(Redirected from King Lear (play)):''This article is on the play. For the legendary king, see
Leir of Britain. For the professional baseball player, see
King Lear (baseball).''
'''King Lear''' is a play by
William Shakespeare, considered one of his greatest tragedies, based on the
legend of
King Lear of
Britain. The part of Lear has been played by many
great actors, but although Lear is an old man, the part is rarely taken on by older actors in stage versions because it is so strenuous both physically and emotionally.
There are two distinct versions of the play: ''The True Chronicle of the History of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters'', which appeared in
quarto in
1608, and ''The Tragedy of King Lear'', which appeared in the
First Folio in
1623, a more theatrical version. The two texts are commonly printed in a conflated version, although many modern editors have argued that each version has its individual integrity.
After the
Restoration the play was often modified by theatre practitioners who disliked its
nihilistic flavour, but since
World War II it has come to be regarded as one of Shakespeare's supreme achievements. The tragedy is particularly noted for its probing observations on the nature of human suffering and kinship on a cosmic scale.
Sources
Shakespeare's play is based on various accounts of the semi-legendary
Leir, a
King of the Britons, whose tale was first written down by the
twelfth century historian
Geoffrey of Monmouth. Shakespeare's most important source is thought to be 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. The name of Cordelia was probably taken from
Edmund Spenser's ''
The Faerie Queene'', published in
1590. Spenser's Cordelia also dies from
hanging, as in ''King Lear''.
Other possible sources are ''
A Mirror for Magistrates'' (
1574), by
John Higgins; ''The Malcontent'' (
1604), by
John Marston; ''The London
Prodigal'' (
1605); ''Arcadia'' (1580-1590), by
Sir Philip Sidney, from which Shakespeare took the main outline of the Gloucester subplot;
Montaigne's ''Essays'', which were translated into English by
John Florio in
1603; ''An Historical Description of Iland of Britaine'', by
William Harrison; ''Remaines Concerning Britaine'', by
William Camden (
1606); ''
Albion's England'', by
William Warner, (
1589); and ''A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures'', by
Samuel Harsnett (
1603), 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, where a father rejects his
youngest daughter on the basis of a statement of her love that does not please him.
[1]'
Date and text
Although a precise date of composition cannot be given, many editors of the play date ''King Lear'' between
1603 and
1606. The latest it could have been written is
1606, because the
Stationers' Register notes a performance on
December 26,
1606. The
1603 date originates from words in Edgar's speeches which may derive from
Samuel Harsnett's ''Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures'' (1603).
[2] 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).
[3] On the contrary, 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".
[4]
However, before
Kenneth Muir set out the case for the play's indebtedness to Harsnett's 1603 text, a minority of scholars believed the play to be much older. In 1936, A.S. Cairncross argued that "the relationship of the two plays [''Leir'' and ''Lear''] has been inverted": Shakespeare's ''Lear'' came first and that the anonymous ''Leir'' is an imitation of it.
[5] One piece of evidence for this view is that in
1594, ''King Leir'' was entered into the Stationers' Register (but never published), while in the same year a play called ''King Leare'' was recorded by
Philip Henslowe as being performed at the
Rose theatre.
[6] However, the majority view is that these two references are simply variant spellings of the same play, ''King Leir''.
[7]In addition,
Eva Turner Clark, an Oxfordian denier of Shakespeare's authorship, saw numerous parallels between the play and the events of 1589-90, including the Kent banishment subplot, which she believed to parallel the 1589 banishment of Sir Francis Drake by Queen Elizabeth.
[8]
The question of dating is further complicated by the question of revision (see below).
The modern text of King Lear derives from three sources: two quartos, published in 1608 (Q
1) and 1619 (Q
2)
[9] respectively, and the version in the First Folio of 1623 (F
1). The differences between these versions are significant. 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 a completely different style of punctuation, and about half the verse lines in the F
1 and either printed as prose or differently divided in the Q
1. 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 presumption that Shakespeare wrote only one original manuscript, now unfortunately lost, and that the Quarto and Folio versions are distortions of that original.
