Mary Honywood’s narrative accounts follow a very similar path as the Shakespeare’s play King Lear. In the beginning of the first excerpt of Honywood’s narrative is the discussion of “eternal inheritance,” which creates a parallel to King Lear because of the issue of distributing land and property once the father dies. Another parallel that comes into play is the “law of nature and of nations,” similar to King Lear, the father is debating which laws he should follow when passing down his land as inheritance. King Lear had only three daughters, the commonly followed law of inheritance at the time for a man with no sons would have been to divide his land equally among his three daughters, which Lear had planned to do. That is at least until his pride got in the way and he gave them a ‘love-test’ to see who loved him the most. This prideful moment eventually leads to Lear’s later death as he quickly loses both power as well as his sanity. What distinguishes Thomas Godfrey from Lear is that he has three sons and one daughter, so following the most common laws of inheritance of the time, Godfrey’s oldest son should inherit everything after his father’s death. Rather, Godfrey decides to give Mary’s “elder brother two parts, & the third he divided betwixt his two younger sons,” which did not follow any law of the nation during that time.
Additionally, the key part of inheritance is that it is given away once the owner is dead, in these cases once the fathers of the families, Lear and Godfrey, pass away. Yet, neither King Lear nor Godfrey wait until that point, they both distribute their property how they want among their children. This decision makes them vulnerable as it leaves them at the will of their children until they do actually pass away. Perhaps they both thought that their children would be overwhelmingly grateful and shower them with love; however, in this case it dod not happen because not only did they give up their children’s inheritance, but they gave up their power. Both of their decisions left them without homes or money of their own.
Shortly after Lear banishes Cordelia and gives his land to Regan and Goneril his mental health begins to rapidly diminish, leading to him dying very soon after. Mary Honywood’s father “continued not long after these discontentments, the whole tyme of his lyfe after the passing a way of his estat was but nine mooneths,” meaning that only nine months after distributing his land among his children, Godfrey also died. When left in the hands of their children to take care of them Lear and Godfrey would soon face their deaths as their children show little to no interest in taking care of them. In both the play King Lear and Mary Honywood’s narrative accounts of her father’s will, the leading men of the stories begin with lots of power, but giving away that power leads to both their deaths.