King Lear Home Page

This is the Home Page for King Lear. The page collects information about this work from across our site. Here you will find links to our edition; where available, you will also find links to graphic facsimiles of the books in which it was first published, a list of performances, relevant pages in the section on Shakespeare's Life and Times, and links to relevant sites on the Internet.

• Title Page
  • King Lear (Folio 1, 1623)
    
  • King Lear (Quarto 1, 1608)
    
  • King Lear (Quarto 2, 1619)
    

List of book facsimiles containing the play King Lear

• First Folio (1623)
  Brandeis University copy from Brandeis University Library
• First Folio (1623)
  New South Wales copy from State Library of New South Wales
• Second Folio (1632)
  New South Wales copy from State Library of New South Wales
• Third Folio (1664)
  New South Wales copy from State Library of New South Wales
• Fourth Folio (1685)
  New South Wales copy from State Library of New South Wales

Pages from the "Life and Times" that discuss King Lear

• King Lear
  
• Staging Lear
  
• The social background: violence and madness
  
• History: division and happy endings
  
• Ideas: disorder and the stars
  
• Literary traditions: kings and clowns
  

List of performances related to King Lear

• King Lear (1958, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, USA)
• Albert van Dalsum, man van het toneel (1964, Jvd Vondel, Netherlands)
• My Kingdom (2001, Don Boyd, International)
• King Real and the Hoodlums (1983, John Fox, GB)
• King Lear (1948, GB)
• King Lear (1953, Peter Brook, USA)
• Re Lear, de un'idea di gran teatro di William Shakespeare (1972, Mario Ricci, Italy)
• King Lear (1973, Edward Sherin, USA)
• King Lear (1980, Julian Lopez-Morillas, USA)
• King Lear (1980, GB)
• Stages: Houseman Directs Lear (1981, USA)
• King Lear (1982, Jonathan Miller, GB)
• Morris Carnovsky Performs Shakespeare (1982, USA)
• King Lear (1982, GB)
• Köning Lear. [King Lear] (1982, Erik Vos, Netherlands)
• King Lear (1983, Michael Elliott, GB)
• Shakespeare: King Lear: Workshops I and II (1985, GB)
• Shakespeare's King Lear and the Middle Ages (1985, USA)
• King Lear (Reflections) (GB)
• Shakespeare (GB)
• 79 more performances...

Summary list of artifacts related to the play King Lear

• illustration artifacts (1)

Relevant links to other sites on the web

• Two Lears For Television: An Exploration of Televisual Strategies
  Cook, Hardy M. "Two Lears for Television: An Exploration of Televisual Strategies." SHAKSPER via Early Modern Literary Studies. Cook compares two versions of King Lear-- Jonathan Miller's 1982 version with Michael Hordern as Lear for the series "The Shakespeare Plays" and Michael Elliott's with Lawrence Olivier.
• "Is This the Promised End?": The Tragedy of King Lear
  Oates, Joyce Carol. "'Is This the Promised End?': The Tragedy of King Lear." (Originally published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33.1 (1974): 19-32. Oates examines the scene in which Lear awakes to find Cordelia beside him (4.7) and how it functions in terms of the end of the play:
• The King Lear Quarto in Rehearsal and Performance
  Richman, David. "The King Lear Quarto in Rehearsal and Performance." SHAKSPER via Early Modern Literary Studies . Richman discusses performing from the quarto, rather than the recommended folio or conflated versions of King Lear:
• King Lear and the Culture of Justice
  Schneider, Jr., Ben Ross. "King Lear and the Culture of Justice." SHAKSPER via Early Modern Literary Studies, 1997. Schneider re-evaluates reading the character of King Lear as a victim:
• King Lear in Its Own Time: The Difference that Death Makes
  Schneider, Jr., Ben Ross. "King Lear in Its Own Time: The Difference that Death Makes." Early Modern Literary Studies 1.1 (1995): 3.1-49. Schneider disagrees with the modern idea that Shakespeare's is a timeless genius of human nature and reads King Lear in the specific context of the time in which it was written and in terms of Elizabethan conceptions of death:
• King Lear Beyond Reason: Love and Justice in the Family
  Schwehn, Mark R. "King Lear Beyond Reason: Love and Justice in the Family." First Things 36 (October 1993): 25-33. A thematic approach to King Lear focussing on the love relationship between parent and child:
• "The Thing Itself": Staging Male Sexual Vulnerability in King Lear
  Shurgot, Michael W. "'The Thing Itself': Staging Male Sexual Vulnerability in King Lear." Shakespeare and Renaissance Association of West Virginia (SRASP) 22 (1999). Shurgot examines the thematic significance of the nude scenes in the Royal National Theatre's 1997 production of King Lear:
• The Lunar Calendar of Shakespeare's King Lear
  Sohmer, Steve. "The Lunar Calendar of Shakespeare's King Lear." Early Modern Literary Studies 5.2 (1999): 2.1-17. Sohmer analyzes the dates in King Lear to provide evidence that the lunar calendar was one of Shakespeare's sources and suggests the possibility that the play was performed for King James I on December 26, 1606 as well as the significance of this date:
• Edgar and Kingship in the Three King Lears
  Stoll, Abraham. "Edgar and Kingship in the Three King Lears." West Virginia Shakespeare and Renaissance Association Selected Papers (SRASP) 22 (1999). Stoll explores the different ideas of kingship in the Tate, Quarto, and Folio versions of King Lear and constructs his own reading kingship based on all these sources:
• "Fairies and Gods": A Socio-Religious Context for King Lear
  Wylie, Jessica. "Faires and Gods: A Socio-Religious Context for King Lear." SHAKSPER via Early Modern Literary Studies. Wylie explores the Celtic-pagan and Roman influences of and the interplay of these influences in King Lear:
• Lear's Lapse: Foreshadowing King Lear I. i.
  Locket, Joseph. "Lear's Lapse: Foreshadowings in King Lear I.i." Grist for the Mill: Papers, Projects, Positions, 1996. Locket discusses the early signs in King Lear that point towards the eventual dissolution of Lear's kingdom into social chaos:
• A Serpent's Tooth
  Richard Nathan's How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth It Is to Have a Thankless Child is his parody of King Lear as written for W. C. Fields:
• Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures
  Samuel Harsnett's A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures (1603) was used by Shakespeare as his source for the names of demons in King Lear. Locate this text at the Furness Collection: