ABSTRACT
The map of the kingdom is redrawn more than once in Shakespeare's King Lear, the first time when the three parcels of real estate the king carves up at the start of the play are digested by the halves Lear angrily places in Goneril's and Regan's hands after Cordelia refuses her share in the project. Shakespeare also uses the shape of the triangle to play with the dual roles of Lear's three daughters as "guardian figures" who tend the center, but also as "gateway figures" who oversee the boundaries between the home and the larger world. Cordelia is thus only the first of Lear's daughters to threaten the security of home as well as its meaning, its warmth, and its extent. Intimacy can estrange the home's inmates, while the security of the hearth can cloak enmity or merely offer a warmth generated by, rather than blocked from, enemy fires.
