The Wars Of The Roses Analysis

The birthplace of modern western democracy endured decades upon decades of civil war, but this same civil war that savaged Britain for so long also spurred the growth of democracy. The Wars of the Roses helped shape the future of Britain and the wider the world, and it also helped form the basis for William Shakespeare’s King Lear. Shakespeare lived in a time in British history only a century after the conclusion of this brutal conflict, and it had a powerful impact on his writing. Conflict over the line of succession is the main conflict in both King Lear and in the Wars of the Roses, and Shakespeare manipulates this struggle to convey his message that absolute power in the hands of a few can be disastrous. This allusion to this major historical …show more content…
However his own vanity blinds him from realizing that two of his three daughters, Goneril and Regan, are innately evil and will do anything to seize his power. This is very similar to the intrigue that caused the Wars of the Roses, with the Henry VI slowly losing his sanity. In both instances the vacuum of power left by the two king’s relinquishment of complete authority led to conflict. In the case of King Lear, the way Goneril and Regan treat their aging father causes Cordelia to return to Britain with a French army. While in the Wars of the Roses two powerful houses competed for the throne: the House of Lancaster and the House of York. The two houses would engage in conflict so draining that Britain lost its remaining territories on the continent and that foreign trade nearly ground to a halt. Civil war breads destruction and death, feelings conveyed when the blinded Gloucester says “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport” (Shakespeare 110). The cruelty and loss of humanity that accompanies any type of civil war is what Shakespeare feared the most. As a man of literature and the arts, Shakespeare could not imagine bloodshed being brought to his very front