Chapter Nine - Macbeth, King Lear, and the Bleakness of Power

CHAPTER NINE

Macbeth, King Lear, and the Bleakness of Power

THIS IS WHERE the joy drains out.

There’s no mistaken identity here. No witty banter. No lovers reunited or villains outwitted or cosmic redemption wrapped in a neat rhyming couplet.

This is the Shakespeare that stares into the void and doesn’t blink.
This is the long cold stare of power — what it costs, what it breaks, what it becomes once the crown goes on and the soul goes out.

Welcome to Macbeth and King Lear.
Two plays.
Two kings.
Zero happy endings.

In Macbeth, we meet a man who should be the hero.

He’s brave. Decorated. Loyal to his king. If the story stopped there, he’d get a statue.

But then the witches appear.

They don’t tell him to do anything. They just name what he might become: Thane of Cawdor. King of Scotland.

It’s enough.

He starts to rot before our eyes. Lady Macbeth doesn’t have to push hard. The murder happens fast. But what unfolds after — the unraveling — is the real play.

Paranoia. Hallucinations. Blood that won’t wash off.
A crown that never fits right.
A man who thought power would fill something, and instead finds himself empty and hunted by ghosts of his own making.

By the end, he’s a shell. He gives the most haunting speech in Shakespeare’s entire catalogue — not about kingship, but about meaninglessness.

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…”

No purpose. No justice. No arc. Just the thud of time passing, dragging us toward death.

Then there’s Lear — an old king who decides to divide his kingdom among his daughters, hoping to retire and be worshipped from a distance.

It goes badly.

He gives power to the wrong daughters, keeps none for himself, and discovers too late that loyalty isn’t a performance. As the kingdom fractures, so does his mind. He wanders the moors half-naked, raving at storms, grieving for a daughter he once cursed.

There’s no villain pulling strings. No divine hand to stop the descent. Just a once-powerful man being crushed by the consequences of his own choices.

And here’s the thing: it’s not a warning. It’s a diagnosis.

Shakespeare isn’t saying, “Don’t be like Macbeth,” or “Don’t end up like Lear.”
He’s saying: This is what power does to people. This is the rot. This is the deal. Take the crown, and you don’t just inherit land — you inherit fear, projection, madness, betrayal.

And still… everyone wants it.

These plays don’t let you breathe.
They don’t let you pretend.

When the heroes fall, there’s no sudden burst of clarity, no catharsis. Macbeth dies in combat. Lear cradles his dead daughter and screams until he dies too.

They see the truth only at the very end — when it’s too late to do anything but suffer it.

That’s not tragedy for drama’s sake.

That’s honesty.

That’s Shakespeare showing us that sometimes the greatest horror isn’t losing power — it’s realizing it never made you real in the first place.