Gloucester has talked about in Act I have happened:
Gloucester: These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects: love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked 'twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there's son against father: the king falls from bias of nature; there's father against child. (I.2. 105-113)
The bonds of family love - and a family is the basic unit of any human society - broke apart due to egotism of Lear, Gloucester, and other people in charge. Unthinkingly, they rendered love powerless and now this is coming home to haunt them: Lear's exile is only partially worse than what he did to Kent and Cordelia, and so is Gloucester's fate.
However, the callous way that Cornwall and Regan had turned on Gloucester, demonstrates how social empathy, the "love" of the play is quickly vanishing: not only family members are turning on each other, but also everyone is turning on everyone else.
In Act III of the play, Shakespeare shows that without love exerting its' power in the society even as just an abstract concept, there is no social empathy or bonds at all, and without social empathy - the "love" of the play - Lear's ex-kingdom is on a brink of a civil war, as there is no society as such anymore. Maintaining a society is the role of love/social empathy, but does it have the power to back itself up, or is love unable to make the situation better after all?
Act IV indicates the shift of atmosphere in the play. Cordelia and her army have arrived to avenge Lear's hurts, and Kent, due to his compassionate loyalty to Lear, has rescued the King from the wilderness, to which Lear has initially exiled Kent and Cordelia in Act I. In Gloucester's case, he too is rescued by his son Edgar, who too breaks this atmosphere of callousness by rescuing his father from death several times, from Oswald and from Gloucester's own suicide tendencies. Cordelia and Edgar seek to restore the family unit, to restore social empathy in England. Yet considering that Lear is still mad, and Gloucester never fully recovers from his abuse by Edmond, Regan, and Cornwall indicate that it is not easy even for the most loving person: love does have power, Shakespeare insists. However, it is strength of human character, of a person's humanity - a personal strength, so to speak, the strength of human spirit and heart. However, this strength has nothing to do with what passes for physical, let alone militaristic power in the world: Cordelia's army is defeated, and she and Lear are captured.
It is here that the play shifts one last time, and this time, hope is gone, as both Lear and Cordelia perish in the end. The feelings of Lear and Cordelia are no match for the Captain's practical attitude: "I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dry oats; / If it be a man's work, I'll do't." (V.3. 42-43) Lear kills the assassin, just too late to save Cordelia: the power of love is not violence; when loving people turn to violence, they just become like everyone else, and their capability love dies, as Cordelia did.
It is the same thing in the subplot regarding Edgar and Gloucester. Though Edgar does defeat his half-brother and restores his rightful place in the society, this has no affect on Gloucester, as he had died earlier - albeit from happiness. Yet, Edgar wanted not only his place in the society, but his father's recognition of him - and the latter has been too brief. The death of Gloucester, like deaths of Cordelia and Lear, shows that love is not weak but fragile, almost too fragile for this violent and callous world, and can die too easily - whereas restoring it back is much harder.
"King Lear" ends on a negative note, as everyone except for Albany, Edgar, and Kent is dead. Kent seems to be dying as well - "I have a journey, sir, shortly to go: / My master calls me,--I must not say no." (V.3. 368-369) Death is the ultimate end: it ends everything, including love.
In "King Lear", the power of love is ambiguous - on one hand, it can change a person's character, but on the other, it always seems to come a moment too late in the play. Why? Because when it comes to brute strength, love is weak. It does not have direct power; rather, it has subtle influence, and while without it humans turn into monsters very quickly, with it, humans recover from their monstrous state much more slowly. That is why Shakespeare concludes "King Lear" on a pessimistic note: love is not powerful, it is weak and is lost easily but found after much struggle, especially in a world where brute force is holding sway. However, find and hold onto it we must, lest we lose all of it.
Bibliography:
Black, Joseph, et al., eds. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century. King Lear. 1st ed. 6 vols. Petersborough: Broadview Press, 2002.