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, Q
1 is "authorial"; F
1 is "theatrical." In criticism, the rise of "revision criticism" has been part of the pronounced trend away from mid-century formalism. 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 not the only recent edition to offer the traditional conflated text.
Performance history
The first recorded performance on December 26, 1606 is the only one known with certainty from Shakespeare's era. The play was revived soon after the theatres re-opened at the start of the
Restoration era, and was played in its original form as late as
1675. But the urge to adapt and change that was so liberally applied to Shakespeare's plays in that period eventually settled on ''Lear'' as on other works.
Nahum Tate produced his famous or infamous adaptation in
1681—he gave the play a happy ending, with Edgar and Cordelia marrying and Lear restored to kingship. This was the version acted by
Thomas Betterton,
David Garrick, and
Edmund Kean, and praised by
Samuel Johnson. The play was suppressed in the late 18th and early 19th century by the British government, which disliked the dramatization of a mad monarch at a time when
George III was insane
[10]. The original text did not return to the stage till
William Charles Macready's production of
1838.
[11] Other actors who were famous as King Lear in the nineteenth century were
Samuel Phelps and
Edwin Booth.
The play is among the most popular of Shakespeare’s works to be staged in the twentieth century. The most famous staging may be
Paul Scofield's
1962 performance as Lear directed by
Peter Brook, which was voted as the greatest performance in a
Shakespearean play in the history of the RSC in a
2004 opinion poll of members of the
Royal Shakespeare Company, and immortalized on film in
1971. The longest running
Broadway run of ''King Lear'' was the
1968 production starring
Lee J. Cobb as Lear, with
Stacy Keach as Edmund,
Philip Bosco as Kent, and
René Auberjonois as the Fool. It ran for 72 performances. No other
Broadway production of the play has run for as many as 50 performances.
Other famous actors to play King Lear in the twentieth century are:
★
Laurence Olivier, who decided to tackle the role for the second time at the age of 75 in a
television production in
1982 with an all star cast that included
Diana Rigg,
John Hurt, and
Colin Blakely. Olivier had played Lear previously in
1946, at the age of thirty-nine at the
Old Vic, but without much success. His 1982 Lear was
telecast in the
United States in
1984 and was widely acclaimed, and Olivier received the last of his several
Emmy Awards as
Best Actor for his performance.
★
John Gielgud was 26 when he first played Lear at the
Old Vic Theatre in
1931, and played the part in three additional stage productions. He was 90 when he took on the part for the final time in a
1994 radio production with a cast that included
Judi Dench,
Kenneth Branagh and
Derek Jacobi.
★
Orson Welles played Lear at the New York Civic Center in
1958, breaking his ankle during the run and playing most of the performances in a wheelchair.
★
Donald Wolfit was considered one of the great Lears, keeping the role in his repertory for over ten years and playing it on
Broadway and for the
Royal Shakespeare Company.
★
Ian Holm won a
Laurence Olivier Award for his performance of Lear at the
Royal National Theatre and an
Emmy nomination for the television version.
★ One of the best film adaptations was done by Mosfilm in the 1971 masterpiece from director Grigori Koznitsev. It features a full cast of brilliant Soviet actors, beautiful back-and-white photography, and a score by Shostakovich. The scipt is based on a translation by Boris Pasternak. Estonian actor Jüri Järvet plays the mad king.
The first great 21st century Lear may be
Christopher Plummer, who became the first actor to receive a
Tony Award nomination for playing King Lear in the
2004 Broadway production at the
Vivian Beaumont Theatre.
Ian McKellen (who had performed the play twice before in the roles of Edgar and the Earl of Kent, winning a
Drama Desk Award for the former) has also been triumphant as King Lear after opening in the play at the Courtyard Theatre at
Stratford-Upon-Avon for the
Royal Shakespeare Company in April of 2007 before taking the production on a world tour with a cast that includes
Sylvester McCoy as the Fool,
Frances Barber as Goneril and
Jonathan Hyde as the Earl of Kent. Other recent Lears were
Stacy Keach in a production at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and
Kevin Kline in a critically reviled production at the
New York Shakespeare Festival.
