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Shakespeare's King Lear

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Joseph Marcell (Lear) and John Stahl (Gloucester),  King Lear, directed by Bill Buckhurst, Shakespeare’s Globe, presented by Folger Theatre, 2014.

Introduction to the play

Shakespeare’s  King Lear  challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. Its figures harden their hearts, engage in violence, or try to alleviate the suffering of others. Lear himself rages until his sanity cracks. What, then, keeps bringing us back to  King Lear ? For all the force of its language,  King Lear  is almost equally powerful when translated, suggesting that it is the story, in large part, that draws us to the play.

The play tells us about families struggling between greed and cruelty, on the one hand, and support and consolation, on the other. Emotions are extreme, magnified to gigantic proportions. We also see old age portrayed in all its vulnerability, pride, and, perhaps, wisdom—one reason this most devastating of Shakespeare’s tragedies is also perhaps his most moving.

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The Folger Shakespeare

Our bestselling editions of Shakespeare's plays and poems

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child.

As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods; They kill us for their sport.

King Lear in our collection

A selection of Folger collection items related to King Lear . Find more in our digital image collection

View in our digital image collection

Essays and resources from The Folger Shakespeare

Learn more about the play, its language, and its history from the experts behind our edition.

About Shakespeare’s King Lear An introduction to the plot, themes, and characters in the play

Reading Shakespeare’s Language A guide for understanding Shakespeare’s words, sentences, and wordplay

An Introduction to This Text A description of the publishing history of the play and our editors’ approach to this edition

Textual Notes A record of the variants in the early printings of this text

Appendix: 3.1.21–46

A Modern Perspective An essay by Susan Snyder

Further Reading Suggestions from our experts on where to learn more

Shakespeare and his world

Learn more about Shakespeare, his theater, and his plays from the experts behind our editions.

Shakespeare’s Life An essay about Shakespeare and the time in which he lived

Shakespeare’s Theater An essay about what theaters were like during Shakespeare’s career

The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays An essay about how Shakespeare’s plays were published

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Advice from the players: 10 great actors on performing shakespeare.

Read a few favorite quotes from actors who joined us on our Shakespeare Unlimited podcast, including the late Glenda Jackson, Adrian Lester, and Sir Ian McKellen.

Excerpt: "King Lear: Shakespeare's Dark Consolations"

“ King Lear is about insiders who with terrible suddenness are shoved outside, and what they learn or don’t learn from finding themselves positioned there,” writes Arthur Frank.

Patrick Page on King Lear and Shakespeare's Villains

Patrick Page tells us how he gets inside the mind of Lear in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s 2023 production.

ENCORES: 'King Lear' performed by Folger Theatre and The Classical Theatre of Harlem

Folger Public Programs is pleased to present ENCORES, recalling the rich history of programming on the historic Folger stage. This week, we revisit a performance of ‘King Lear’ by Folger Theatre and The Classical Theatre of Harlem (2007).

Making BEDLAM: Creating a Shakespeare mash-up series

Production crew of BEDLAM: The Series. Photo by Ashley Garrett. Eric Tucker is an off-Broadway director and Artistic Director of Bedlam Theatre. Musa Gurnis is an early modern theater scholar and actor. When we pitched our Shakespeare mash-up series BEDLAM…

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Teaching King Lear

Use the Folger Method to teach King Lear . Become a Teacher Member to get exclusive access to lesson plans and professional development.

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The Key to Getting ALL Students Understanding and Interpreting Complex Texts

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Cutting a Scene: King Lear 4.6

• Lesson plan

Choral Reading: King Lear 1.2

Choral reading: fences and king lear.

• August Wilson

Early printed texts

The textual history of  King Lear  is complicated, from its first printing to how it is edited today. The play first appeared in 1608 as a quarto titled  True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King Lear (Q1). That version of the play is in itself confusing: some verse lines are erroneously divided or set as prose, prose lines are sometimes set as verse, and the book went through multiple changes during its press run, correcting mistakes, but also introducing new ones. The play was reprinted in 1619 (Q2), with some additional lineation and word changes. In 1623, the play was included in the First Folio as  The Tragedie of King Lear (F1). This version of the play is markedly different than Q1: there are about 100 lines that are in F1 but not Q1, and about 300 lines (including the entirety of 4.3) that are in Q1 but omitted in F1; there are also differences in about 800 words between the two versions.

Since the 18th century, editors have conflated the two versions—combining both texts to produce a play that is different from either Q1 or F1. In the 20th century, scholars increasingly argued that each version was a distinct play, either due to one of the versions incorporating interventions from someone other than Shakespeare, or due to Shakespeare’s own revision of the play. It is possible now to find modern editions that conflate Q1 and F1, that are based on solely Q1 or F1, or that present Q1 and F1 on facing pages. The Folger edition is based on Q1, but it includes additions from F1 where the omission would otherwise leave a gap. The edition marks off the F1-only text in square brackets; Q1-only text is indicated with angled brackets. In some cases, the editors have made changes that are not from F1 or Q1; those emendations are marked with half-brackets.

