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King Lear
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This article is about Shakespeare's play. For the legendary figure, see Leir of Britain. For other uses, see King Lear (disambiguation).
King Lear and the Fool in the Storm by William Dyce (1806–1864) — the depiction of the heath a popular and critical fallacy of interpretation.[1]
King Lear is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It depicts the gradual descent into madness of the title character, after he disposes of his kingdom giving bequests to two of his three daughters based on their flattery of him, bringing tragic consequences for all. Derived from the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological pre-Roman Celtic king, the play has been widely adapted for the stage and motion pictures, with the title role coveted by many of the world's most accomplished actors.
The first attribution to Shakespeare of this play, originally drafted in 1605 or 1606 at the latest with its first known performance on St. Stephen's Day in 1606, was a 1608 publication in a quarto of uncertain provenance, in which the play is listed as a history; it may be an early draft or simply reflect the first performance text. The Tragedy of King Lear, a more theatrical revision, was included in the 1623 First Folio. Modern editors usually conflate the two, though some insist that each version has its own individual integrity that should be preserved.
After the English Restoration, the play was often revised with a happy, non-tragic ending for audiences who disliked its dark and depressing tone, but since the 19th century Shakespeare's original version has been regarded as one of his supreme achievements. The tragedy is particularly noted for its probing observations on the nature of human suffering and kinship. George Bernard Shaw wrote, "No man will ever write a better tragedy than Lear."
Contents
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1 Characters
2 Synopsis
2.1 Act I
2.2 Act II
2.3 Act III
2.4 Act IV
2.5 Act V
3 Sources
3.1 Changes from source material
4 Date and text
5 Analysis and criticism
5.1 Historicist interpretations
5.2 Psychoanalytic and psychosocial interpretations
5.3 Christianity
5.4 Fairy tales
6 Performance history
6.1 17th century
6.2 18th century
6.3 19th century
6.4 20th century
6.5 21st century
7 Screen adaptations
8 Radio/audio adaptations
9 See also
10 Notes and references
10.1 Notes
10.2 References
11 Cited sources
11.1 Editions of King Lear
11.2 Secondary sources
12 External links
Characters[edit]
Lear – King of Britain
Goneril – Lear's eldest daughter
Regan – Lear's second daughter
Cordelia – Lear's youngest daughter
Duke of Albany – Goneril's husband
Duke of Cornwall – Regan's husband
Earl of Gloucester
Earl of Kent – later disguised as Caius
Edgar – Gloucester's son
Edmund – Gloucester's illegitimate son
Oswald – Goneril's loyal steward
Fool – Lear's fool
King of France – suitor and later husband to Cordelia
Duke of Burgundy – suitor to Cordelia
Curan – courtier
Old man – tenant of Gloucester
Officer – employed by Edmund
Gentleman – attends Cordelia
Knights of Lear's retinue
Officers, Messengers, Servants, Soldiers, and Attendants
Synopsis[edit]
Cordelia in the Court of King Lear (1873) by Sir John Gilbert
Act I[edit]
King Lear of Britain, elderly and wanting to retire from the duties of the monarchy, decides to divide his realm among his three daughters, and declares he will offer the largest share to the one who loves him most. The eldest, Goneril, speaks first, declaring her love for her father in fulsome terms. Moved by her flattery Lear proceeds to grant to Goneril her share as soon as she has finished her declaration, before Regan and Cordelia have a chance to speak. He then awards to Regan her share as soon as she has spoken. When it is finally the turn of his youngest and favourite daughter, Cordelia, at first she refuses to say anything ("Nothing, my Lord") and then declares there is nothing to compare her love to, nor words to properly express it; she speaks honestly but bluntly, that she loves him according to her bond, no more and no less. Infuriated, Lear disinherits Cordelia and divides her share between her elder sisters.
The Earl of Gloucester and the Earl of Kent observe that, by dividing his realm between Goneril and Regan, Lear has awarded his realm in equal shares to the peerages of the Duke of Albany (Goneril's husband) and the Duke of Cornwall (Regan's husband). Kent objects to Lear's unfair treatment of Cordelia; enraged by Kent's protests, Lear banishes him from the country. Lear then summons the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France, who have both proposed marriage to Cordelia. Learning that Cordelia has been disinherited, the Duke of Burgundy withdraws his suit, but the King of France is impressed by her honesty and marries her nonetheless. The King of France is shocked by Lear's decision because up until this time Lear has only praised and favoured Cordelia (". . . she, who even but now was your best object, the argument of your praise, balm of your age . . . ").[2] Meanwhile, Gloucester has introduced his illegitimate son Edmund to Kent.
King Lear: Cordelia's Farewell by Edwin Austin Abbey
Lear announces he will live alternately with Goneril and Regan, and their husbands. He reserves to himself a retinue of one hundred knights, to be supported by his daughters. Goneril and Regan speak privately, revealing that their declarations of love were fake, and that they view Lear as a foolish old man.
