King Lear

The Tragedy of King Lear, often shortened to King Lear, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare in late 1605¹ 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, madness and human nature. The earliest known performance was on Saint Stephen's Day in 1606. Modern editors derive their texts from three extant publications: the 1608¹ 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.

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, madness and human nature. 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== 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 ==Plot== 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 the way he carries a stigma for his birth 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 of knights, who have become a disorderly mob, 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== '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. Shakespeare's most important source is probably the second edition of The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande by Raphael Holinshed, published in 1587¹. 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 1590¹, 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=== (c.1894) 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== edition, published in 1608 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. The modern text of King Lear derives from three sources: two quartos, one published in 1608 (Q 1 ) and the other in 1619 (Q 2 ), and the version in the First Folio of 1623 (F 1 ). Q1 has "many errors and muddles". Q2 was based on Q1. It introduced corrections and new errors. Q2 also informed the Folio text. Quarto and Folio texts differ significantly. Q 1 contains 285 lines not in F 1 ; F 1 contains around 100 lines not in Q 1 . Also, at least a thousand individual words are changed between the two texts, each text has different styles of punctuation, and about half the verse lines in the F 1 are either printed as prose or differently divided in the Q 1 . Early editors, beginning with Alexander Pope, conflated the two texts, creating the modern version that has been commonly used since. The conflated version originated with the assumptions that the differences in the versions do not indicate any re-writing by the author; that Shakespeare wrote only one original manuscript, which is now lost; and that the Quarto and Folio versions contain various distortions of that lost original. In 2021, Duncan Salkeld endorsed this view, suggesting that Q1 was typeset by a reader dictating to the compositor, leading to many slips caused by mishearing. Other editors, such as Nuttall and Bloom, have suggested Shakespeare himself may have been involved in reworking passages in the play to accommodate performances and other textual requirements of the play. 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." ==Interpretations and analysis== ===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 bodies 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 this 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. ==Adaptations== ===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. (1949). "The film has two antecedents—biblical references to Joseph and his brothers and King Lear". 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 2002¹ 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 2017¹, 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. ==See also== Illegitimacy in fiction 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 ==Notes and references== ===Notes=== ===References=== ==Bibliography== ===Editions of King Lear=== ===Secondary sources=== ==External links== King Lear – at Project Gutenberg King Lear, Folger Shakespeare Library

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