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= King_Lear =
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Introduction
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'The Tragedy of King Lear', often shortened to 'King Lear', is a
tragedy written by William Shakespeare in late 1605 or early 1606. Set
in pre-Roman Britain, the play depicts the consequences of King Lear's
love-test, in which he divides his power and land according to the
praise of his daughters. The play is known for its dark tone, complex
poetry, and prominent motifs concerning blindness and madness.
The earliest known performance was on Saint Stephen's Day in 1606.
Modern editors derive their texts from three extant publications: the
1608 quarto (Q1), the 1619 quarto (Q2, unofficial and based on Q1),
and the 1623 First Folio. The quarto versions differ significantly
from the folio version.
In 1681, after the English Restoration, Nahum Tate produced a revised
version with a romantic subplot and a less bleak ending. This version
displaced Shakespeare's from the professional stage until 1838.
However, since then, Shakespeare's original play has come to be
regarded as one of his supreme achievements. In his 'A Defence of
Poetry' (1821), Percy Bysshe Shelley called 'King Lear' "the most
perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world", and the
play is regularly cited as one of the greatest works of literature
ever written.
Characters
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* Lear - King of Britain
* Goneril - Lear's eldest daughter
* Regan - Lear's middle daughter
* Cordelia - Lear's youngest daughter
* The Fool - attendant on Lear
* Duke of Albany - Goneril's husband
* Duke of Cornwall - Regan's husband
* King of France - suitor and later husband to Cordelia
* Duke of Burgundy - suitor to Cordelia
* Earl of Gloucester - a Lear loyalist
* Edgar - Gloucester's first-born son
* Edmund - Gloucester's illegitimate son
* Earl of Kent - a Lear loyalist
* Oswald - Goneril's steward
* Doctor - attends on Cordelia
* Curan - Gloucester's servant
* Old Man - a tenant of Gloucester
Notable casts
rowspan="1" |Character Broadway revival (1956) West End
revival (1962) Broadway revival (1968) Broadway revival
(2004) West End revival (2007) West End revival (2010)
Off-Broadway revival (2011) Broadway revival (2019)
!Off-West End revival (2024)
!Lear align="center" , |Orson Welles align="center" , |Paul
Scofield align="center" , |Lee J. Cobb align="center" ,
|Christopher Plummer align="center" , |Ian McKellen align="center"
, |Derek Jacobi align="center" , |Sam Waterston align="center" ,
|Glenda Jackson align="center" |Danny Sapani
!Goneril align="center" |Geraldine Fitzgerald align="center"
|Irene Worth align="center" |Marilyn Lightstone align="center"
|Domini Blythe align="center" |Frances Barber align="center" |Gina
McKee align="center" |Enid Graham align="center" |Elizabeth Marvel
align="center" |Ayika Henry
!Regan align="center" |Sylvia Short align="center" |Patience
Collier align="center" |Patricia Elliott align="center" |Lucy
Peacock align="center" |Monica Dolan align="center" |Justine
Mitchell align="center" |Kelli O’Hara align="center" |Aisling
O'Sullivan align="center" |Faith Omole
!Cordelia align="center" |Viveca Lindfors align="center" |Diana
Rigg align="center" |Barbette Tweed align="center" |Claire Jullien
align="center" |Romola Garai align="center" |Pippa Bennett-Warner
align="center" |Kristen Connolly align="center", rowspan=2|Ruth
Wilson |Gloria Obianyo
!The Fool |align="center" |Alvin Epstein align="center" |Alec
McCowen align="center" |René Auberjonois align="center" |Barry
MacGregor align="center" |Sylvester McCoy align="center" |Ron Cook
align="center" |Bill Irwin align="center" |Clarke Peters
!Duke of Albany |align="center" |Sorrell Booke align="center"
|Peter Jeffrey align="center" |Charles Cioffi align="center" |Guy
Paul align="center" |Julian Harries align="center" |Tom Beard
align="center" |Richard Topol align="center" |Dion Johnstone
align="center" |Geoffrey Lumb
!Duke of Cornwall |align="center" |Thayer David align="center"
|Tony Church align="center" |John Devlin align="center" |Stephen
Russell align="center" |Guy Williams align="center" |Gideon Turner
align="center" |Frank Wood align="center" |Russell Harvard
align="center" |Edward Davis
!King of France |align="center" |Robert Blackburn align="center"
|Barry MacGregor align="center" |Robert Phalen align="center"
|Christopher Randolph align="center" |Ben Addis align="center"
|Ashley Zhangazha align="center" |Michael Izquierdo align="center"
|Ian Lassiter align="center" |Steffan Rizzi
!Duke of Burgundy |align="center" |Walter Matthews align="center"
|Tony Steedman align="center" |Bill Moor align="center" |Eric
Sheffer Stevens align="center" |Peter Hinton align="center"
|Stefano Braaschi align="center" |Che Ayende align="center"
|Justin Cunningham align="center" |Oliver Cudbill
!Earl of Gloucester |align="center" |Lester Rawlins align="center"
|Alan Webb align="center" |William Myers align="center" |James
Blendick align="center" |William Gaunt align="center" |Paul Jesson
align="center" |Michael McKean align="center" |Jayne Houdyshell
align="center" |Michael Gould
!Edgar |align="center" |Robert Fletcher align="center" |Brian
Murray align="center" |Robert Phalen align="center" |Brent Carver
align="center" |Ben Meyjes align="center" |Gwilym Lee
align="center" |Arian Moayed align="center" |Sean Carvajal
align="center" |Matthew Tennyson
!Edmund |align="center" |John Colicos align="center" |James Booth
align="center" |Stacy Keach align="center" |Geraint Wyn Davies
align="center" |Philip Winchester align="center" |Alec Newman
align="center" |Seth Gilliam align="center" |Pedro Pascal
align="center" |Fra Fee
!Earl of Kent |align="center" |Roy Dean align="center" |Brewster
Mason align="center" |Philip Bosco align="center" |Benedict
Campbell align="center" |Jonathan Hyde align="center" |Michael
Hadley align="center" , colspan=2|John Douglas Thompson
align="center" |Alec Newman
!Oswald |align="center" |Francis Carpenter align="center" |Clive
Swift align="center" |Tom Sawyer align="center" |Andy Prosky
align="center" |John Hefferman align="center" |Amit Shah
align="center" |Michael Crane align="center" |Matthew Maher
align="center" |Hugo Bolton
!Doctor |align="center" |Walter Matthews align="center" |Gareth
Morgan align="center" |William Myers align="center" |William Cain
align="center" |Russell Byrne align="center" |N/A align="center"
|Craig Bockhorn align="center" |N/A align="center" |N/A
!Curan |align="center" |Tom Clancy align="center" |Philip Brack
align="center" |Jerome Dempsey align="center" |Eric Sheffer Stevens
align="center" |Seymour Matthews align="center" |N/A
align="center" |Herb Foster align="center" |N/A align="center"
|Oliver Cudbill
!Old Man |align="center" |N/A align="center" |Michael Burrell
align="center" |Don McHenry align="center" |Leo Leyden
align="center" |N/A align="center" |Derek Hutchinson
align="center" |Herb Foster align="center" |Stephanie Roth
align="center" |N/A
Plot
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The play begins with the Earls of Gloucester and Kent discussing
Lear's succession plans. Gloucester introduces his illegitimate son,
Edmund. The court arrives and Lear announces he will finalise the
marriage of his youngest daughter, Cordelia, to either the Duke of
Burgundy or the King of France. Lear will also abdicate, granting a
third of his kingdom to each daughter, provided they declare their
love for him. Goneril and Regan make flattering speeches but Cordelia
says she loves him according to her duty. Outraged, Lear disowns
Cordelia, dividing her inheritance between her two sisters. Lear sets
conditions: he retains the title of king, he will reside with Goneril
and Regan, and he keeps a retinue of a hundred knights. Kent chastises
Lear for abdicating and for disowning Cordelia, so Lear banishes him.