Gloucester's bastard son Edmund resents his illegitimate status, and plots to dispose of his legitimate older brother Edgar. He tricks his father with a forged letter, making him think that Edgar plans to usurp the estate. Kent returns from exile in disguise (calling himself Caius), and Lear hires him as a servant. At Albany and Goneril's house, Lear and Kent quarrel with Oswald, Goneril's steward. Lear discovers that now that Goneril has power, she no longer respects him. She orders him to reduce the number of his disorderly retinue. Enraged, Lear departs for Regan's home. The Fool reproaches Lear with his foolishness in giving everything to Regan and Goneril, and predicts that Regan will treat him no better.
Act II[edit]
Edmund learns from Curan, a courtier, that there is likely to be war between Albany and Cornwall, and that Regan and Cornwall are to arrive at Gloucester's house that evening. Taking advantage of the arrival of the duke and Regan, Edmund fakes an attack by Edgar, and Gloucester is completely taken in. He disinherits Edgar and proclaims him an outlaw.
Bearing Lear's message to Regan, Kent meets Oswald again at Gloucester's home, quarrels with him again, and is put in the stocks by Regan and her husband Cornwall. When Lear arrives, he objects to the mistreatment of his messenger, but Regan is as dismissive of her father as Goneril was. Lear is enraged but impotent. Goneril arrives and supports Regan's argument against him. Lear yields completely to his rage. He rushes out into a storm to rant against his ungrateful daughters, accompanied by the mocking Fool. Kent later follows to protect him. Gloucester protests against Lear's mistreatment. With Lear's retinue of a hundred knights dissolved, the only companions he has left are his Fool and Kent. Wandering on the heath after the storm, Edgar, in the guise of a madman named Tom o' Bedlam, meets Lear. Edgar babbles madly while Lear denounces his daughters. Kent leads them all to shelter.
Act III[edit]
A watercolour of King Lear and the Fool in the storm from Act III, Scene ii of King Lear
Edmund betrays Gloucester to Cornwall, Regan and Goneril. He reveals evidence that his father knows of an impending French invasion designed to reinstate Lear to the throne; and in fact a French army has landed in Britain. Once Edmund leaves with Goneril to warn Albany about the invasion, Gloucester is arrested, and Regan and Cornwall gouge out Gloucester's eyes. As he is doing so, a servant is overcome with rage by what he is witnessing and attacks Cornwall, mortally wounding him. Regan kills the servant, and tells Gloucester that Edmund betrayed him; then she turns him out to wander the heath, too.
Act IV[edit]
Edgar, in his madman's guise, meets his blinded father on the heath. Gloucester, sightless and failing to recognise Edgar's voice, begs Tom to lead him to a cliff at Dover so that he may jump to his death. Goneril discovers that she finds Edmund more attractive than her honest husband Albany, whom she regards as cowardly. Albany has developed a conscience — he is disgusted by the sisters' treatment of Lear and Gloucester -- and denounces his wife. Goneril sends Edmund back to Regan. After receiving news of Cornwall's death, she fears her newly widowed sister may steal Edmund and sends him a letter through Oswald. Now alone with Lear, Kent leads him to the French army, which is commanded by Cordelia. But Lear is half-mad and terribly embarrassed by his earlier follies. At Regan's instigation, Albany joins his forces with hers against the French. Goneril's suspicions about Regan's motives are confirmed and returned, as Regan rightly guesses the meaning of her letter and declares to Oswald that she is a more appropriate match for Edmund. Edgar pretends to lead Gloucester to a cliff, then changes his voice and tells Gloucester he has miraculously survived a great fall. Lear appears, by now completely mad. He rants that the whole world is corrupt and runs off.
Oswald appears, still looking for Edmund. On Regan's orders, he tries to kill Gloucester but is killed by Edgar. In Oswald's pocket, Edgar finds Goneril's letter, in which she encourages Edmund to kill her husband and take her as his wife. Kent and Cordelia take charge of Lear, whose madness quickly passes. Regan, Goneril, Albany, and Edmund meet with their forces. Albany insists that they fight the French invaders but not harm Lear or Cordelia. The two sisters lust for Edmund, who has made promises to both. He considers the dilemma and plots the deaths of Albany, Lear, and Cordelia. Edgar gives Goneril's letter to Albany. The armies meet in battle, the British defeat the French, and Lear and Cordelia are captured. Edmund sends Lear and Cordelia off with secret-joint orders from him (representing Regan and her forces) and Goneril (representing the forces of her estranged husband, Albany) for the execution of Cordelia.
Act V[edit]
Lear and Cordelia by Ford Madox Brown
The victorious British leaders meet, and the recently widowed Regan now declares she will marry Edmund. But Albany exposes the intrigues of Edmund and Goneril and proclaims Edmund a traitor. Regan falls ill, having been poisoned by Goneril, and is escorted offstage, where she dies. Edmund defies Albany, who calls for a trial by combat. Edgar appears masked and in armour, and challenges Edmund to a duel. No one knows who he is. Edgar wounds Edmund fatally, though he does not die immediately. Albany confronts Goneril with the letter which was intended to be his death warrant; she flees in shame and rage. Edgar reveals himself, and reports that Gloucester died offstage from the shock and joy of learning that Edgar is alive, after Edgar revealed himself to his father.
Offstage, Goneril, her plans thwarted, commits suicide. The dying Edmund decides, though he admits it is against his own character, to try to save Lear and Cordelia; however, his confession comes too late. Soon after, Albany sends men to countermand Edmund's orders, Lear enters bearing Cordelia's corpse in his arms, having survived by killing the executioner. Kent appears and Lear now recognises him. Albany urges Lear to resume his throne, but as with Gloucester, the trials Lear has been through have finally overwhelmed him, and he dies. Albany then asks Kent and Edgar to take charge of the throne. Kent declines, explaining that his master is calling him on a journey and he must follow. Finally, Albany (in the Quarto version) or Edgar (in the Folio version) implies that he will now become king.
