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Quote 15 I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit that, sons at perfect age and fathers declined, the father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage the revenue. (I.ii) Meaning- With these lines Edmund insinuates to his father Gloucester that his brother Edgar has been plotting to take over Gloucester’s estates. In order to be effective, this deceit of Edmund’s must be plausible, and Shakespeare’s audience would have known that it was not uncommon for landowners’ children to want to take over their father’s lands before their fathers died. The contemporary court case of Sir Brian Annesley revolved around a daughter who claimed to believe that her father was too senile to manage his property, and the case caused a sensation, which shows that situations of this kind were the cause of a great deal of anxiety in Shakespeare’s day. King Lear is deeply concerned with the disasters which can occur when the normal processes of inheritance are disrupted.