Lear offers Cordelia without a dowry to her suitors. France accepts,
admiring her honesty.
Ambitious Edmund resents his bastardy and plots to supplant his
legitimate brother, Edgar, with a forged letter. Meanwhile, rather
than leaving, Kent has disguised himself as 'Caius'. Lear hires him
after he beats Goneril's servant, Oswald, for lack of manners. Goneril
has lost patience with hosting the king and his retinue, and so orders
him to dismiss half his knights. Enraged, Lear curses Goneril and
threatens to take back his power, before departing for Regan's
residence. In a private conversation, Lear fears he might be going
mad. After encouraging Edgar to fly the castle, Edmund insinuates his
brother was planning to murder Gloucester. Convinced, the earl
disinherits Edgar, proclaiming him an outlaw. Edgar is pursued across
the countryside, causing him to adopt the persona of a mad beggar
named Tom o' Bedlam.
Regan and her husband, the Duke of Cornwall, arrive at Gloucester's
home. Kent and Oswald quarrel, leading Cornwall and Regan to place
Kent in the stocks. When Lear sees his messenger stocked, he struggles
to control his rage. Together, Goneril and Regan decide to dismiss his
knights. Lear goes mad, running out into a storm. Regan, Goneril, and
Cornwall shut the gates after him, despite Gloucester's protests. Lear
and the Fool are found on the heath by Kent, who leads them to
shelter. In a hovel, they encounter Edgar as the mad beggar. During
the stormy night, Gloucester arrives and encourages Kent to take Lear
to Dover, where he knows a French army will land to restore the king.
Edmund reveals Gloucester's intelligence to Cornwall and Regan. When
Gloucester returns, Cornwall gouges out his eyes as retribution. One
of Cornwall's servants intervenes, mortally wounding Cornwall.
Discovering Edmund's betrayal, Gloucester realises that Edgar was
innocent. The blinded earl is thrown out, hiring Poor Tom, whom he
fails to recognise as his outlawed son, to lead him to Dover.
Goneril instructs Oswald to kill Gloucester and to deliver a letter to
Edmund, for whom she has an adulterous infatuation. The widowed Regan
is also attracted to Edmund, who is pitting the two sisters against
each other. Edgar tricks the suicidal Gloucester into thinking he has
survived a leap from the cliffs of Dover. They meet Lear again, who
discourses madly about kingship, flattery, and hypocrisy. Oswald tries
to kill Gloucester but is slain by Edgar. In Oswald's pocket, Edgar
finds Goneril's letter to Edmund. Cordelia is reconciled with Lear,
whose madness abates enough for him to ask her forgiveness. Regan,
Goneril, Albany, and Edmund meet with their forces, preparing for
battle. In disguise, Edgar gives Goneril's letter to Albany. The
British defeat the French, capturing Lear and Cordelia. Edmund sends
them to prison with covert orders for execution.
Regan declares she will marry Edmund, not knowing she has been
poisoned by Goneril. Albany uses the letter to proclaim Edmund and
Goneril as traitors. Regan collapses and dies. Edmund calls for trial
by combat and Edgar appears as an anonymous champion, defeating
Edmund. Goneril flees, killing herself off-stage. Edgar reveals
himself and Gloucester's recent death. A repentant, dying Edmund
discloses his order to kill Lear and Cordelia. Lear carries the dead
Cordelia in his arms, before dying of grief. Albany offers to share
power: Kent refuses, expecting soon to follow Lear into the grave.
Edgar neither accepts nor declines.
Sources
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Shakespeare's play is based on various accounts of the semi-legendary
Brythonic figure Leir of Britain, whose name has been linked by some
scholars to the Brythonic god Lir/Llŷr, though in actuality the names
are not etymologically related. Shakespeare's most important source is
probably the second edition of 'The Chronicles of England, Scotlande,
and Irelande' by Raphael Holinshed, published in 1587. Holinshed
himself found the story in the earlier by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which
was written in the 12th century. Edmund Spenser's 'The Faerie Queene',
published 1590, also contains a character named Cordelia, who also
dies from hanging, as in 'King Lear'.
Other possible sources are the anonymous play 'King Leir' (published
in 1605); 'The Mirror for Magistrates' (1574), by John Higgins; 'The
Malcontent' (1604), by John Marston; 'The London Prodigal' (1605);
Montaigne's 'Essays', which were translated into English by John
Florio in 1603; 'A Description of Elizabethan England' (1577), by
William Harrison; 'Remains Concerning Britain' (1606), by William
Camden; 'Albion's England' (1589), by William Warner; and 'A
Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures' (1603), by Samuel
Harsnett, which provided some of the language used by Edgar while he
feigns madness. 'King Lear' is also a literary variant of a common
folk tale, "Love Like Salt", Aarne-Thompson type 923, in which a
father rejects his youngest daughter for a statement of her love that
does not please him.
The source of the subplot involving Gloucester, Edgar, and Edmund is a
tale in Philip Sidney's 'Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia' (1580-90),
with a blind Paphlagonian king and his two sons, Leonatus and
Plexitrus.
Changes from source material
==============================
Besides the subplot involving the Earl of Gloucester and his sons, the
principal innovation Shakespeare made to this story was the death of
Cordelia and Lear at the end; in the account by Geoffrey of Monmouth,
Cordelia restores Lear to the throne, and succeeds him as ruler after
his death. During the 17th century, Shakespeare's tragic ending was
much criticised and alternative versions were written by Nahum Tate,
in which the leading characters survived and Edgar and Cordelia were
married (despite the fact that Cordelia was previously betrothed to
the King of France). As Harold Bloom states: "Tate's version held the
stage for almost 150 years, until Edmund Kean reinstated the play's
tragic ending in 1823."
Holinshed states that the story is set when Joash was King of Judah
(), while Shakespeare avoids dating the setting, only suggesting that
it is sometime in the pre-Christian era (with numerous anachronisms,
such as Anglo-Saxon names and titles like Duke and Earl).
The character of Earl of Kent (disguised as 'Caius') is a creative
elaboration on Perillus, the king's loyal retainer in 'King Leir'. The
Fool, Oswald, and Edmund's Captain were created wholly by Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's Lear and other characters make oaths to Jupiter, Juno,
and Apollo. While the presence of Roman religion in Britain is
technically an anachronism, nothing was known about any religion that
existed in Britain at the time of Lear's alleged life.