Sources[edit]
The first edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande, printed in 1577.
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.[3][4][5] 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 Historia Regum Britanniae 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; An Historical Description of Iland of Britaine (1577), by William Harrison; Remaines Concerning Britaine (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 fairy 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.[6]
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.[7]
Changes from source material[edit]
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).[8] 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."[8]
Date and text[edit]
Title page of the first quarto edition, published in 1608
Although an exact date of composition cannot be given, many academic editors of the play date King Lear between 1603 and 1606. The latest it could have been written is 1606, as the Stationers' Register notes a performance 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).[9] In his Arden edition, R. A. Foakes argues for a date of 1605–6, because one of Shakespeare's sources, The True Chronicle History of King Leir, was not published until 1605; close correspondences between that play and Shakespeare's suggest that he may have been working from a text (rather than from recollections of a performance).[10] 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 "1604-5 seems the best compromise".[11] Dr. Naseeb Shaheen dates the play c1605-6 per line 1.2.103 "These late eclipses in the sun and moon" which relates to the lunar eclipse of 27 September 1605 and the solar eclipse of 2 October 1605.[12]
The first page of King Lear, printed in the Second Folio of 1632
The modern text of King Lear derives from three sources: two quartos, published in 1608 (Q1) and 1619 (Q2)[13] respectively, and the version in the First Folio of 1623 (F1). The differences between these versions are significant. Q1 contains 285 lines not in F1; F1 contains around 100 lines not in Q1. Also, at least a thousand individual words are changed between the two texts, each text has a completely different style of punctuation, and about half the verse lines in the F1 are either printed as prose or differently divided in the Q1. The early editors, beginning with Alexander Pope, simply conflated the two texts, creating the modern version that has remained nearly universal for centuries. The conflated version is born from the hypothesis that Shakespeare wrote only one original manuscript, now unfortunately lost, and that the Quarto and Folio versions are distortions of that original. Others, such as Nuttall and Bloom, have identified Shakespeare himself as having been involved in reworking passages in the play to accommodate performances and other textual requirements of the play.[14]
As early as 1931, Madeleine Doran suggested that the two texts had basically different provenances, 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. Their thesis, while controversial, has gained significant acceptance. It posits, essentially, that the Quarto derives from something close to Shakespeare's foul papers, and the Folio is drawn in some way from a promptbook, prepared for production by Shakespeare's company or someone else. In short, Q1 is "authorial"; F1 is "theatrical". In criticism, the rise of "revision criticism" has been part of the pronounced trend away from mid-century formalism.[15]
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 is the only recent edition to offer the traditional conflated text. 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.[14] 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."[14]
Analysis and criticism[edit]
Analysis and criticism of King Lear over the centuries has been extensive.
What we know of Shakespeare's wide reading and powers of assimilation seems to show that he made use of all kinds of material, absorbing contradictory viewpoints, positive and negative, religious and secular, as if to ensure that King Lear would offer no single controlling perspective, but be open to, indeed demand, multiple interpretations.
R. A. Foakes [16]
Historicist interpretations[edit]
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. Along with the two views of Nature, Lear 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."[17]
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",[18] endurance, courage and "ripeness".[19]
Three daughters of King Lear by Gustav Pope
Psychoanalytic and psychosocial interpretations[edit]
King Lear provides a basis for "the primary enactment of psychic breakdown in English literary history".[20] The play begins with Lear's "near-fairytale narcissism".[21]
Given the absence of legitimate mothers in King Lear, Coppélia Kahn[22] 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.
Lear and Cordelia in Prison — William Blake circa 1779
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".[23] 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 and succeeds him).
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.[24] This theory indicates that the King's "dethronement"[25] 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".[26]
"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."[26]
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.[27]
Christianity[edit]
A 1793 painting of King Lear and Cordelia by Benjamin West.
