In the play King Lear, by William Shakespeare, the idea of imprisonment is a fundamental to the plot and central ideas. All characters are imprisoned, whether it is physically, socially or psychologically. Through their society and its’, as well as their own faults each character suffers ‘imprisonment’ in some form. King Lear is one of the more caged characters of the play, he suffers both social and psychological incarceration and this is one the chief reasons for his descent into mental hell and inevitable downfall. Lear is imprisoned by the role he must play in society and by his own internal shackles. The