A Thanksgiving Lesson from King Lear

Gratitude is a noble virtue; you have to respect yourself to be grateful to others. Only those who feel blessed can be filled with gratitude. It is a kind of courtesy of the heart.

William Shakespeare's most agonized play, King Lear, grapples with the ingratitude of Lear's daughters toward their royal father. It is an extended contemplation of the Elizabethan virtues of thankfulness and loyalty; and what happens when those virtues are lost. King Lear is betrayed by the older two daughters, who flatter his vanity, while misunderstanding the honest love of his youngest daughter Claudia. Lear is an object lesson in the debts we owe our loved ones.

The duty to "honor one's father and mother" was taken for granted for most of written history. It precedes the prohibition against murder, theft and adultery in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20: 2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21).

As Shakespeare's aged King Lear is forced to wander over the stormy heath with only his trusted Fool for company, he cries out,

... filial ingratitude!

Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand

For lifting food to it? ...

Ingratitude is a revolt in the body of the family, as if the mouth bites the hand that feeds it.

No, I will weep no more. In such a night

To shut me out! Pour on! I will endure.

In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!

Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,-

O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;

No more of that.

Act 3, sc. 4, l. 11-4.

I don't want to take for granite my familial ties. I'm especially thankful for all that my mother and father have done for me the past 36+ years and continue to do!