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How bravely thou becomest thy bed, fresh lily.       — Cymbeline , Act II Scene 2

The Tragedy of King Lear

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Kinglear essay (1)

Related Papers

Bilal Hamamra

This article deploys the critical lines of new historicism, feminism and performance studies to argue that Shakespeare's King Lear is a critique of King James I's absolute authority and the destructive ideology of gender difference via the binary opposites of speech and silence. A new historicist reading would argue that the dominant male powers in King Lear eliberately foster the subversive behaviour of others (Cordelia, Regan, Goneril, Edmund) in order to crush it publicly and so assert their dominance. However, in this paper, I argue that King Lear is a trial of language, ending with the renunciation of patriarchal speech and the subordination of male figures to Cordelia's silence. Following materialist feminist criticism, I argue that Regan and Goneril are reproducers of the masculine ideology of power, property and linguistic domination. While Shakespeare criticises male figures' absolute voices that are ventriloquised by Regan, Goneril and Edmund, he represents silence as a subjective space of truth and honesty and a site of rebellion against unjust speech as illuminated in the figure of Cordelia whose silence undermines Lear's game of words.

zorai med cherif

Critical Literary Studies, Vol. I, No 2, Spring and Summer, 2019

Fatemeh Mahmoudi

This paper aims to investigate the role of language as a form of political and social control, and a vehicle for power and domination in Shakespeare's King Lear and Edward Bond's Lear on parallel bases. Foucault's famous statement which refers to power as present "everywhere, not because it embraces everything but because it comes from everywhere" clearly points to the always already presence of power. The issue of power has occupied a central position within his works. In fact, language can reflect truth as false and vice versa to sustain dominant group's desires. Language can both reflect and affect our perception of the world indeed. In fact, King Lear and Lear are both stages for language game. The paper thus aims to focus on the way language plays a key role in King Lear and Lear as a vehicle for power and how language makes you powerful or how it throws you away to be a margin. The result shows that there is a dual relation between language and power, so that the voice of king is doomed to silence through the function of characters' powerful language usage. In both plays, King is in the margin and language rules powerfully on socio-political relations. This paper has benefited from library documents and sources by use of a descriptive-analytical method.

Keith Bateson

This paper argues that Shakespeare used festive traditions to structure "King Lear." St. Stephan's day festivities with the lords of misrule are set against midsummer rituals and may serve as a critique of James I rule when played in 1606.

final published version

Critical Insights: Family, edited by John Knapp (Ipswich, MA: EBSCO, 2012): 83-103.

Joseph Carroll

Studies in English Language and Literature

David Hurley

This paper explores the role of "occasion" as a "Machiavellian" tool of political "practice" and "counter practice" in King Lear, and looks at the influence of Justus Lipsius' stoical concept of "constancy" as a countermeasure.

SMART M O V E S J O U R N A L IJELLH

Abstract Giving the vast proliferation of Shakespeare studies we examine the strong impact of Bible in his plays. Inevitably, for instance, the study of Shakespeare and the Bible overlaps the study of Shakespeare and religion. There is some evidence that Shakespeare had read and used the ‘Geneva Bible’ in his works. The glimpse of parables and references of the Bible can be seen very clearly in many of his plays. The similarities of the incidents and characters from the Bible and King Lear from the Shakespeare's play will be discussed in this paper which had a strong impact on the audience of sixteenth century and it is still continuing at the present time. Keywords: King Lear, Job, Geneva Bible, King James Version Bible 1611.

Evolution of Violence, edited by Todd K. Shackelford and Ranald D. Hansen (New York: Springer, 2013) 33-52.

People read literature because they want to understand their own experience and the experience of others. Literature contains much violence because violence reveals the underlying conflicts in all social relationships. Evolutionary psychology offers the best explanatory framework for understanding social conflicts, but evolutionary psychology is still in the process of formulating theories about the way core motives interact with specific cultural constructs. To explain the significance of violence in particular works of literature, critics must analyze the interactions between human life history, specific cultural values, individual differences in authorial vision, and relations between the minds of authors and readers in response to characters. This chapter offers examples of that kind of analysis for three works of literature: Grimms’ “Little Red Riding Hood,” Angela Carter’s “The Werewolf,” and Shakespeare’s King Lear. The analysis of “Little Red Riding Hood” identifies fear of predation and fear of strangers as core concerns in the story and examines the way symbolic images affect the emotions of child readers. The analysis of “The Werewolf” contrasts the author’s relations with characters and audience in that story with the authors’ relations with characters and audience in the other two works. The analysis of King Lear contrasts the emotional effects of tragedy with the emotional effects of action movies, identifies normative human universals as the basis for audience response, examines the way characters in the play and critics of the play seek meaning through religious ideas, contrasts religious ideas with Shakespeare’s naturalistic world view, and argues that intuitive insights into human life history form the moral core of the play.