Holinshed identifies the personal names of the Duke of Albany
(Maglanus), the Duke of Cornwall (Henninus), and the Gallic/French
leader (Aganippus). Shakespeare refers to these characters by their
titles only, and also changes the nature of Albany from a villain to a
hero, by reassigning Albany's wicked deeds to Cornwall. Maglanus and
Henninus are killed in the final battle, but are survived by their
sons Margan and Cunedag. In Shakespeare's version, Cornwall is killed
by a servant who objects to the torture of the Earl of Gloucester,
while Albany is one of the few surviving main characters. Isaac Asimov
surmised that this alteration was due to the title Duke of Albany
being held in 1606 by Prince Charles, the younger son of Shakespeare's
benefactor King James. However, this explanation is faulty, because
James' older son, Prince Henry, held the title Duke of Cornwall at the
same time.
Date and text
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There is no direct evidence to indicate when 'King Lear' was written
or first performed. It is thought to have been composed sometime
between 1603 and 1606. A Stationers' Register entry notes a
performance before James I on 26 December 1606. The 1603 date
originates from words in Edgar's speeches which may derive from Samuel
Harsnett's 'Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures' (1603). A
significant issue in the dating of the play is the relationship of
'King Lear' to the play titled 'The True Chronicle History of the Life
and Death of King Leir and his Three Daughters', which was published
for the first time after its entry in the Stationers' Register of 8
May 1605. This play had a significant effect on Shakespeare, and his
close study of it suggests that he was using a printed copy, which
suggests a composition date of 1605-06. Conversely, Frank Kermode, in
the 'Riverside Shakespeare', considers the publication of 'Leir' to
have been a response to performances of Shakespeare's already-written
play; noting a sonnet by William Strachey that may have verbal
resemblances with 'Lear', Kermode concludes that "1604-05 seems the
best compromise".
A line in the play that regards "These late eclipses in the sun and
moon" appears to refer to a phenomenon of two eclipses that occurred
over London two weeks apart--the lunar eclipse of 27 September 1605
and the solar eclipse of 12 October 1605. This remarkable pair of
events stirred up much discussion among astrologers. Edmund's line "A
prediction I read this other day..." apparently refers to the
published prognostications of the astrologers, which followed after
the eclipses. This suggests that those lines in Act I were written
sometime after both the eclipses and the published comments.
As early as 1931, Madeleine Doran suggested that the two texts had
independent histories, and that these differences between them were
critically interesting. This argument, however, was not widely
discussed until the late 1970s, when it was revived, principally by
Michael Warren and Gary Taylor, who discuss a variety of theories
including Doran's idea that the Quarto may have been printed from
Shakespeare's foul papers, and that the Folio may have been printed
from a promptbook prepared for a production.
The New Cambridge Shakespeare has published separate editions of Q and
F; the most recent Pelican Shakespeare edition contains both the 1608
Quarto and the 1623 Folio text as well as a conflated version; the New
Arden edition edited by R. A. Foakes offers a conflated text that
indicates those passages that are found only in Q or F. Both Anthony
Nuttall of Oxford University and Harold Bloom of Yale University have
endorsed the view of Shakespeare having revised the tragedy at least
once during his lifetime. As Bloom indicates: "At the close of
Shakespeare's revised 'King Lear', a reluctant Edgar becomes King of
Britain, accepting his destiny but in the accents of despair. Nuttall
speculates that Edgar, like Shakespeare himself, usurps the power of
manipulating the audience by deceiving poor Gloucester."
Historicist interpretations
=============================
John F. Danby, in his 'Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature - A Study of
King Lear' (1949), argues that 'Lear' dramatizes, among other things,
the current meanings of "Nature". The words "nature", "natural", and
"unnatural" occur over forty times in the play, reflecting a debate in
Shakespeare's time about what nature really was like; this debate
pervades the play and finds symbolic expression in Lear's changing
attitude to Thunder. There are two strongly contrasting views of human
nature in the play: that of the Lear party (Lear, Gloucester, Albany,
Kent), exemplifying the philosophy of Bacon and Hooker, and that of
the Edmund party (Edmund, Cornwall, Goneril, Regan), akin to the views
later formulated by Hobbes, though the latter had not yet begun his
philosophy career when 'Lear' was first performed. Along with the two
views of Nature, the play contains two views of Reason, brought out in
Gloucester and Edmund's speeches on astrology (1.2). The rationality
of the Edmund party is one with which a modern audience more readily
identifies. But the Edmund party carries bold rationalism to such
extremes that it becomes madness: a madness-in-reason, the ironic
counterpart of Lear's "reason in madness" (IV.6.190) and the Fool's
wisdom-in-folly. This betrayal of reason lies behind the play's later
emphasis on 'feeling'.
The two Natures and the two Reasons imply two societies. Edmund is the
New Man, a member of an age of competition, suspicion, glory, in
contrast with the older society which has come down from the Middle
Ages, with its belief in co-operation, reasonable decency, and respect
for the whole as greater than the part. 'King Lear' is thus an
allegory. The older society, that of the medieval vision, with its
doting king, falls into error, and is threatened by the new
Machiavellianism; it is regenerated and saved by a vision of a new
order, embodied in the king's rejected daughter. Cordelia, in the
allegorical scheme, is threefold: a person; an ethical principle
(love); and a community. Nevertheless, Shakespeare's understanding of
the New Man is so extensive as to amount almost to sympathy. Edmund is
the last great expression in Shakespeare of that side of Renaissance
individualism--the energy, the emancipation, the courage--which has
made a positive contribution to the heritage of the West. "He embodies
something vital which a final synthesis must reaffirm. But he makes an
absolute claim which Shakespeare will not support. It is right for man
to feel, as Edmund does, that society exists for man, not man for
society. It is not right to assert the kind of man Edmund would erect
to this supremacy."
The play offers an alternative to the feudal-Machiavellian polarity,
an alternative foreshadowed in France's speech (I.1.245-256), in Lear
and Gloucester's prayers (III.4. 28-36; IV.1.61-66), and in the figure
of Cordelia. Until the decent society is achieved, we are meant to
take as role-model (though qualified by Shakespearean ironies) Edgar,
"the machiavel of goodness", endurance, courage and "ripeness".
The play also contains references to disputes between King James I and
Parliament. In the 1604 elections to the House of Commons, Sir John
Fortescue, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was defeated by a member
of the Buckinghamshire gentry, Sir Francis Goodwin. Displeased with
the result, James declared the result of the Buckinghamshire election
invalid, and swore in Fortescue as the MP for Buckinghamshire while
the House of Commons insisted on swearing in Goodwin, leading to a
clash between King and Parliament over who had the right to decide who
sat in the House of Commons. The MP Thomas Wentworth, the son of
another MP Peter Wentworth--often imprisoned under Elizabeth for
raising the question of the succession in the Commons--was most
forceful in protesting James's attempts to reduce the powers of the
House of Commons, saying the King could not just declare the results
of an election invalid if he disliked who had won the seat as he was
insisting that he could. The character of Kent resembles Peter
Wentworth in the way which is tactless and blunt in advising Lear, but
his point is valid that Lear should be more careful with his friends
and advisers.