Critics are divided on the question of whether or not King Lear represents an affirmation of a particular Christian doctrine.[28] Among those who argue that Lear is redeemed in the Christian sense through suffering are A. C. Bradley[29] and John Reibetanz, who has written: "through his sufferings, Lear has won an enlightened soul".[30] Other critics who find no evidence of redemption and emphasise the horrors of the final act include John Holloway[31] and Marvin Rosenberg.[32] 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".[33]
Fairy tales[edit]
In the first edition of Kinder- und Hausmärchen by the Brothers Grimm, the Anhang (appendix) entry to No. 71 Princess Mouse-skin included a note: "as the father here, so asks King Lear his daughter". The English translation of this story by Oliver Loo begins as follows: "A king had three daughters; thereon he wanted to know, which loved him most, let them come in front of him and asked them. The eldest spoke, she loved him more, than the whole kingdom; the second, more than all the precious stones and pearls in the world; but the third said, she loved him more than salt. The king was so upset, that she compared her love of him with such a small thing, gave her to a servant and commanded, he should take her into the forest and kill her."[34]
Performance history[edit]
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,[35] by Kathryn Hunter in 1996–67,[36] by Clare Coulter in 2013,[37] by Glenda Jackson in 2016,[38] and by Diane D'Aquila in 2017.[39] Marcia Gay Harden plays Lear in a few scenes from the play in the 2012 Canadian film If I Were You.
17th century[edit]
Cover of Tate's The History of King Lear
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.[40] 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.[41] 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.[42] 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.[43]
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.[44] 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.[45] 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).[46] 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."[47] 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 kidnap and rape,[48] and a scene in which Cordelia wears men's pants that would reveal the actress's ankles.[49] The play ends with a celebration of "the King's blest Restauration", an obvious reference to Charles II.[50]
18th century[edit]
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.[51]
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.[52] He also reduced the prominence of the Edgar-Cordelia love story, in order to focus more on the relationship between Lear and his daughters.[53] 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.[54]
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.[55]
19th century[edit]
King Lear mourns Cordelia's death, James Barry, 1786–1788
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."[56]
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.[57] 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.[58] At last in 1838 William Macready at Covent Garden performed Shakespeare's version, freed from Tate's adaptions.[59] 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."[60] And Helen Faucit's final appearance as Cordelia, dead in her father's arms, became one of the most iconic of Victorian images.[61] 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."[62] 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.[63] 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.[64]
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.[65] 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.[66] 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.[67] 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."[68]
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.[69] 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.[70]
20th century[edit]
Cordelia's Portion by Ford Madox Brown
By mid-century, the actor-manager tradition had declined, to be replaced by a structure where 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".[71] Wolfit supposedly drank eight bottles of Guinness in the course of each performance.[72]
George Bernard Shaw wrote, "No man will ever write a better tragedy than Lear".[73]
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.[74] 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.[75] Similarly, the Fool evolved through the course of the century, with portrayals often deriving from the music hall or circus tradition.[76]
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."[77] 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.[78]
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 (in Anthony Dawson's words) "a kind of symbolic circle".[79] 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".[80]
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.[81] 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.[81]
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.[82] 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.[83]
21st century[edit]
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).[84]
In 2012 Peter Hinton directed an all-First Nations production of King Lear at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with the setting changed to an Algonquin nation in the 17th century.[85] 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.[85] This setting would later be reproduced as part of the Manga Shakespeare graphic novel series published by Self-Made Hero, adapted by Richard Appignanesi and featuring the illustrations of Ilya.
In 2015 Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille staged a production set in Upper Canada, against the backdrop of the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837.[86] This production starred David Fox as Lear.[86]
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."[87]
In 2016 Talawa Theatre Company and Royal Exchange Manchester co-produced a production of King Lear with Don Warrington in the title role.[88][89] The production, featuring a largely black cast, was described in The Guardian as being "as close to definitive as can be".[90] The Daily Telegraph said "Don Warrington's King Lear is a heartbreaking tour de force".[91][92] King Lear was also 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".[93]
Screen adaptations[edit]
The play's plot, or major elements from it, have frequently been used by film makers.
The first film of King Lear was a five-minute German version made around 1905, which has not survived.[94] The oldest extant version is a ten-minute studio-based version from 1909 by Vitagraph, which made (in Luke McKernan's words) the "ill-advised" decision to attempt to cram in as much of the plot as possible.[95] 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.[96] 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.[97]
Joseph Mankiewicz' 1949 House of Strangers is often considered a Lear adaptation, but the parallels are more striking in its 1954 Western remake Broken Lance in which a cattle baron played by Spencer Tracy tyrannises over his three sons, of whom only the youngest, Joe, played by Robert Wagner, remains loyal.[98]
The only two significant big-screen performances of Shakespeare's text date from the early 1970s: Grigori Kozintsev was working on his Korol Lir[a] at the same time as Peter Brook was filming his King Lear.[99] 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".[100] 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".[101] The film drew heavily on the ideas of Jan Kott, in particular his observation that King Lear was the precursor of absurdist theatre: in particular, the film has parallels with Beckett's Endgame.[102] 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 (in Douglas Brode's words) "Lear, the land, and us with nowhere to go".[103] Cruelty pervades the film, which does not distinguish between the violence of ostensibly good and evil characters, presenting both savagely.[104] 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 (as Daniel Rosenthal describes it) of playing Lear as "poor old white-haired patriarch".[105]
By contrast, Korol Lir has been praised, for example 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."[106] 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.[107] 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.[108] 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'.[109] 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.[110]
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.[111] 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, its pathos deriving in part from the physical frailty of Olivier the actor.[112]
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.[113] 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.[114] 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.[115]
Screenshot from trailer for House of Strangers (1949)
"The film has two antecedents--biblical references to Joseph and his brothers and King Lear".[116]
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.[117] 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.[118] John Boorman's 1990 Where the Heart Is features a father who disinherits his three spoilt children.[119] 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.[120]
In 1997 Jocelyn Moorhouse directed A Thousand Acres, based on Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, set in 1990s Iowa.[121] The film is described, by scholar Tony Howard, as the first adaptation to confront the play's disturbing sexual dimensions.[120] 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.[122][123]
The play was again 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.[124] 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.[125] 2003's Channel 4-commissioned two-parter Second Generation set the story in the world of Asian manufacturing and music in England.[126]
In 2016, Talawa Theatre Company and Royal Exchange Manchester released a stage to screen adaptation of King Lear with Don Warrington in the title role, and also starring Alfred Enoch, Miltos Yerolemou, Philip Whitchurch, Fraser Ayres and Rakie Ayola.[127][128] King Lear: The Film is available free in the UK and internationally via the BBC and British Council collaboration, Shakespeare Lives till 30 September 2016.[128]
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.[129]
Radio/audio adaptations[edit]
The very first recording of the Argo Shakespeare for Argo Records was King Lear in 1957, directed/produced by George Rylands with William Devlin in the title role, Jill Balcon as Goneril and Prunella Scales as Cordelia.[130]
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.
On 10 April 1994 in celebration of Sir John Gielgud's 90th birthday, 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 Doneril, 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.[131]
On 8 May 2016, BBC Radio 3's Drama on 3 broadcast a production directed by Gaynor Macfarlane with an all-Scottish cast featuring Ian McDiarmid as Lear, Madeleine Worrall as Goneril, Frances Grey as Regan, Joanna Vanderham as Cordelia, Michael Nardone as Kent, Bill Paterson as Gloucester, Finn den Hertog as Edgar, Paul Higgins as Edmund, Brian Vernel as The Fool, Steven Robertson as Albany and Steven Cree as Cornwall.[132]
See also[edit]
Illegitimacy in fiction
Nothing comes from nothing
Shakespearean fool
Fool (novel)
Water and Salt
Cap-o'-Rushes
The Goose-Girl at the Well
The Dirty Shepherdess
The Yiddish King Lear
Notes and references[edit]
Notes[edit]
Jump up ^ The original title of this film in Cyrillic script is Король Лир and the sources anglicise it with different spellings. Rosenthal 2007 has Korol Lir, Brode 2001 has Karol Lear.
References[edit]
Jump up ^ See Gwilym Jones, Shakespeare's Storms (MUP, 2015), pp. 59-78. ISBN 1526111853
Jump up ^ Greenblatt, Stephen and Cohen, Walter and Jean E, Howard and Katharine Eisaman, Maus (2009). The Norton Shakespeare Based on the Oxford Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc. p. 1268. ISBN 9780393933130. CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
Jump up ^ Jackson 1995, p. 459.
Jump up ^ Ekwall 1928, p. xlii.
Jump up ^ Stevenson, W. H., "A note on the derivation of the name 'Leicester'", in: The Archaeological Journal, Volume 75, Royal Archaeological Institute, London, 1918, pp. 30–31
Jump up ^ Soula Mitakidou and Anthony L. Manna, with Melpomeni Kanatsouli, Folktales from Greece: A Treasury of Delights, p 100 ISBN 1-56308-908-4; see also D. L. Ashliman, "Love Like Salt: folktales of types 923 and 510"
Jump up ^ McNeir 1968.
^ Jump up to: a b Harold Bloom. Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages: King Lear. Infobase Publishing, p.53, 2008.
Jump up ^ Frank Kermode, 'King Lear', The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 1249.
Jump up ^ R.A. Foakes, ed. King Lear. London: Arden, 1997, 89–90.
Jump up ^ Kermode, Riverside, 1250.
Jump up ^ Naseeb Shaheen Biblical References in Shakespeare's Plays (Newark, 1999, 2011), p. 606
Jump up ^ The 1619 quarto is part of William Jaggard's so-called False Folio.
^ Jump up to: a b c Harold Bloom. Bloom's Shakespeare Through the Ages: King Lear. Infobase Publishing, p.xii, 2008.
Jump up ^ Taylor & Warren 1983.
Jump up ^ Shakespeare and Foakes p.107.
Jump up ^ John Danby, Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature: A Study of King Lear (London, 1949), p.50
Jump up ^ Danby, p.151
Jump up ^ Danby, p.50
Jump up ^ Brown, Dennis (2001). "King Lear: The Lost Leader; Group Disintegration, Transformation and Suspended Reconsolidation". Critical Survey. Berghahn Books. 13 (3): 19–39. eISSN 1752-2293. ISSN 0011-1570. JSTOR 41557126 – via JSTOR. (Registration required (help)).
Jump up ^ Brown, Dennis (2001). ""King Lear": The Lost Leader; Group Disintegration, Transformation and Suspended Reconsolidation". Critical Survey. Berghahn Books. 13 (3): 19–39. eISSN 1752-2293. ISSN 0011-1570. JSTOR 41557126 – via JSTOR. (Registration required (help)).
Jump up ^ Kahn, Coppèlia. "The Absent Mother in King Lear". Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Eds. Margaret Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy Vickers. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986. p. 33-49.
Jump up ^ Writings on Art and Literature by Sigmund Freud, Foreword by Neil Hertz, Stanford University Press (page 120)
Jump up ^ McLaughlin, John. "The Dynamics of Power in King Lear: An Adlerian Interpretation." Shakespeare Quarterly 29 (1978): 39.
Jump up ^ Croake, James W. (1983). "Alderian Family Counseling Education". Individual Psychology: The Journal of Adlerian Theory, Research & Practice. 39: 247 – via EBSCOhost.
^ Jump up to: a b Harold Bloom. Shakespeare Through the Ages: King Lear, pg. 317.
Jump up ^ Kamaralli, Anna (22 December 2015). "Thou hadst better avoid getting teary – and King Leary – this Christmas". The Conversation. Retrieved 4 January 2016.
Jump up ^ Peat, Derek (1982). "And That's True Too: King Lear and the Tension of Uncertainty", in Aspects of King Lear edited by Kenneth Muir and Stanley Wells. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 43–53. ISBN 978-0-521-28813-2.
Jump up ^ Bradley, A. C. (1991). Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. London: Penguin. p. 235. ISBN 978-0-14-053019-3.
Jump up ^ Reibetanz, John (1977). The Lear world : a study of King Lear in its dramatic context. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 108.
Jump up ^ Holloway, John (2005). The Story of the Night: Studies in Shakespeare's Major Tragedies. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-01033-8.
Jump up ^ Rosenberg, Marvin (1992). The Masks of King Lear. Newark DE: Univ of Delaware Press. ISBN 978-0-87413-485-8.
Jump up ^ Elton, William R. (1988). King Lear and the Gods. Lexington KY: University Press of Kentucky. p. 260. ISBN 978-0-8131-0178-1.
Jump up ^ The Original Grimm Fairy Tales Translated by Oliver Loo, 2014, ISBN 978-1-312-41904-9
Jump up ^ "No gender rules for Rose's King Lear". Toronto Star, 19 March 1995.
Jump up ^ Gay p.171.
Jump up ^ "Coulter, Clare". Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia, 5 March 2013.
Jump up ^ "King Lear, Old Vic, review: 'Glenda Jackson's performance will be talked about for years'". The Telegraph, 5 November 2016.
Jump up ^ "Actress Diane D’Aquila on playing the role of King Lear as a woman". The Globe and Mail, 5 July 2017.
Jump up ^ Taylor, Gary (b) p.5
Jump up ^ Thomson p.143; Taylor, Gary (b) p.6.
Jump up ^ Shakespeare and Hunter p.45; Taylor, Gary (b) pp.18–19.
Jump up ^ Gurr and Ichikawa, pp.53–54.
Jump up ^ Marsden p.21.
Jump up ^ Taylor, Michael pp.324–325.
Jump up ^ Bradley pp.43
Jump up ^ Armstrong p.312; Jackson (c) p.190.
Jump up ^ Potter p.186; Marsden p.28.
Jump up ^ Bradley pp.47.
Jump up ^ Marsden p.28, citing Tate's Lear line 5.6.119.
Jump up ^ Cited by Marsden p.30.
Jump up ^ Tatspaugh p.528.
Jump up ^ Marsden p.33
Jump up ^ Marsden p.30, citing Gray's Inn Journal 12 January 1754.
Jump up ^ Morrison p.232.
Jump up ^ Moody p.40; Shakespeare and Hunter p.50.
Jump up ^ Potter p.189.
Jump up ^ Potter pp.190–191; Wells (b) p.62.
Jump up ^ Potter pp.190–191.
Jump up ^ Potter, p.191.
Jump up ^ Gay p.161.
Jump up ^ Wells (b) p.73.
Jump up ^ Shakespeare and Hunter p.51.
Jump up ^ Shakespeare and Foakes pp.30–31.
Jump up ^ Potter p.191.
Jump up ^ Schoch pp.58–75 and 67.
Jump up ^ Potter p.193.
Jump up ^ Jackson (c) p.206.
Jump up ^ Schoch p.63; and see: "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 8 June 2011. Retrieved 29 May 2011.
Jump up ^ O'Connor p.78.
Jump up ^ Quoted in Wells (b) p.224; Shakespeare and Foakes p.89.
Jump up ^ According to Ronald Harwood, quoted in Wells (b) p.229.