Characters
Charles H. Cameron as King Lear (1872) / print by A.L. Coburn
★ '
King Lear' is ruler of Britain. He is a
patriarchal figure whose misjudgment of his daughters brings about his downfall.
★ 'Goneril' (sometimes written 'Gonerill') is Lear's treacherous eldest daughter and wife to the
Duke of Albany.
★ 'Regan' is Lear's treacherous second daughter, and wife to the
Duke of Cornwall.
★ 'Cordelia' (poss. "heart of a lion"
[12]) is Lear's youngest daughter. At the beginning of the play, she has yet to marry and has two suitors: the
Duke of Burgundy and the
King of France.
★ 'The Duke of Albany'
[13] is Goneril's husband. Goneril scorns him for his "milky gentleness". He turns against his wife later in the play.
★ 'The Duke of Cornwall'
is Regan's husband. He has the
Earl of Kent put in the
stocks, leaves Lear out on the
heath during a storm, and gouges out Gloucester's eyes. After his attack on Gloucester, one of his servants attacks and mortally wounds him.
★ 'The
Earl of Gloucester'
is Edgar's father, and the father of the illegitimate son, Edmund. Edmund deceives him against Edgar, and Edgar flees, taking on the disguise of
Tom O'Bedlam.
★ 'The Earl of Kent'
is always faithful to Lear, but he is
banished by the king after he protests against Lear's treatment of Cordelia. He takes on a disguise (Caius) and serves the king without letting him know his true identity.
★ '
Edmund' (sometimes written 'Edmond') is Gloucester's illegitimate son. He works with Goneril and Regan to further his ambitions, and the three of them form a romantic triangle.
★ 'Edgar' is the legitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester. Disguised as
Tom O'Bedlam, he helps his blind father. At the end of the play he assumes rule of the kingdom and the 'Divine Right of Kings' is restored.
★ 'Oswald' is Goneril's servant, and is described as "a serviceable villain". He tries to murder Gloucester, but instead he is killed by Edgar.
★ 'The
Fool' is a jester who is devoted to Lear and Cordelia, although his relationships with both are quite complex. Although he misses Cordelia when she is gone, we never see the two together. He has a privileged relationship with Lear; no one else would get away with taunting him the way the Fool does, through riddles and insults. When Lear begins to consider the feelings of others and the effects of his actions, he first thinks to help the Fool.
Synopsis
The play begins with King Lear taking the decision to abdicate the throne and divide his
kingdom among his three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. The eldest two are married while Cordelia is much sought after as a bride, partly because she is her father's favourite. In a fit of senile vanity, he suggests a contest — each daughter shall be accorded lands according to how much they demonstrate their love for him in speech. But the plan misfires. Cordelia refuses to outdo the flattery of her elder sisters, as she feels it would only cheapen her true feelings to flatter him purely for reward. Lear, in a fit of pique, divides her share of the kingdom between Goneril and Regan, and Cordelia is
banished. The
King of France however marries her, even after she has been
disinherited, since he sees value in her honesty, or perhaps a
casus belli to subsequently invade England.
Soon after Lear abdicates the throne, he finds that Goneril and Regan's feelings for him have turned cold, and arguments ensue. The
Earl of Kent, who has spoken up for Cordelia and been banished for his pains, returns disguised as the servant Caius, who will "eat no fish" (that is to say, he is a
Protestant), in order to protect the king, to whom he remains loyal. Meanwhile, Goneril and Regan fall out with one another over their attraction to Edmund, the bastard son of the
Earl of Gloucester — and are forced to deal with an army from
France, led by Cordelia, sent to restore Lear to his throne. A cataclysmic war is fought.
The subplot involves the Earl of Gloucester and his two sons, the good Edgar and the evil Edmund. Edmund concocts false stories about his legitimate half-brother, and Edgar is forced into exile, affecting lunacy. Edmund engages in liaisons with Goneril and Regan. Gloucester is
blinded by Regan's husband, the Duke of Cornwall, but is saved from death by several of Cornwall's servants, who object to the duke's treatment of Lear; one of the servants wounds the duke (but is killed by Regan), who throws Gloucester into the storm in order for him to, "smell his way to
Dover" after plucking out his eyes. Cornwall dies of his wound shortly thereafter. The storm scene is where Lear exclaims how he is "a man more sinned against than sinning".