Just as the House of Commons had argued to James that their loyalty
was to the constitution of England, not to the King personally, Kent
insists his loyalty is institutional, not personal, as he is loyal to
the realm of which the king is head, not to Lear himself, and he tells
Lear to behave better for the good of the realm. By contrast, Lear
makes an argument similar to James that as king, he holds absolute
power and could disregard the views of his subjects if they displease
him whenever he liked. In the play, the characters like the Fool, Kent
and Cordelia, whose loyalties are institutional, seeing their first
loyalty to the realm, are portrayed more favorably than those like
Regan and Goneril, who insist they are only loyal to the king, seeing
their loyalties as personal. Likewise, James was notorious for his
riotous, debauched lifestyle and his preference for sycophantic
courtiers who were forever singing his praises out of the hope for
advancement, aspects of his court that closely resemble the court of
King Lear, who starts out in the play with a riotous, debauched court
of sycophantic courtiers. Kent criticises Oswald as a man unworthy of
office who has only been promoted because of his sycophancy, telling
Lear that he should be loyal to those who are willing to tell him the
truth, a statement that many in England wished that James would heed.
Furthermore, James VI of Scotland inherited the throne of England upon
the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, thereby uniting the kingdoms of the
island of Britain into one, and a major issue of his reign was the
attempt to forge a common British identity. James had given his sons
Henry and Charles the titles of Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Albany,
the same titles borne by the men married to Regan and Goneril. The
play begins with Lear ruling all of Britain and ends with him
destroying his realm; the critic Andrew Hadfield argued that the
division of Britain by Lear was an inversion of the unification of
Britain by James, who believed his policies would result in a well
governed and prosperous unified realm being passed on to his heir.
Hadfield argued that the play was meant as a warning to James as in
the play a monarch loses everything by giving in to his sycophantic
courtiers who only seek to use him while neglecting those who truly
loved him. Hadfield also argued that the world of Lear's court is
"childish" with Lear presenting himself as the father of the nation
and requiring all of his subjects, not just his children, to address
him in paternal terms, which infantises most of the people around him,
which pointedly references James's statement in his 1598 book 'The
Trew Law of Free Monarchies' that the king is the "father of the
nation", for whom all of his subjects are his children.
Psychoanalytic and psychosocial interpretations
=================================================
According to Dennis Brown, 'King Lear' provides a basis for "the
primary enactment of psychic breakdown in English literary history".
The play begins with Lear's "near-fairytale narcissism".
Given the absence of legitimate mothers in 'King Lear', Coppélia Kahn
provides a psychoanalytic interpretation of the "maternal subtext"
found in the play. According to Kahn, Lear's old age forces him to
regress into an infantile disposition, and he now seeks a love that is
traditionally satisfied by a mothering woman, but in the absence of a
real mother, his daughters become the mother figures. Lear's contest
of love between Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia serves as the binding
agreement; his daughters will get their inheritance provided that they
care for him, especially Cordelia, on whose "kind nursery" he will
greatly depend.
Cordelia's refusal to dedicate herself to him and love him as more
than a father has been interpreted by some as a resistance to incest,
but Kahn also inserts the image of a rejecting mother. The situation
is now a reversal of parent-child roles, in which Lear's madness is a
childlike rage due to his deprivation of filial/maternal care. Even
when Lear and Cordelia are captured together, his madness persists as
Lear envisions a nursery in prison, where Cordelia's sole existence is
for him. It is only with Cordelia's death that his fantasy of a
daughter-mother ultimately diminishes, as 'King Lear' concludes with
only male characters living.
Sigmund Freud asserted that Cordelia symbolises Death. Therefore, when
the play begins with Lear rejecting his 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".
Alternatively, an analysis based on Adlerian theory suggests that the
King's contest among his daughters in Act I has more to do with his
control over the unmarried Cordelia. This theory indicates that the
King's "dethronement" might have led him to seek control that he lost
after he divided his land.
In his study of the character-portrayal of Edmund, Harold Bloom refers
to him as "Shakespeare's most original character". "As Hazlitt pointed
out", writes Bloom, "Edmund does not share in the hypocrisy of Goneril
and Regan: his Machiavellianism is absolutely pure, and lacks an
Oedipal motive. Freud's vision of family romances simply does not
apply to Edmund. Iago is free to reinvent himself every minute, yet
Iago has strong passions, however negative. Edmund has no passions
whatsoever; he has never loved anyone, and he never will. In that
respect, he is Shakespeare's most original character."
The tragedy of Lear's lack of understanding of the consequences of his
demands and actions is often observed to be like that of a spoiled
child, but it has also been noted that his behaviour is equally likely
to be seen in parents who have never adjusted to their children having
grown up.
Christianity
==============
Critics are divided on the question of whether 'King Lear' represents
an affirmation of a particular Christian doctrine. Those who think it
does posit different arguments, which include the significance of
Lear's self-divestment. For some critics, this reflects the Christian
concepts of the fall of the mighty and the inevitable loss of worldly
possessions. By 1569, sermons delivered at court such as those at
Windsor declared how "rich men are rich dust, wise men wise dust...
From him that weareth purple, and beareth the crown down to him that
is clad with meanest apparel, there is nothing but garboil, and
ruffle, and hoisting, and lingering wrath, and fear of death and death
itself, and hunger, and many a whip of God." Some see this in Cordelia
and what she symbolised--that the material body are mere husks that
would eventually be discarded so that the fruit can be reached.
Among those who argue that Lear is redeemed in the Christian sense
through suffering are A.C. Bradley and John Reibetanz, who has
written: "through his sufferings, Lear has won an enlightened soul".
Other critics who find no evidence of redemption and emphasise the
horrors of the final act include John Holloway and Marvin Rosenberg.
William R. Elton stresses the pre-Christian setting of the play,
writing that, "Lear fulfills the criteria for pagan behavior in life,"
falling "into total blasphemy at the moment of his irredeemable loss".
This is related to the way some sources cite that at the end of the
narrative, King Lear raged against heaven before eventually dying in
despair with the death of Cordelia.
Harold Bloom argues that 'King Lear' transcends a morality system
entirely, and thus is one of the major triumphs of the play. Bloom
writes that in the play there is, "... no theology, no metaphysics, no
ethics".
Performance history
======================================================================
'King Lear' has been performed by esteemed actors since the 17th
century, when men played all the roles. From the 20th century, a
number of women have played male roles in the play, most commonly the
Fool, who has been played (among others) by Judy Davis, Emma Thompson
and Robyn Nevin. Lear himself has been played by Marianne Hoppe in
1990, by Janet Wright in 1995, by Kathryn Hunter in 1996-97, and by
Glenda Jackson in 2016 and 2019.
17th century
==============
Shakespeare wrote the role of Lear for his company's chief tragedian,
Richard Burbage, for whom Shakespeare was writing incrementally older
characters as their careers progressed. It has been speculated either
that the role of the Fool was written for the company's clown Robert
Armin, or that it was written for performance by one of the company's
boys, doubling the role of Cordelia. Only one specific performance of
the play during Shakespeare's lifetime is known: before the court of
King James I at Whitehall on 26 December 1606. Its original
performances would have been at The Globe, where there were no sets in
the modern sense, and characters would have signified their roles
visually with props and costumes: Lear's costume, for example, would
have changed in the course of the play as his status diminished:
commencing in crown and regalia; then as a huntsman; raging bareheaded
in the storm scene; and finally crowned with flowers in parody of his
original status.
