Regan (King Lear) measure of pain that others are prepared to inflict; her mind itself is a lynch mob" (291). Regan (King Lear) Regan is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's tragic play, "King Lear", named after a King of the Britons recorded by the medieval scribe Geoffrey of Monmouth. Shakespeare based the character on "Regan", a personage described by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical chronicle "Historia regum Britanniae" ("History of the Kings of Britain", ) as one of the British king Lear's three daughters, alongside Goneril and Cordeilla (the source for Cordelia), and the mother of Cunedagius. She is the middle
King Lear daughter, it can be interpreted as him rejecting death; Lear is unwilling to face the finitude of his being. The play's poignant ending scene, wherein Lear carries the body of his beloved Cordelia, was of great importance to Freud. In this scene, Cordelia forces the realization of his finitude, or as Freud put it, she causes him to "make friends with the necessity of dying". Shakespeare had particular intentions with Cordelia's death, and was the only writer to have Cordelia killed (in the version by the Nahum Tate, she continues to live happily, and in Holinshed's, she restores her father