the time of Edward the Confessor, it was believed that a king's touch could cure the disease of scrofula.

The humanity of kings

Shakespeare explored tensions between the private lives and public roles of his powerful characters in many of his plays. Because a king was powerful in so many ways, the contrast between the public pomp and ceremony and the private man beneath the finery was bound to be highly dramatic.

In King Lear Shakespeare reveals the depth of suffering to which Lear's common humanity renders him susceptible. When he strips off his robes he reveals himself to be a man just like any member of the audience. In one scene he appears to be indistinguishable from a naked beggar.

In King Lear Shakespeare shows that kings are at their mostvulnerable and human when they are beset by a combination of family and political problems. When Lear gives away his kingdom to Goneril and Regan, he exposes his humanity to their cruelty and is not protected by his kingly status and all the private and public power which that had bestowed upon him.

What makes a good ruler?

The question of what makes a good ruler is debated through many of Shakespeare’s plays. In Act IV of Macbeth, Malcolm lists the virtues that suit a king as:

King Lear is a ruler who has commanded respect and loyalty in the past (from Kent and Gloucester for example) yet whose faculties are declining with ‘the infirmity of his age’ – in the first act of the play he is seen to be