Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt son and father.
– William Shakespeare
King Lear, Act 1, Scene 2. After Edmund’s shock revelation of Edgar’s plot to kill his father – completely false, as Edmund is the betrayer – Gloucester is in a dark mood. In this passage he expresses his dark nihilistic vision of a dysfunctional world of complete social breakdown: love gone cold, friendships broken, brothers at odds, riots in the cities, civil wars, kings betrayed, and the bond between fathers and sons broken.