Edgar, still under the guise of a homeless lunatic, finds Gloucester out in the storm. The earl asks him whether he knows the way to Dover, to which Edgar replies that he will lead him. Edgar, whose voice Gloucester fails to recognise, is shaken by encountering his blinded father and his guise is put to the test.
Lear appears in Dover, wandering about raving and talking to mice. Gloucester attempts to throw himself from a cliff, but is deceived by Edgar in order to save him and comes off safely, encountering the king shortly after. Lear and Cordelia are briefly reunited and reconciled before the battle between Britain and France. After the French lose, Lear is content at the thought of living in prison with Cordelia, but Edmund gives orders for them to be
executed.
Edgar, in disguise, then fights Edmund, fatally wounding him. On seeing this, Goneril, who has already poisoned Regan out of jealousy, kills herself. Edgar reveals himself to Edmund and tells him that Gloucester has just died. On hearing this, and of Goneril and Regan's deaths, Edmund tells Edgar of his order to have Lear and Cordelia murdered and gives orders for them to be reprieved - perhaps his one act of goodness in the entire play.
Unfortunately, the reprieve comes too late. Lear appears on stage with Cordelia's dead body in his arms, having killed the servant who hanged her, then dies himself.
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. During the
eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, this tragic ending was much criticised, and alternative versions were written and performed, in which the leading characters survived and Edgar and Cordelia were married.
Points of debate
Opening
Scene one features a ceremony in which King Lear bequeaths his kingdom to his daughters. The plain sense of the opening is that this is an auction giving his kingdom to the most admiring and flattering of his daughters, taking the form of a 'love test'.
David Ball posits an alternate interpretation.
[14] He bases this analysis on the conversation between Kent and Gloucester which are the first seven lines of the play and serve to help the audience understand the context of the drama about to unfold.
Ball interprets this statement to mean that the court already knows how the King is going to divide his kingdom; that the outcome of the ceremony is already decided and publicly known. If the court knows that the outcome of the contest is not going to change, then they must also be aware that it is only a formality, or in Ball's words "a public relations stunt."
[14]
There are only two clues from the text on how balanced the king's division of the kingdom that the audience needs to take into account for understanding the nature of this ceremony. The first is the above quoted section where Gloucester describes the shares as equal. The second is in Lear's description that while Regan's portion of the kingdom is "No less in space, validity, and pleasure/Than that conferred on Goneril." (Act I/Scene 1) but for Cordelia's "more opulent than [her] sisters" (Act I/Scene 1). There is a contradiction in how the court views the coming action and how the king presents it.
Alternatively, it has been suggested that the King's "contest" has more to do with his control over the unmarried Cordelia.
[16] On receiving her proclamations of devout love and loyalty, he plans to force her into a marriage which she could not possibly object to after claiming such stolid obedience. Of course, the trap fails disastrously for all parties. It is not clear whether or not Shakespeare intended his audience to be aware of this
subtext, or whether he assumed the details of the situation were not relevant.
Tragic ending
''King Lear mourns Cordelia's death'',
James Barry, 1786-1788
The
adaptations that Shakespeare made to the legend of King Lear to produce his tragic version are quite telling of the effect they would have had on his contemporary audience. The story of King Lear (or
Leir) was familiar to the average
Elizabethan theatre goer (as were many of Shakespeare's sources) and any discrepancies between versions would have been immediately apparent.
Shakespeare's tragic conclusion gains its sting from such a discrepancy. The traditional legend and all
adaptations preceding Shakespeare's have it that after Lear is restored to the throne, he remains there until "made ripe for death" (
Edmund Spenser). Cordelia, her sisters also deceased, takes the throne as rightful heir, but after a few years is overthrown and imprisoned by nephews, leading to her
suicide.
Shakespeare shocks his audience by bringing the worn and haggard Lear onto the stage, carrying his dead youngest daughter. He taunts them with the possibility that she may live yet with Lear saying, "This feather stirs; she lives!" But Cordelia's death is soon confirmed.