All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government on 6 September
1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent
companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were
established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between
them. And from the restoration until the mid-19th century the
performance history of 'King Lear' is not the story of Shakespeare's
version, but instead of 'The History of King Lear', a popular
adaptation by Nahum Tate. Its most significant deviations from
Shakespeare were to omit the Fool entirely, to introduce a happy
ending in which Lear and Cordelia survive, and to develop a love story
between Cordelia and Edgar (two characters who never interact in
Shakespeare) which ends with their marriage. Like most Restoration
adapters of Shakespeare, Tate admired Shakespeare's natural genius but
saw fit to augment his work with contemporary standards of art (which
were largely guided by the neoclassical unities of time, place, and
action). Tate's struggle to strike a balance between raw nature and
refined art is apparent in his description of the tragedy: "a heap of
jewels, unstrung and unpolish't; yet so dazzling in their disorder,
that I soon perceiv'd I had seiz'd a treasure." Other changes included
giving Cordelia a 'confidante' named Arante, bringing the play closer
to contemporary notions of poetic justice, and adding titilating
material such as amorous encounters between Edmund and both Regan and
Goneril, a scene in which Edgar rescues Cordelia from Edmund's
attempted kidnapping and rape, and a scene in which Cordelia wears
men's pants that would reveal the actress's ankles. The play ends with
a celebration of "the King's blest Restauration", an obvious reference
to Charles II.
18th century
==============
In the early 18th century, some writers began to express objections to
this (and other) Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare. For example,
in 'The Spectator' on 16 April 1711 Joseph Addison wrote "'King Lear'
is an admirable Tragedy ... as 'Shakespeare' wrote it; but as it is
reformed according to the chymerical Notion of poetical Justice in my
humble Opinion it hath lost half its Beauty." Yet on the stage, Tate's
version prevailed.
David Garrick was the first actor-manager to begin to cut back on
elements of Tate's adaptation in favour of Shakespeare's original: he
retained Tate's major changes, including the happy ending, but removed
many of Tate's lines, including Edgar's closing speech. He also
reduced the prominence of the Edgar-Cordelia love story, in order to
focus more on the relationship between Lear and his daughters. His
version had a powerful emotional impact: Lear driven to madness by his
daughters was (in the words of one spectator, Arthur Murphy) "the
finest tragic distress ever seen on any stage" and, in contrast, the
devotion shown to Lear by Cordelia (a mix of Shakespeare's, Tate's and
Garrick's contributions to the part) moved the audience to tears.
The first professional performances of 'King Lear' in North America
are likely to have been those of the Hallam Company (later the
American Company) which arrived in Virginia in 1752 and who counted
the play among their repertoire by the time of their departure for
Jamaica in 1774.
19th century
==============
Charles Lamb established the Romantics' attitude to 'King Lear' in his
1811 essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, considered with reference
to their fitness for stage representation" where he says that the play
"is essentially impossible to be represented on the stage", preferring
to experience it in the study. In the theatre, he argues, "to see Lear
acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a
walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters on a rainy night,
has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting" yet "while we
read it, we see not Lear but we are Lear,--we are in his mind, we are
sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and
storms." Literary critic Janet Ruth Heller elaborates on the hostility
of Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Hazlitt to performances
of tragedy, especially Shakespearean tragedy. They believed that such
stagings appealed more to the senses than the imagination. However,
reading stimulates the imagination. Also, Heller traces the history of
the idea that tragedy should be read, not performed, back to Plato and
to misreadings of Aristotle's 'Poetics'. See 'Coleridge, Lamb,
Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama', University of Missouri Press,
1990).
'King Lear' was politically controversial during the period of George
III's madness, and as a result was not performed at all in the two
professional theatres of London from 1811 to 1820: but was then the
subject of major productions in both, within three months of his
death. The 19th century saw the gradual reintroduction of
Shakespeare's text to displace Tate's version. Like Garrick before
him, John Philip Kemble had introduced more of Shakespeare's text,
while still preserving the three main elements of Tate's version: the
love story, the omission of the Fool, and the happy ending. Edmund
Kean played 'King Lear' with its tragic ending in 1823, but failed and
reverted to Tate's crowd-pleaser after only three performances. At
last in 1838, William Macready at Covent Garden performed
Shakespeare's version, freed from Tate's adaptions. The restored
character of the Fool was played by an actress, Priscilla Horton, as,
in the words of one spectator, "a fragile, hectic, beautiful-faced,
half-idiot-looking boy". And Helen Faucit's final appearance as
Cordelia, dead in her father's arms, became one of the most iconic of
Victorian images. John Forster, writing in the 'Examiner' on 14
February 1838, expressed the hope that "Mr Macready's success has
banished that disgrace [Tate's version] from the stage for ever." But
even this version was not close to Shakespeare's: the 19th-century
actor-managers heavily cut Shakespeare's scripts: ending scenes on big
"curtain effects" and reducing or eliminating supporting roles to give
greater prominence to the star. One of Macready's innovations--the use
of Stonehenge-like structures on stage to indicate an ancient
setting--proved enduring on stage into the 20th century, and can be
seen in the 1983 television version starring Laurence Olivier.
In 1843, the Act for Regulating the Theatres came into force, bringing
an end to the monopolies of the two existing companies and, by doing
so, increased the number of theatres in London. At the same time, the
fashion in theatre was "pictorial": valuing visual spectacle above
plot or characterisation and often required lengthy (and
time-consuming) scene changes. For example, Henry Irving's 1892 'King
Lear' offered spectacles such as Lear's death beneath a cliff at
Dover, his face lit by the red glow of a setting sun; at the expense
of cutting 46% of the text, including the blinding of Gloucester. But
Irving's production clearly evoked strong emotions: one spectator,
Gordon Crosse, wrote of the first entrance of Lear, "a striking figure
with masses of white hair. He is leaning on a huge scabbarded sword
which he raises with a wild cry in answer to the shouted greeting of
his guards. His gait, his looks, his gestures, all reveal the noble,
imperious mind already degenerating into senile irritability under the
coming shocks of grief and age."
The importance of pictorialism to Irving, and to other theatre
professionals of the Victorian era, is exemplified by the fact that
Irving had used Ford Madox Brown's painting 'Cordelia's Portion' as
the inspiration for the look of his production, and that the artist
himself was brought in to provide sketches for the settings of other
scenes. A reaction against pictorialism came with the rise of the
reconstructive movement, believers in a simple style of staging more
similar to that which would have pertained in renaissance theatres,
whose chief early exponent was the actor-manager William Poel. Poel
was influenced by a performance of 'King Lear' directed by Jocza
Savits at the Hoftheater in Munich in 1890, set on an apron stage with
a three-tier Globe--like reconstruction theatre as its backdrop. Poel
would use this same configuration for his own Shakespearean
performances in 1893.