Jump up ^ Shaw 1961, p. 111.
Jump up ^ Shakespeare and Foakes p.24.
Jump up ^ Shakespeare and Foakes pp.36–37.
Jump up ^ Shakespeare and Foakes p.52.
Jump up ^ Warren p.266.
Jump up ^ Administrator. "I Am The Walrus (Lennon/McCartney) - About The Beatles". About The Beatles.
Jump up ^ Dawson p.178.
Jump up ^ Lan, p.532; Gillies, Minami Li and Trivedi p.265.
^ Jump up to: a b Holland p.211.
Jump up ^ Shakespeare and Foakes pp.27–28.
Jump up ^ Holland p.213.
Jump up ^ Beckerman, Jim (21 June 2010). "Hudson Shakespeare Company takes "King Lear" outdoors". The Daily Record of Bergen County.
^ Jump up to: a b "A 'King Lear' in need of a king ". The Globe and Mail, 13 May 2012.
^ Jump up to: a b "David Fox stars in ‘Upper Canada’ King Lear". Toronto Star, 16 November 2015.
Jump up ^ Blake, Elissa (22 November 2015). "Three girls – lucky me! says Geoffrey Rush as he plays in King Lear". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
Jump up ^ "Don Warrington cast as King Lear at the Royal Exchange - News - The Stage". Thestage.com. 12 October 2015. Retrieved 25 December 2017.
Jump up ^ [1]
Jump up ^ Hickling, Alfred (7 April 2016). "King Lear review – as close to definitive as can be". Theguardian.com. Retrieved 25 December 2017.
Jump up ^ Allfree, Claire (18 May 2016). "Don Warrington's King Lear is a heartbreaking tour de force". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 25 December 2017.
Jump up ^ [2]
Jump up ^ Billington, Michael (2 September 2016). "King Lear review – Sher shores up his place in Shakespeare royalty". Theguardian.com. Retrieved 25 December 2017.
Jump up ^ Brode 2001, p. 205.
Jump up ^ McKernan and Terris p.83
Jump up ^ McKernan and Terris p.84; this version appears on the British Film Institute video compilation Silent Shakespeare (1999).
Jump up ^ Brode 2001, pp. 205–6.
Jump up ^ McKernan and Terris pp.84–85.
Jump up ^ Brode 2001, p. 206.
Jump up ^ Pauline Kael's New Yorker review cited by Brode 2001, pp. 206, 209.
Jump up ^ Both cited by Brode 2001, p. 206.
Jump up ^ Brode 2001, pp. 206–07.
Jump up ^ Brode 2001, pp. 206–10.
Jump up ^ Rosenthal p.82.
Jump up ^ Rosenthal p.83.
Jump up ^ Cited by Brode 2001, p. 211.
Jump up ^ Rosenthal p.81
Jump up ^ Brode 2001, pp. 211–12.
Jump up ^ Rosenthal pp.79–80; King Lear III iv 28.
Jump up ^ Guntner pp.129–130.
Jump up ^ McKernan and Terris pp.85–87.
Jump up ^ McKernan and Terris pp.87–88.
Jump up ^ Rosenthal p.84.
Jump up ^ Guntner p.131; Rosenthal p.84.
Jump up ^ Rosenthal pp.84–87; Jackson(b) p.225.
Jump up ^ Griggs, Yvonne (2009). Screen Adaptations: Shakespeare's King Lear: A Close Study of the Relationship Between Text and Film. London: Methuen Drama. p. 122. ISBN 978-1-408-10592-4.
Jump up ^ McKernan and Terris p.85
Jump up ^ McKernan and Terris p.87
Jump up ^ Howard p.308.
^ Jump up to: a b Howard p.299.
Jump up ^ Rosenthal p.88.
Jump up ^ Rosenthal pp.88–89
Jump up ^ Brode 2001, p. 217.
Jump up ^ Rosenthal pp.90–91; Lehmann pp.72–89.
Jump up ^ Rosenthal pp.92–93.
Jump up ^ Greenhalgh and Shaughnessy p.99.
Jump up ^ "Harry Potter star Alfred Enoch thinks it's about time we had a black Mr Darcy". Metro.co.uk. 17 July 2016. Retrieved 25 December 2017.
^ Jump up to: a b "King Lear: Part One, Shakespeare Lives". BBC. Retrieved 25 December 2017.
Jump up ^ McNary, Dave (19 April 2016). "Bruce Dern, Anthony Michael Hall to Star in 'King Lear' Adaptation (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety (magazine). Retrieved 26 December 2017.
Jump up ^ https://www.thestage.co.uk/features/2017/remastered-the-legendary-argo-shakespeare-recordings
Jump up ^ http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/9c7568ecb6364145bccb158fdc2d1ed4
Jump up ^ https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079lydd
Cited sources[edit]
Editions of King Lear[edit]
Secondary sources[edit]
Armstrong, Alan Unfamiliar Shakespeare in Wells and Orlin pp. 308–319.
Bradley, Lynne (2010). Adapting King Lear for the Stage. Ashgate. ISBN 978-1-4094-0597-9.
Brode, Douglas (2001). Shakespeare in the Movies: From the Silent Era to Today. Berkley Boulevard. ISBN 0-425-18176-6.
Burnett, Mark Thornton; Ramona Wray (2006). Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-2351-8.
Burt, Richard Backstage Pass(ing): Stage Beauty, Othello and the Make-up of Race in Burnett and Wray pp. 53–71.
Chauhan, Abnish Singh (2016). William Shakespeare King Lear. Bhavdiya Prakashan, Ayodhya, India. ISBN 978-9385893018.
Dawson, Anthony B. International Shakespeare in Wells and Stanton pp. 174–193.
Ekwall, Eilert (1928). English River-names. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
deGrazia, Margreta; Stanley Wells (2001). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-65881-0.
Gay, Penny Women and Shakespearean Performance in Wells and Stanton pp. 155–173.
Gillies, John & Ryuta Minami, Ruri Li and Poonam Trivedi Shakespeare on the Stages of Asia in Wells and Stanton pp. 259–283.
Greenhalgh, Susan and Robert Shaughnessy Our Shakespeares: British Television and the Strains of Multiculturalism in Burnett and Wray pp. 90–112.
Guntner, J. Lawrence Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear on Film in Jackson (a) pp. 117–134, especially the section King Lear: A Play For Our Times pp. 128–132.
Gurr, Andrew; Mariko Ichikawa (2000). Oxford Shakespeare Topics: Staging in Shakespeare's Theatres. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-871158-2.
Hodgdon, Barbara; W. B. Worthen (2005). A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-8821-0.
Holland, Peter Shakespeare in the Twentieth-Century Theatre in deGrazia and Wells pp. 199–215.
Howard, Tony Shakespeare's Cinematic Offshoots in Jackson (a) pp. 295–313.
Jackson, Kenneth Hurlstone (1995) [1953]. Language and history in early Britain: A chronological survey of the Brittonic languages, first to twelfth century A.D. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. ISBN 978-1-85182-140-2.