This was indeed too bleak for some to take, even many years later. ''King Lear'' was at first unsuccessful on the
Restoration stage, and it was only with
Nahum Tate's happy-ending version of
1681 that it became part of the repertory. Tate's ''Lear'', where Lear survives and triumphs, and Edgar and Cordelia get married, held the stage until
1838.
Samuel Johnson endorsed the use of Tate's version in his edition of Shakespeare's plays (
1765): "Cordelia, from the time of Tate, has always retired with victory and felicity. And, if my sensations could add anything to the general suffrage, I might relate that I was many years ago so shocked by Cordelia's death, that I know not whether I ever endured to read again the last scenes of the play till I undertook to revise them as an editor".
Cordelia and the Fool
The character of Lear's Fool, important in the first
act, disappears without explanation in the third. He appears in Act I, scene four, and disappears in Act III, scene six. His final line is "And I'll go to bed at noon", a line that many think might mean that he is to die at the highest point of his life, when he lies in prison separated from his friends.
A popular explanation for the fool's disappearance is that the
actor playing the Fool also played Cordelia. The two characters are never on stage simultaneously, and
dual-roling was common in Shakespeare's time. However, the Fool would have been performed by
Robert Armin, the regular clown actor of Shakespeare's company, who is unlikely to have been cast as a tragic heroine. Even so, the play does ask us to at least compare the two; Lear chides Cordelia for foolishness in Act I; chides himself as equal in folly in Act V; and as he holds the dead Cordelia in the final scene, says "And my poor fool is hanged" ("fool" could be taken as either a direct reference to the Fool, or an affectionate reference to Cordelia herself, or it could refer to both the fool and Cordelia).
In Elizabethan English, "fool" was a term used to mean "child" (cf. foal). For example, in
Hamlet Polonius warns Ophelia that if she doesn't keep her distance from Hamlet, she'll "tender me a fool," i.e. present him with a child. As Lear holds the dead body of Cordelia, he remembers holding her in his arms as a baby. (Modern English still uses "foolish" and "childish" as near synonyms.)
Adaptations and cultural references
★ Portions of a radio performance of the play on
BBC Radio 3 in the UK were used by
John Lennon in
The Beatles' song "
I Am the Walrus", starting at about the halfway point, but most audible towards the end and during the long fadeout. Lennon added the BBC audio (live as it was being broadcast) on a whim during mixing of the track. The character Oswald's exhortation, "bury my body", as well as his lament, "O, untimely death!" (Act IV, Scene VI) were interpreted by fans as further pieces of evidence that band member
Paul McCartney was dead.
★ A lake in
Watermead Country Park, between
Birstall and
Thurmaston,
Leicester is named King Lear's Lake, owing to its proximity of the legendary burial tomb of King Lear. A statue in the lake depicts the final scene of Shakespeare's play.
Readings
A number of significant and diverse readings have emerged from eras and societies since the play was first written; evidence of the ability of Shakespeare to encompass many human experiences. The play was poorly received in the 17th century because the theme of fallen royalty was too close to the events of the period; the exile of the court to France. In 1681 Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear to suit the 17th century audience; a complete and didactic love story with the brutal scenes omitted. The plot is rewritten; Edgar has unrequited love for Cordelia, the King of France omitted.
As society and time changed to take more notice of pain and suffering, especially in the nineteenth century, more of Shakespeare's unhappy ending was reinstalled.
The twentieth century saw a number of diverse and rich readings of the play emerge as a result of the turbulent social changes of the century. A.C Bradley saw this play as an individual coming to terms with his personality; that Lear was a great man and therefore the play is almost unfathomable. The feminism movement that emerged last century interpreted that the message of the play was that chaos occurred when power was given to women and that order was restored only when men returned to power. This overshadowing message, coupled with a number of Lear's misogynist remarks has fueled this debate.
