Goneril

Goneril is a character in Shakespeare's tragic play King Lear (1605). She is the eldest of King Lear's three daughters. Along with her sister Regan, Goneril is considered a villain, obsessed with power and overthrowing her elderly father as ruler of the kingdom of Britain. Her aggressiveness is a rare trait for a female character in Elizabethan literature.

Shakespeare based the character on Gonorilla, a personage described by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical chronicle Historia regum Britanniae ("History of the Kings of Britain", c. 1138) as the eldest of the British king Lear's three daughters, alongside Regan and Cordeilla (the source for Cordelia), and the mother of Marganus.

Analysis

The earliest example of her deceitful tendencies occurs in the first act. Without a male heir, Lear is prepared to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, as long as they express their true love to him. Knowing her response will get her closer to the throne, Goneril professes, "Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter" (1.1. 53). She has no reservations about lying to her father.