William Shakespeare’s plays often provided a great deal of insight into the psychology of his characters and King Lear is no exception. As King Lear prepares for his retirement, he thinks to set things up for a comfortable and easy journey through time to the end of his life. He does this by allocating his land and property to his three daughters to the degree to which they are able to convince him that they love him. While his two older daughters easily play the game, vowing their undying devotion to his every comfort, his youngest daughter refuses to play the game, insisting that he should know by now the depth of her affections. Because of the choices he makes at this point in his life, Lear is forced to endure a much longer spiritual and physical journey through to the door of death. As he travels from being ruler of his land to destitute madman to retired and dying king, Lear experiences a much longer spiritual and mental journey than he anticipated while still managing to maintain his nobility in the end. As he undergoes this process, he proves himself to be a tragic hero. Basically, there are six major elements required to make up a tragic hero. To begin with, heroes must have a noble stature, although they don’t necessarily have to be royalty. They are also seen to have excessive pride or what some might politely call a lot of self-confidence. Finally, they all have to have a tragic flaw, usually something related to their source of pride. These three character traits combined lead the character to his or her downfall through a three-step process. The process begins with the first event, the mistake in judgment or action that will eventually cause his ruin. The second event is when the hero realizes finally where he made his mistake. The final event is the reversal of fortunes the hero experiences as a result of his mistake, experiencing the consequences of his mistake, which was usually a surprise to the audience but a perfectly logical set of consequences as they occurred. As the play opens, King Lear is depicted as a strong king gone weak with age. He is tired of the burdens of ruling a country and makes plans to divide his kingdom among his three daughters and then to live out his last years in peace and comfort, being provided for by those daughters he so lovingly set up to be rulers in their own right: “’tis our fast intent / To shake all cares and business from our age, / Conferring them on younger strengths while we / Unburdened crawl toward death” (I, i, 38-41). His royal nobility is evidenced in his societal position as well as in the great respect his subjects show him. The fact that his kingdom is large enough to divide with honor between three daughters also suggests he holds a very powerful position in the world and his ability to produce a succeeding generation is also demonstrated through his three daughters. There is nobility as well in his plan to divide his kingdom among his three daughters rather than giving it to one only or handing it off to the nearest male relative as was the custom throughout much of England at the time Shakespeare wrote his play. However, even in this element of the play, Lear shows a slight weakness in his nobility as he has been unable to prod