20th century
==============
By mid-century, the actor-manager tradition had declined, to be
replaced by a structure in which the major theatre companies employed
professional directors as auteurs. The last of the great
actor-managers, Donald Wolfit, played Lear in 1944 on a
Stonehenge-like set and was praised by James Agate as "the greatest
piece of Shakespearean acting since I have been privileged to write
for the 'Sunday Times'". Wolfit supposedly drank eight bottles of
Guinness in the course of each performance.
The character of Lear in the 19th century was often that of a frail
old man from the opening scene, but Lears of the 20th century often
began the play as strong men displaying regal authority, including
John Gielgud, Donald Wolfit and Donald Sinden. Cordelia, also, evolved
in the 20th century: earlier Cordelias had often been praised for
being sweet, innocent and modest, but 20th-century Cordelias were
often portrayed as war leaders. For example, Peggy Ashcroft, at the
RST in 1950, played the role in a breastplate and carrying a sword.
Similarly, the Fool evolved through the course of the century, with
portrayals often deriving from the music hall or circus tradition.
At Stratford-upon-Avon in 1962 Peter Brook (who would later film the
play with the same actor, Paul Scofield, in the role of Lear) set the
action simply, against a huge, empty white stage. The effect of the
scene when Lear and Gloucester meet, two tiny figures in rags in the
midst of this emptiness, was said (by the scholar Roger Warren) to
catch "both the human pathos ... and the universal scale ... of the
scene". Some of the lines from the radio broadcast were used by The
Beatles to add into the recorded mix of the song "I Am the Walrus".
John Lennon happened upon the play on the BBC Third Programme while
fiddling with the radio while working on the song. The voices of
actors Mark Dignam, Philip Guard, and John Bryning from the play are
all heard in the song.
Like other Shakespearean tragedies, 'King Lear' has proved amenable to
conversion into other theatrical traditions. In 1989, David McRuvie
and Iyyamkode Sreedharan adapted the play then translated it to
Malayalam, for performance in Kerala in the Kathakali tradition--which
itself developed around 1600, contemporary with Shakespeare's writing.
The show later went on tour, and in 2000 played at Shakespeare's
Globe, completing, according to Anthony Dawson, "a kind of symbolic
circle". Perhaps even more radical was Ong Keng Sen's 1997 adaptation
of 'King Lear', which featured six actors each performing in a
separate Asian acting tradition and in their own separate languages. A
pivotal moment occurred when the Jingju performer playing Older
Daughter (a conflation of Goneril and Regan) stabbed the Noh-performed
Lear whose "falling pine" deadfall, straight face-forward into the
stage, astonished the audience, in what Yong Li Lan describes as a
"triumph through the moving power of 'noh' performance at the very
moment of his character's defeat".
In 1974, Buzz Goodbody directed 'Lear', a deliberately abbreviated
title for Shakespeare's text, as the inaugural production of the RSC's
studio theatre The Other Place. The performance was conceived as a
chamber piece, the small intimate space and proximity to the audience
enabled detailed psychological acting, which was performed with simple
sets and in modern dress. Peter Holland has speculated that this
company/directoral decision--namely 'choosing' to present Shakespeare
in a small venue for artistic reasons when a larger venue was
available--may at the time have been unprecedented.
Brook's earlier vision of the play proved influential, and directors
have gone further in presenting Lear as (in the words of R. A. Foakes)
"a pathetic senior citizen trapped in a violent and hostile
environment". When John Wood took the role in 1990, he played the
later scenes in clothes that looked like cast-offs, inviting
deliberate parallels with the uncared-for in modern Western societies.
Indeed, modern productions of Shakespeare's plays often reflect the
world in which they are performed as much as the world for which they
were written: and the Moscow theatre scene in 1994 provided an
example, when two very different productions of the play (those by
Sergei Zhonovach and Alexei Borodin), very different from one another
in their style and outlook, were both reflections on the break-up of
the Soviet Union.
21st century
==============
In 2002 and 2010, the Hudson Shakespeare Company of New Jersey staged
separate productions as part of their respective Shakespeare in the
Parks seasons. The 2002 version was directed by Michael Collins and
transposed the action to a West Indies, nautical setting. Actors were
featured in outfits indicative of looks of various Caribbean islands.
The 2010 production directed by Jon Ciccarelli was fashioned after the
atmosphere of the film 'The Dark Knight' with a palette of reds and
blacks and set the action in an urban setting. Lear (Tom Cox) appeared
as a head of multi-national conglomerate who divided up his fortune
among his socialite daughter Goneril (Brenda Scott), his officious
middle daughter Regan (Noelle Fair) and university daughter Cordelia
(Emily Best).
In 2012, renowned Canadian director Peter Hinton-Davis directed an
all-First Nations production of 'King Lear' at the National Arts
Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, with the setting changed to an Algonquin
nation in the 17th century. The cast included August Schellenberg as
Lear, Billy Merasty as Gloucester, Tantoo Cardinal as Regan, Kevin
Loring as Edmund, Jani Lauzon in a dual role as Cordelia and the Fool,
and Craig Lauzon as Kent.
In 2015, Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille staged a production set in
Upper Canada against the backdrop of the Upper Canada Rebellion of
1837. This production starred David Fox as Lear.
In the summer of 2015-2016, The Sydney Theatre Company staged 'King
Lear', directed by Neil Armfield with Geoffrey Rush in the lead role
and Robyn Nevin as the Fool. About the madness at the heart of the
play, Rush said that for him "it's about finding the dramatic impact
in the moments of his mania. What seems to work best is finding a
vulnerability or a point of empathy, where an audience can look at
Lear and think how shocking it must be to be that old and to be
banished from your family into the open air in a storm. That's a level
of impoverishment you would never want to see in any other human
being, ever."
In 2016, Talawa Theatre Company and Royal Exchange Manchester
co-produced a production of 'King Lear' with Don Warrington in the
title role. The production, featuring a largely black cast, was
described in 'The Guardian' as being "as close to definitive as can
be". 'The Daily Telegraph' wrote that "Don Warrington's King Lear is a
heartbreaking tour de force". 'King Lear' was staged by Royal
Shakespeare Company, with Antony Sher in the lead role. The
performance was directed by Gregory Doran and was described as having
"strength and depth".
In 2017, the Guthrie Theater produced a production of 'King Lear' with
Stephen Yoakam in the title role. Armin Shimerman appeared as the
fool, portraying it with "an unusual grimness, but it works", in a
production that was hailed as "a devastating piece of theater, and a
production that does it justice".
'King Lear' was part of the Stratford Festival's 2023 season, with
Paul Gross playing the title role. The production was directed by
Kimberley Rampersad, and was set in "The near future. A kingdom on the
precipice."
In October 2023, a new production directed by and starring Kenneth
Branagh, set in Neolithic Britain, began a strictly limited run in
London's West End and was transferred to The Shed in New York City in
October 2024. A version in modern dress was mounted in February 2024
at the Almeida Theatre, directed by Yaël Farber. The production
featured a much younger Lear, portrayed by Danny Sapani, alongside
Clarke Peters as the Fool, Fra Fee as Edmund, Gloria Obianyo as
Cordelia, Matthew Tennyson as Edgar, and Alec Newman as Kent.