Jackson, Russell (a) (2000). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-63975-1.
Keenan, Siobhan. Acting Companies and Their Plays in Shakespeare's London. London: Arden, 2014. 86-92.
Jackson, Russell (b) Shakespeare and the Cinema in deGrazia and Wells pp. 217–233.
Jackson, Russell (c) Shakespeare on the Stage from 1660 to 1900 in Wells (a) pp. 187–212.
Lan, Yong Li Shakespeare and the Fiction of the Intercultural in Hodgdon and Worthen pp. 527–549.
Lehmann, Courtney The Postnostalgic Renaissance: The 'Place' of Liverpool in Don Boyd's My Kingdom in Burnett and Wray pp. 72–89.
Marsden, Jean I. Improving Shakespeare: from the Restoration to Garrick in Wells and Stanton pp. 21–36.
McKernan, Luke; Olwen Terris (1994). Walking Shadows: Shakespeare in the National Film and Television Archive. British Film Institute. ISBN 0-85170-486-7.
McNeir, Waldo F. (1968). "The Role of Edmund in King Lear". Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. Rice University. 8 (2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama): 187–216. doi:10.2307/449655. ISSN 0039-3657. JSTOR 449655. EISSN 1522-9270 – via JSTOR. (Registration required (help)).
Moody, Jane Romantic Shakespeare in Wells and Stanton pp. 37–57.
Potter, Lois Shakespeare in the Theatre, 1660–1900 in deGrazia and Wells pp. 183–198.
Rosenthal, Daniel (2007). 100 Shakespeare Films. British Film Institute. ISBN 978-1-84457-170-3.
Schoch, Richard W. Pictorial Shakespeare in Wells and Stanton pp. 58–75.
Shakespeare, William (1997). R. A. Foakes, ed. King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare (Third Series) Methuen Drama. ISBN 978-1-903436-59-2.
Shakespeare, William (1972–1996). G. K. Hunter, ed. King Lear. New Penguin Shakespeare.
Shaw, George Bernard (1961). Wilson, Edwin, ed. Shaw on Shakespeare. Applause. ISBN 1-55783-561-6.
Tatspaugh, Patricia Performance History: Shakespeare on the Stage 1660–2001 in Wells and Orlin pp. 525–549.
Taylor, Gary (a); Warren, Michael, eds. (1983). The Division of the Kingdoms: Shakespeare's Two Versions of King Lear. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-812950-9.
Taylor, Gary (b) Shakespeare Plays on Renaissance Stages in Wells and Stanton pp. 1–20.
Taylor, Michael The Critical Tradition in Wells and Orlin pp. 323–332.
Thomson, Peter The Comic Actor and Shakespeare in Wells and Stanton pp. 137–154.
Warren, Roger Shakespeare on the Twentieth-Century Stage in Wells (a) pp. 257–272.
Wells, Stanley (a) (1986). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare Studies. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-31841-6.
Wells, Stanley (b) (1997). Oxford Shakespeare Topics: Shakespeare in the Theatre, An Anthology of Criticism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-871176-6.
Wells, Stanley; Lena Cowen Orlin (2003). Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924522-3.
Wells, Stanley; Sarah Stanton (2002). The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Stage. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-79711-X.
External links[edit]
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The Tragedy of King Lear
Wikiquote has quotations related to: King Lear
Wikimedia Commons has media related to King Lear.
King Lear – at Project Gutenberg.
"Modern Translation of King Lear" - Modern version of the play
King Lear – Searchable, online version of the text.
King Lear – Read Online
King Lear at the British Library
King Lear public domain audiobook at LibriVox
BBC audio file. In Our Time, BBC Radio 4 discussion.
Joyce Carol Oates on King Lear
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VIAF: 210981740
LCCN: n84006972
GND: 4099357-7
SUDOC: 027342956
BNF: cb11940560x (data)
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BNE: XX3383775
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=King_Lear&oldid=838514299"
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value:
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rei_Lear
Rei Lear – Portuguese
pt
pt
interlanguage-link-target

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-ro
display: none;

value: Король Лир – Russian

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sco
display: none;

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-simple
display: none;

value: شاھ ايليا – Sindhi

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sd
display: none;

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sk
display: none;

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sr
display: none;

value:
https://sh.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lear
King Lear – Serbo-Croatian
sh
sh
interlanguage-link-target

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-sh
display: none;

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-fi
display: none;

value:
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Lear
Kung Lear – Swedish
sv
sv
interlanguage-link-target

value: interlanguage-link interwiki-sv badge-Q17559452 badge-recommendedarticle

value:
https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kral_Lear
Kral Lear – Turkish
tr
tr
interlanguage-link-target

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-tr
display: none;

value: Король Лір – Ukrainian

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-uk
display: none;

value:
https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vua_Lia
Vua Lia – Vietnamese
vi
vi
interlanguage-link-target

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-vi
display: none;

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-war
display: none;

value:
interlanguage-link interwiki-zh-yue
display: none;

value: All languages (initial selection from common choices by you and others)

value: mediawiki ltr sitedir-ltr mw-hide-empty-elt ns-0 ns-subject page-King_Lear rootpage-King_Lear skin-vector action-view