One of the primary sources of conflict in literature is the clash of values and ideology between the old and new, the traditional and modern. In Shakespeare’s plays there is conflict between generations and ideologies; class conflict; racial conflict; and at the heart of it all, the conflict between light and darkness. Many of these are layered in what is perhaps his greatest tragedy King Lear. Moving beyond the personal, Shakespeare offers the more universal generational conflict. But it goes deeper — King Lear is a Renaissance play when the old world had become dated and defunct and a new