Film and video
================
The first film adaptation of 'King Lear' was a five-minute German
version made around 1905, which has not survived. The oldest extant
version is a ten-minute studio-based version from 1909 by Vitagraph,
which, according to Luke McKernan, made the "ill-advised" decision to
attempt to cram in as much of the plot as possible. Two silent
versions, both titled 'Re Lear', were made in Italy in 1910. Of these,
the version by director Gerolamo Lo Savio was filmed on location, and
it dropped the Edgar sub-plot and used frequent intertitling to make
the plot easier to follow than its Vitagraph predecessor. A
contemporary setting was used for Louis Feuillade's 1911 French
adaptation 'Le Roi Lear Au Village', and in 1914 in America, Ernest
Warde expanded the story to an hour, including spectacles such as a
final battle scene.
The Joseph Mankiewicz (1949) 'House of Strangers' is often considered
a 'Lear' adaptation, but the parallels are more striking in 'Broken
Lance' (1954) in which a cattle baron played by Spencer Tracy
tyrannizes his three sons, and only the youngest, Joe, played by
Robert Wagner, remains loyal.
The TV anthology series 'Omnibus' (1952-1961) staged a 73-minute
version of 'King Lear' on 18 October 1953. It was adapted by Peter
Brook and starred Orson Welles in his American television debut.
Two screen versions of 'King Lear' date from the early 1970s: Grigori
Kozintsev's 'Korol Lir', and Peter Brook's film of 'King Lear', which
stars Paul Scofield. Brook's film starkly divided the critics: Pauline
Kael said "I didn't just dislike this production, I hated it!" and
suggested the alternative title 'Night of the Living Dead'. Yet Robert
Hatch in 'The Nation' thought it as "excellent a filming of the play
as one can expect" and Vincent Canby in 'The New York Times' called it
"an exalting 'Lear', full of exquisite terror". The film drew on the
ideas of Jan Kott, in particular his observation that 'King Lear' was
the precursor of absurdist theatre, and that it has parallels with
Beckett's 'Endgame'. Critics who dislike the film particularly draw
attention to its bleak nature from its opening: complaining that the
world of the play does not deteriorate with Lear's suffering, but
commences dark, colourless and wintry, leaving, according to Douglas
Brode, "Lear, the land, and us with nowhere to go". Cruelty pervades
the film, which does not distinguish between the violence of
ostensibly good and evil characters, presenting both savagely. Paul
Scofield, as Lear, eschews sentimentality: This demanding old man with
a coterie of unruly knights provokes audience sympathy for the
daughters in the early scenes, and his presentation explicitly rejects
the tradition of playing Lear as "poor old white-haired patriarch".
'Korol Lir' has been praised by critic Alexander Anikst for the
"serious, deeply thoughtful" even "philosophical approach" of director
Grigori Kozintsev and writer Boris Pasternak. Making a thinly veiled
criticism of Brook in the process, Anikst praised the fact that there
were "no attempts at sensationalism, no efforts to 'modernise'
Shakespeare by introducing Freudian themes, Existentialist ideas,
eroticism, or sexual perversion. [Kozintsev] ... has simply made a
film of Shakespeare's tragedy." Dmitri Shostakovich provided an epic
score, its motifs including an (increasingly ironic) trumpet fanfare
for Lear, and a five-bar "Call to Death" marking each character's
demise. Kozintzev described his vision of the film as an ensemble
piece: with Lear, played by a dynamic Jüri Järvet, as first among
equals in a cast of fully developed characters. The film highlights
Lear's role as king by including his people throughout the film on a
scale no stage production could emulate, charting the central
character's decline from their god to their helpless equal; his final
descent into madness marked by his realisation that he has neglected
the "poor naked wretches". As the film progresses, ruthless
characters--Goneril, Regan, Edmund--increasingly appear isolated in
shots, in contrast to the director's focus, throughout the film, on
masses of human beings.
Jonathan Miller twice directed Michael Hordern in the title role for
English television, the first for the BBC's 'Play of the Month' in
1975 and the second for the 'BBC Television Shakespeare' in 1982.
Hordern received mixed reviews, and was considered a bold choice due
to his history of taking much lighter roles. Also for English
television, Laurence Olivier took the role in a 1983 TV production for
Granada Television. It was his last screen appearance in a
Shakespearean role.
In 1985, a major screen adaptation of the play appeared: 'Ran',
directed by Akira Kurosawa. At the time the most expensive Japanese
film ever made, it tells the story of Hidetora, a fictional
16th-century Japanese warlord, whose attempt to divide his kingdom
among his three sons leads to an estrangement with the youngest, and
ultimately most loyal, of them, and eventually to civil war. In
contrast to the cold drab greys of Brook and Kozintsev, Kurosawa's
film is full of vibrant colour: external scenes in yellows, blues and
greens, interiors in browns and ambers, and Emi Wada's Oscar-winning
colour-coded costumes for each family member's soldiers. Hidetora has
a back-story: a violent and ruthless rise to power, and the film
portrays contrasting victims: the virtuous characters Sue and
Tsurumaru who are able to forgive, and the vengeful Kaede (Mieko
Harada), Hidetora's daughter-in-law and the film's Lady Macbeth-like
villain.
A scene in which a character is threatened with blinding in the manner
of Gloucester forms the climax of the 1973 parody horror 'Theatre of
Blood'. Comic use is made of Sir's inability to physically carry any
actress cast as Cordelia opposite his Lear in the 1983 film of the
stage play 'The Dresser'. John Boorman's 1990 'Where the Heart Is'
features a father who disinherits his three spoiled children. Francis
Ford Coppola deliberately incorporated elements of 'Lear' in his 1990
sequel 'The Godfather Part III', including Michael Corleone's attempt
to retire from crime throwing his domain into anarchy, and most
obviously the death of his daughter in his arms. Parallels have also
been drawn between Andy García's character Vincent and both Edgar and
Edmund, and between Talia Shire's character Connie and Kaede in 'Ran'.
In 1997, Jocelyn Moorhouse directed 'A Thousand Acres', based on Jane
Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, set in 1990s
Iowa. The film is described, by scholar Tony Howard, as the first
adaptation to confront the play's disturbing sexual dimensions. The
story is told from the viewpoint of the elder two daughters, Ginny
played by Jessica Lange and Rose played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who were
sexually abused by their father as teenagers. Their younger sister
Caroline, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh had escaped this fate and is
ultimately the only one to remain loyal.
In 1998, the BBC produced a televised version, directed by Richard
Eyre, of his award-winning 1997 Royal National Theatre production,
starring Ian Holm as Lear. In March 2001, in a review originally
posted to CultureVulture.net, critic Bob Wake observed that the
production was "of particular note for preserving Ian Holm's
celebrated stage performance in the title role. Stellar interpreters
of Lear haven't always been so fortunate." Wake added that other
performances had been poorly documented because they suffered from
technological problems (Orson Welles), eccentric televised productions
(Paul Scofield), or were filmed when the actor playing Lear was unwell
(Laurence Olivier).
