Who is King Lear from Tales from Shakespeare and what is their importance?

King Lear is an aged British king who decides to make his will. He had three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Goneril and Regan are hateful, ungrateful, treacherous and greedy. They feign great love for their old father and shower him with flattery and vows of loyalty. He is taken in by them and gives each of them and their husbands a third of his kingdom. Cordelia, the youngest and his treasure, is sickened by her sisters' flattery, greed and dishonesty and thus is very sparse and plain in her statement to her father, saying that she loves him according to her duty as his child. King Lear is shocked that his favorite daughter, Cordelia, should not profess her love for him the way her sisters had done and foolishly bequeaths her portion of the kingdom to be divided between the other two sisters and their husbands. His old age has beclouded his reason.