One of the most important reading of the 20th century is the existential point of view. The threat of nuclear annihilation and environmental destruction have contributed to this reading which has gained pace throughout the century compounded by
World War I,
World War II, the
Cold War, a civil or regional war occurring in almost every year, mass genocides and the propaganda power of the mass media. These events have led to a sense that life is meaningless, has no reward and there is no justice in the universe. This is represented in the play by Edmund's rejection of the Gods, Gloucester's declaration that the gods are cruel and unjust and the ruthless animal imagery throughout the play—also an important feature of textual integrity. The storm scene is viewed as the centre of ruthless devastation and the lack of hope and futile loss of life at the end of the play looks towards a bleak future. Interestingly, this reading can be seen as a direct contrast to the Aristotelian interpretation which suggests that the audience rejoice in the reconciliation between Lear and Cordelia and although the play ends tragically, humanity has learned a lesson and looks toward a brighter future.
The Family Drama reading has also become prevalent in the 20th century; critics suggesting that the chaos was a result of the inevitable dynamics that can emerge in any family situation. Key issues include the relationship between Lear and Goneril/Regan, between Lear and Cordelia and the relationship between Gloucester and his sons.
The play has been interpreted by many societies. Communist Russia emphasised the suffering of the common people and the oppressive nature of the monarch in Korol Lear (1970) while the Jewish community emphasised other aspects of the play.
Lear's suffering as a form of
purgatory, within a shifting religious landscape in contemporary England, have also been put forward as a context for this play as well as
Hamlet.
[17]
Reworkings
Since the 1950s, there have been various "reworkings" of King Lear. These include:
★ The novel ''
A Thousand Acres'' by
Jane Smiley
★ The play ''
Lear'' by
Edward Bond
★ The play ''Lear's Daughters'' by WTG and Elaine Feinstein
★ The play ''Seven Lears'' by Howard Barker
★ The play ''Lear Reloaded'' by Scot Lahaie
★ The film ''
The King is Alive'', directed by
Kristian Levring
Film adaptations
★
1909 - A silent, black and white film directed by J. Stuart Blackton and William V. Ranous, with William V. Ranous as Lear.
★
1916 - Directed by
Ernest C. Warde, with
Frederick Warde as Lear.
★
1934 - "Der Yidisher Kenig Lear," or The Yiddish King Lear, is an adapted of
Jacob Gordin's play set in Jewish Vilna, Lithuania. The film is directed by Harry Thomashefsky.
★
1948 - Directed by Royston Morley with William Devlin as Lear.
★
1953 - Directed by
Andrew McCullough with
Orson Welles as Lear. This one does not feature the subplot of Gloucester and his sons, and has Poor Tom as a character in his own right.
★
1971 - Directed by
Peter Brook with
Paul Scofield as Lear,
Alan Webb as Duke of Gloucester,
Irene Worth as Goneril,
Susan Engel as Regan,
Anne-Lise Gabold as Cordelia,
Jack MacGowran as Fool. The text has been severely cut and the remainder has been reassembled. All is bleak in this black and white, existential experience.
★
1974 - A
live recorded performance from the
New York Shakespeare Festival, directed by
Edwin Sherin, with
James Earl Jones as Lear.
★
1974 - A
Thames Television production, directed by Tony Davenall with
Patrick Magee as Lear.
★
1975 - Directed by
Jonathan Miller for
BBC TV, as part of the "Play for the Month" series, with
Michael Hordern as Lear.
★
1982 - Directed by
Jonathan Miller for
BBC TV with
Michael Hordern once again cast as Lear. Part of the
Shakespeare Plays series, this version follows the text closely.
★
1984 - Directed by
Michael Elliott with
Laurence Olivier as Lear. The film begins and ends at Stonehenge, and features
Dorothy Tutin as Goneril,
Diana Rigg as Regan,
Anna Calder-Marshall as Cordelia,
John Hurt as the
Fool,
Colin Blakely as Kent,
Leo McKern as Gloucester, and
Robert Lindsay as Edmund.
[2]. Olivier won the
Emmy Award for his performance.
In this image from
Akira Kurosawa's ''
Ran'', Hidetora (Lear) flees from his burning castle.
★
1985 - The film ''
Ran'' by
Akira Kurosawa sets the story in Edo-period Japan and replaces the three daughters with three sons.