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by William Shakespeare

King lear essay questions.

Who is the protagonist of King Lear ? How do you know?

Like many of Shakespeare's plays, the distinction between protagonists, antagonists, and neutral characters is often blurred in King Lear . In many ways, Lear himself can be considered an antagonist, as he catalyzes the dissolution of his own kingdom when he disinherits Cordelia. But Lear is also a type of protagonist, as his daughters Goneril and Regan in turn strip him of his power and make Lear a more sympathetic character. In this way, there is no clear protagonist in the play, and audiences are forced to reckon with the question of who, ultimately, is to blame for Lear's demise.

What role does age play in the development of the narrative?

Age is an important motif in King Lear , most notably because Lear is an older king who is attempting to safeguard his kingdom by leaving it in the hands of his three daughters. However, Lear's age is something that he does not necessarily take seriously until it is too late: he remains convinced that he is still an effective and powerful ruler even after disinheriting Cordelia, a sense of denial that makes him vulnerable to the greed of Goneril and Regan. Ironically, only after Lear has descended into a near-mad state and only after his demise is all but guaranteed does he come to recognize himself as a feeble and weak old man.

What significance does Lear's fool have in the play?

The fool in King Lear is, ironically, likely the wisest and most knowledgable character in the play. He is frequently warning Lear about the consequences of his decisions, and often speaks harsh truths masked as entertaining half-riddles so as not to overstep his social role. Furthermore, the fool serves as a type of foil for Lear himself, as Lear more often ignores or ridicules his fool instead of taking his cautions seriously, thereby highlighting Lear's own lack of self-knowledge and foresight.

How might you explain Cordelia's response to Lear's test of love at the beginning of the play?

Unlike Goneril and Regan, Cordelia refuses to appeal to Lear's vanity when expressing her love for him, even if it means losing her inheritance. Goneril and Regan both deliver hyperbolic but disingenuous speeches about their love for their father, and when Lear asks Coredlia to do the same, she remains silent. Cordelia's response is puzzling, but ultimately emphasizes her ability to distinguish between unconditional love and false love expressed for the sake of benefiting from it. Cordelia's silence is a testament to her love for her father over her desire for property, as she likely knows what the consequences of her actions will be.

Why does Cornwall blind Gloucester?

Though King Lear is not Shakespeare's bloodiest play (that title belongs to Titus Andronicus ), the blinding of Gloucester is one of the cruelest and most violent scenes the bard ever wrote. Technically, Cornwall blinds Gloucester because Gloucester may have committed treason by sending Lear to Cordelia (who, after her exile, is now considered a foreign invader). However, Cornwall's behavior is more intimately attached to his anger and penchant for violence than his commitment to justice. The act is a testament to the play's interest in portraying the world as a relentlessly cruel and endlessly bleak place.

King Lear Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for King Lear is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

"Themes of King Lear are skilfully presented through imagery and symbolism"

King Lear is rife with animal imagery, as the play is known for interrogating whether mankind is anything "more" than animal after all. Most often, animal imagery appears in the form of savage or carnivorous beasts, usually associated with Goneril...

A tragic hero moves the reader to pity,since his misfortune is greater than he deserves,and also creates fear,since his tragedy might easily befall one of us.To what extent does Lear fit the definition of a tragic hero?

Check this out:

http://bailieborocslibrary.weebly.com/blog/lear-develops-more-as-a-tragic-hero-than-gloucester-discuss

Edmund's "Up With Bastards" soliloquy in King Lear

The repetition makes Edmund sound harsh and angry.

Study Guide for King Lear

King Lear study guide contains a biography of William Shakespeare, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About King Lear
• King Lear Summary
• King Lear Video
• Character List

Essays for King Lear

King Lear literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of King Lear.

• The Heroines of Crime and Punishment, King Lear, and To the Lighthouse
• Folly of the Fool
• Sight and Consciousness: An Interpretive Study in King Lear
• An Examination of the Inverse Tropes of Sight and Blindness in King Lear
• Gender, Power, and Economics in King Lear

Lesson Plan for King Lear

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to King Lear
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• King Lear Bibliography

E-Text of King Lear

King Lear E-Text contains the full text of King Lear

• Persons Represented

Wikipedia Entries for King Lear

• Introduction
• Date and text