Powerful Men with Short Tempers

Shakespeare seems to like setting up his characters with outrageous and fatefull stubbornness. I noticed strong parallels between King Lear and Leontes (from The Winter's Tale)

LEONTES is convinced that his faithful wife is cheating on him with his best friend. He rashly accuses her, puts her in prison, banishes their child, and nothing anyone says can sway him otherwise. He gets caught up in pride, and the idea of being decieved and played a fool, makes him so mad, that he in fact becomes the fool.

Leontes and his bewildered accused Queen Hermione

"Go, play, boy, play: thy mother plays, and I
Play too, but so disgraced a part, whose issue
Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour
Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play.
There have been,
Or I am much deceived, cuckolds ere now"

KING LEAR is suddenly convinced that his most virtuous daughter does not love him, because she was honest in the amount of love (unlike her two scheming sisters, who in fact did NOT love him as much, but could flatter). Lear disinherits her, and not even his faithful, long-serving companion could sway him otherwise.

Two mean daughters, and the nice one

"Propinquity and property of blood,
And as a stranger to my heart and me
Hold thee, from this, for ever. The barbarous Scythian,
Or he that makes his generation messes
To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom
Be as well neighbour'd, pitied, and relieved,
As thou my sometime daughter."

I'll bet we'll see a similar downfall as we did with Leontes. But maybe without as forgiving an ending...