★
1987 -
Jean-Luc Godard's version is set in a post-apocalyptic world with
Burgess Meredith as gangster Don Learo and
Molly Ringwald as Cordelia.
★
1997 - A modern retelling, set on a farm in Iowa, was
Jane Smiley's ''A Thousand Acres''. This novel attempted to explain the elder sisters' hatred of their father, was later adapted as a 1997 film directed by
Jocelyn Moorhouse and starring
Jason Robards,
Jennifer Jason Leigh,
Jessica Lange,
Michelle Pfeiffer, and
Colin Firth.
★
1997 -
Sir Ian Holm starred in a television adaptation, directed by
Richard Eyre. Minimalist sets put the focus on the acting.
★
1999 - Directed by and starring
Brian Blessed as Lear .
★
2001 - ''My Kingdom'' stars
Richard Harris,
Lynn Redgrave. A modern gangland version of ''King Lear''.
★
2002 -
Patrick Stewart played John Lear in a television adaptation called ''
King of Texas'', set in frontier Texas and directed by
Uli Edel.
★
2007 - ''Baby Cakes Sees a Play'',
Brad Neely's retelling of King Lear through the eyes of Baby Cakes.
References
1. 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"
2. Frank Kermode, 'King Lear', ''The Riverside Shakespeare'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 1249.
3. R.A. Foakes, ed. ''King Lear''. London: Arden, 1997), 89-90.
4. Kermode, ''Riverside'', 1250.
5. Alfred S. Cairncross, ''The Problem of Hamlet, A Solution'', 1936
6. Chambers & Alexander, as sourced in Ogburn's ''The Mystery of William Shakespeare'', 1984, page 337
7. Lee, Sidney. ''The Chronicle History of King Leir''. London: Chatto and Windus, 1908: ix.
8. Eva Turner Clark, ''Hidden Allusions in Shakespeares Plays'', 1930,pgs 866-888
9. The 1619 quarto is part of William Jaggard's so-called False Folio.
10. ''Shakespeare A to Z'' by Charles Boyce, Dell Publishing, 1990
11. F. E. Halliday, ''A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964,'' Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; pp. 265-66.
12. While it has been claimed that "Cordelia" derives from the Latin "cor" (heart) followed by "delia", an anagram of "ideal", this is questionable. A more likely etymology is that her name is a feminine form of ''coeur de lion,'' meaning "lion-hearted". Another possible source is a Welsh word of uncertain meaning; it may mean "jewel of the sea" or "lady of the sea".
13. These titles are anachronistic. The first use of the title of ''Duke of Albany'' occurred in 1398. The first use of the title of ''Duke of Cornwall'' took place about 1140. The first use of the title of ''Earl of Gloucester'' took place in 1122. The first use of the title ''Earl of Kent'' was in 1067.
14. Ball, David; (1983). Backwards & Forwards. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-1110-0
15. Ball, David; (1983). Backwards & Forwards. Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-1110-0
16. McLaughlin, John. "The Dynamics of Power in King Lear: An Adlerian Interpretation." ''Shakespeare Quarterly'' 29 (1978): 39.
17. ''"Just Passing Through"'', Review of Stephen Greenblatt's 'Hamlet in Purgatory', 20th May 2001, New York Times.[1]
Further reading
★
Service in King Lear
★
Charity in King Lear
★
King Lear Metamorphosed
★
Shakespeare's "Folly": King Lear
★
'Love' in King Lear
★
King Lear: A Prophetic Tragedy
★
An Existential Examination of King Lear
External links
★ the complete text of ''
King Lear'' with Quarto and Folio Variations, Annotations, and Commentary
★ ''
King Lear'' - plain vanilla text at
Project Gutenberg.
★
King Lear - Complete text in HTML.
★
The Tragedie of King Lear - HTML version of this title.
★ ''
Cordelia, King Lear and His Fool'' Free online book.
★
Slashdoc : King Lear Amateur essays on Shakespeare's King Lear
★
Shakespeare's King Lear and the Nature of Disguise
★
Lesson plans for King Lear at Web English Teacher
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