A monarch variously named Ler, Leir or Lyr is found in a number of sources relating to folklore of the Irish and of the British mainland. They all relate the punishment of senile conceit and pride. An old king, demanding an ego massage of his three daughters, divides his kingdom between two flatterers and disinherits the truthful third.

For both Shakespeare and Milton, the closest contemporary 'authorities' are, first, Geoffrey of Monmouth, the twelfth century bishop of St. Asaph (Wales) and, second, the English chronicler Raphael Holinshed in the 1570s.Edmund Spenser also treated of the mad king in the second of two of his three-volume "The Faerie Queene" sets.

The Bard's treatment is, perhaps, sufficiently well-known to obviate the need for deep analysis. As with any corpus of his work, he departs from his sources in crucial respects, adding his own inimitable magic to an old and possibly contemporarily well-known story

He creates, for example, the unforgettable Fool who gives Lear such kingly advice as: "Have more than thou showest. Speak less than thou knowest. Lend less than thou owest..."He also has no hesitation in calling his king a fool: All other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with"

The sub-plot of the equally-maligned Gloucester and his sons, the noble Edgar and and the diabolical Edmund, is first related by Sir Phillip Sidney,s "Arcadia". The Edgarian alter ego, the beggarly Poor Tom, is,however, triumphantly a child of the fertile, green Shakespearean genius.

In addition to his renown as the creator of poetry's twin peaks "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained", Milton's activities and erudition also stretched to politics (he was imprisoned for some time fo rhis beliefs), prose and history.

His "History of Britain,That Part especially, now call'd ENGLAND;" relates the tale of Leir, a descendant of Aeneas of Troy (he of Vergil's Aeneid), who built the city of Leicester.

The Leir story follows the general path of Shakespeare's Lear, excepting the madness (another Bardic innovation) and the sad, sombre ending.

Milton has Cordelia living in France as wife to the it;s king. Following the the rebuffs from Goneril and Regan, Leir is reunited with his youngest, who goes to England to reinstate her father to the throne.Leir lives and reigns three more years, followed by five from Cordelia who is overthrown and killed by her rebellious nephews.

Why did Shakespeare not have a "Happy Ever After" ending? It's difficult to say. Perhaps it 'went against the grain' for him. Perhaps still sorrowing for the loss of his young son Hamnet, between 1600 -1608 he also lost his parents