I'm reading King Lear in Shakespeare. It's pretty awesome, let's just be honest. There's a character named Fool (that's always a plus), two heinous evil sisters, violent blindings, and imaginary suicides. The main action of the play all exists around the semi-idiotic title character holding a contest to see which of his daughters love him the most. The two evil ones obviously flatter him with lies while the youngest, the lovely Cordelia, says she loves him a normal and appropriate amount, with some love left over for her future husband and sissies. So her dad's all embarrassed and cuts her off and sends her to France. This is clearly a poor choice. The other sisters, who now inherit everything, turn their father out and later some people go blind and get put in the stocks and wander around in the rain and in the end pretty much everyone dies.
Here's the weird thing: when my sister and I were little, my dad used to make us read this play aloud with him. Having more understanding of this now than when I was 8, that was a pretty weird father-daughter activity. First of all, it's really violent. Secondly, it's freaking Shakespeare--what kind of 6 and 8 years olds understand that stuff? Third, I think my dad might have been really worried that we might grow up and try to kill him to get at our inheritance. He used to ask us, "Which of Lear's daughters are you?" "Cordelia!" we'd cry in unison, and then we'd go off to do other father-daughter activities like roll in poison ivy accidentally and watch videos of plastic surgery (breast implant operations are not the best to view before eating lasanga).
