the meaning of old people

[alice wellintown]

Hamlet is an old school boy, and Horatio, older still, is, while not
the foolish college chums that Dead G&R are, still, a college lifer,
so, though he approaches Death with Infinite Jest, there is something
cynical in Hamlet's quips and puns; his harsh, even brutal handling of
his elders, not that he treats his peers with much kindness, is sign
that his ego, while not mad, is still maniacal; his monomaniacal quest
haunts him to his Be and his Not; this obsession with Being and not
Becoming, denies the Stoicism that late-Shakespeare plumbs, in other
plays, such as Lear.

Lear is an old man.

Like Hamlet the Elder and the usurping Brother, and like young Hamlet,
Lear knows of Power and all that comes with royal wealth, but he also
knows its corrupting influences.

 The old must suffer, and to cling to life is suffering, to rage
against the dying, to cling to the paper, the plastic, the books, the
records, the words, the memories, is suffering...so the Stoics taught
that old men must let go of such shameful possessing. But Lear, old
man with wrinkled duggs does not say farewell to arms, but still he is
saved from suffering. What saves him is Grace.