King Lear

King Lear Siro: I am your servant, and servants ought never to ask their masters about anything, nor to look into any of their affairs, but when they are told about them by them themselves, they ought to serve them faithfully, so I have done and so I shall do. Siro asserts in Mandragola that the main duty of a loyal servant- and indeed, of others who serve, such as vassal, spouse and child who owe loyalty to masters- is to obey.

Some servants and others in Mandragola, Decameron, and King Lear, seem to agree. But some- such as, the Earl of Kent in King Lear-do not, expressing their loyalty instead of disobeying their masters (i.e. The King), and engaging in trickery. Examine why the Earl of Kent reject's Siro's point-of-view and decides that the best way to remain loyal- loyal to King Lear, in the first case, to the Duke of Gloucester, in the second- is to disobey and engage in trickery.

What do disobedience and trickery achieve? Do they produce better results than the obediant behavior of servants in either Decameron 7.8 or 8.4? Both of the women servants in the Decameron experienced better results than the characters in King Lear, since most of the latter ended up dead by the end of the play. No one died in the two Boccaccio stories, which were intended to be humorous, although one of the servant women received a very bad beating.

Unlike these servants, who were members of the lower classes and quite literally nameless nobodies, the Earl of Kent was an aristocrat who has always served King Lear totally and without reservations. He was definitely not a hired man, but bound be feudal oaths of loyalty to his sovereign. Kent did trick the mad king into believing he is simply a servant named Caius, but with the noblest of intentions and he received no rewards or incentives like the housemaids in Boccaccio's stories.

When the king banished him from the palace and sent him into exile, Kent owed no more allegiance to him at all since their bonds were formally broken, yet him stayed with him until the end of the play and died almost immediately after him. Kent is literally loyal to the death, displaying far more virtue and friendship than the king. Edgar, the Earl of Gloucester's son, shows the same level of love and loyalty, even though his father has unjustly exiled him.

Gloucester also realizes too late that his other son Edmund was really his enemy, involved in the plot against Lear and also in removing Edgar as a competitor. Like the Earl of Kent, Edgar is able to return love for hatred and devotion for contempt, and both prove to be far better characters than the men they served so faithfully. Although Kent and all the members of Lear's family end up dead, Edgar receives his reward by becoming king of England.

At the start of King Lear, the Earl of Kent objects to the exile of Cordelia to France, and is immediately exiled as well for daring to question the king's will. From start to finish, however, he is a man of the highest honor and integrity, and speaks out openly against the injustice done to the youngest (and best) of the three daughters. He says in Act 2 that he had always honored and served the king, who he "loved as my father, as my master followed" (Lear, 1998, p. 8).

So dog-like is his devotion that he even described himself as "a pawn to wage against thine enemies," which is to say a common foot soldier rather than a nobleman (Lear, p. 9). So is Edgar, the son of Gloucester, even after plots by his brother Edward and a forged letter implicated him unjustly in a conspiracy.

After his father is blinded and left to wander the countryside, disguises himself as a homeless madman and continues to serve him, just as Kent takes the name of Caius to serve the wandering and demented Lear. He later cuts down Goneril's servant Oswald, who was sent to murder his father, and later kills Edmund in a duel. Only at the end does Gloucester recognize his son, just as Lear realizes that Caius is really Kent.

Neither man deserved even remotely this amount of loyalty from people they had treated so miserably, but nevertheless Edgar of his blind father, "he led him, begged for him, saved him from despair" (Lear, p. 140). Kent also lived to see all of Lear's enemies defeated and killed, but in the end all he wished was that the old king mot have to suffer any more and that "upon the rack of this tough world stretch him no linger" (Lear, p. 145).

Given all the misfortunes they had experienced and the injustices they had committed, the deaths of Gloucester and Lear and the end of the play were actually quite merciful, although each was permitted to learn the truth before they died. Neither of the servants in the Decameron was of nearly the same social status as the kings and upper nobility of King Lear, although both also served in households of the merchant and gentry classes.

They do not have ties of blood, friendship or feudal vassalage to their masters but simply work for wages, and in both cases they receive some reward for helping the ladies of the house out of very difficult situations. In Decameron 7.8 the widow of Fiesole conspires with her maid and two brothers to embarrass the parish priest who is determined to have an affair with her. He is quite an elderly man even though he acts like a juvenile, and she only feels revulsion towards him.

Her maid Ciutazza (the Troll) is also elderly, ugly and name, but in return for a new gown she agrees to sleep with the man, while the widow and her brothers arranged for the bishop to catch them in the act. At one point, the Troll professes some devotion to her mistress, saying "to oblige you, madam, I will sleep with half-a-dozen," and at the end of the story, the priest is caught and forced to do penance (Boccaccio, 1920, p. 393).

Unlike King Lear, no one dies in this story, although by customary rights the two brothers of the widow did have the right to kill any man who made improper sexual advances toward their sister, but since he was a priest they refrained from doing so. In story 8.4 Sismonda, the aristocratic wife of a merchant, really is guilty of adultery with a young gentleman named Ruberto, and her husband is determined to catch them and then send her home to her brothers for punishment.

One night, he did find Ruberto in the house and.