The play was adapted to the world of gangsters in Don Boyd's 2001 'My
Kingdom', a version which differs from all others in commencing with
the Lear character, Sandeman, played by Richard Harris, in a loving
relationship with his wife. But her violent death marks the start of
an increasingly bleak and violent chain of events (influenced by
co-writer Nick Davies' documentary book 'Dark Heart') which in spite
of the director's denial that the film had "serious parallels" to
Shakespeare's play, actually mirror aspects of its plot closely.
Unlike Shakespeare's Lear, but like Hidetora and Sandeman, the central
character of Uli Edel's 2002 American TV adaptation 'King of Texas',
John Lear played by Patrick Stewart, has a back-story centred on his
violent rise to power as the richest landowner (metaphorically a
"king") in General Sam Houston's independent Texas in the early 1840s.
Daniel Rosenthal comments that the film was able, by reason of having
been commissioned by the cable channel TNT, to include a bleaker and
more violent ending than would have been possible on the national
networks. 2003's Channel 4-commissioned two-parter 'Second Generation'
set the story in the world of Asian manufacturing and music in
England.
The Canadian comedy-drama TV series 'Slings & Arrows' (2003-2006),
which follows a fictional Shakespearean theatre festival inspired by
the real-life Stratford Festival in Ontario, devotes its third season
to a troubled production of 'King Lear'. The fictional actor starring
as Lear (played by William Hutt, who in real life played Lear onstage
at Stratford three times to great acclaim) is given the role despite
concerns over his advanced age and ill health, plus a secret addiction
to heroin discovered by the theatre's director. Eventually the actor's
mental state deteriorates until he seems to believe he is Lear
himself, wandering into a storm and later reciting his lines
uncontrollably. William Hutt himself was in failing health when he
filmed the TV role and died less than a year after the third season
premiered.
In 2008, a version of 'King Lear' produced by the Royal Shakespeare
Company premiered with Ian McKellen in the role of King Lear.
In the 2012 romantic comedy 'If I Were You', there is a reference to
the play when the lead characters are cast in a female version of King
Lear set in modern times, with Marcia Gay Harden cast in the Lear role
and Leonor Watling as "the fool". Lear is an executive in a corporate
empire instead of a literal one, being phased out of her position. The
off-beat play (and its cast) is a major plot element of the movie. The
American musical drama television series 'Empire' is partially
inspired by 'King Lear'. Similarly, the HBO series 'Succession'
(2018-2023) is widely considered to be a modern re-telling of 'King
Lear'.
Carl Bessai wrote and directed a modern adaptation of 'King Lear'
titled 'The Lears'. Released in 2017, the film starred Bruce Dern,
Anthony Michael Hall and Sean Astin.
On 28 May 2018, BBC Two broadcast 'King Lear' starring Anthony Hopkins
in the title role and Emma Thompson as Goneril. Directed by Richard
Eyre, the play featured a 21st-century setting. Hopkins, at the age of
80, was deemed ideal for the role and "at home with Lear's skin" by
critic Sam Wollaston.
Radio and audio
=================
The first recording of the Argo Shakespeare for Argo Records was 'King
Lear' in 1957, directed and produced by George Rylands with William
Devlin in the title role, Jill Balcon as Goneril and Prunella Scales
as Cordelia.
The Shakespeare Recording Society recorded a full-length unabridged
audio productions on LP in 1965 (SRS-M-232) directed by Howard
Sackler, with Paul Scofield as Lear, Cyril Cusack as Gloucester.
Robert Stephens as Edmund, Rachel Roberts, Pamela Brown and John
Stride.
'King Lear' was broadcast live on the BBC Third Programme on 29
September 1967, starring John Gielgud, Barbara Jefford, Barbara Bolton
and Virginia McKenna as Lear and his daughters. At Abbey Road Studios,
John Lennon used a microphone held to a radio to overdub fragments of
the play (Act IV, Scene 6) onto the song "I Am the Walrus", which The
Beatles were recording that evening. The voices recorded were those of
Mark Dignam (Gloucester), Philip Guard (Edgar) and John Bryning
(Oswald).
On 10 April 1994, Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company
performed a radio adaptation directed by Glyn Dearman starring Gielgud
as Lear, with Keith Michell as Kent, Richard Briers as Gloucester,
Dame Judi Dench as Goneril, Emma Thompson as Cordelia, Eileen Atkins
as Regan, Kenneth Branagh as Edmund, John Shrapnel as Albany, Robert
Stephens as Cornwall, Denis Quilley as Burgundy, Sir Derek Jacobi as
France, Iain Glen as Edgar and Michael Williams as The Fool.
Naxos AudioBooks released an audio production in 2002 with Paul
Scofield as Lear, Alec McCowen as Gloucester, Kenneth Branagh as The
Fool, and a full cast. It was nominated for an Audie Award for Audio
Drama in 2003.
In October 2017, Big Finish Productions released an audio adaptation
full cast drama. Adapted by Nicholas Pegg. The full cast starred David
Warner as the titular King Lear, Lisa Bowerman as Regan, Louise
Jameson as Goneril, Trevor Cooper as Oswald / Lear's Gentleman / Third
Messenger, Raymond Coulthard (Edmund / Cornwall's Servant / Second
Messenger / Second Gentleman), Barnaby Edwards (The King of France /
Old Man / Herald), Ray Fearon (The Duke of Cornwall), Mike Grady (The
Fool), Gwilym Lee (Edgar / the Duke of Burgundy), Tony Millan (The
Earl of Gloucester / First Messenger), Nicholas Pegg (The Duke of
Albany / Gloucester's Servant / Curan) and Paul Shelley (The Earl of
Kent)
Opera
=======
Giuseppe Verdi commissioned a libretto for a proposed opera, 'Re
Lear', but no music was ever composed.
German composer Aribert Reimann's opera 'Lear' premiered on 9 July
1978.
Japanese composer's Toshio Hosokawa's opera 'Vision of Lear' premiered
on 19 April 1998 at the Munich Biennale.
Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen's opera 'Kuningas Lear' premiered on
15 September 2000.
Novels
========
Jane Smiley's 1991 novel 'A Thousand Acres', winner of the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction, is based on 'King Lear', but set in a farm in Iowa
in 1979 and told from the perspective of the oldest daughter.
The 2009 novel 'Fool' by Christopher Moore is a comedic retelling of
'King Lear' from the perspective of the court jester.
Edward St Aubyn's 2017 novel 'Dunbar' is a modern retelling of 'King
Lear', commissioned as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series.
On 27 March 2018, Tessa Gratton published a high fantasy adaptation of
'King Lear' titled 'The Queens of Innis Lear' with Tor Books.
Preti Taneja's 2018 novel 'We That Are Young' is based on 'King Lear'
and set in India.
The 2021 novel 'Learwife' by J. R. Thorpe imagines the story of Lear's
wife and the mother of his children, who is not present in the play.
See also
======================================================================
* Illegitimacy in fiction
* Creation ex materia
* Shakespearean fool
* 'Fool' (novel)
* Water and Salt
* Cap-o'-Rushes
* The Goose-Girl at the Well
* The Dirty Shepherdess
* The Yiddish King Lear
* List of idioms attributed to Shakespeare
External links
======================================================================
*
*
* '[
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1532 King Lear]' - at Project
Gutenberg
* [
http://www.bl.uk/works/king-lear 'King Lear'] at the British
Library
*
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lear
