King Lear-Arden Shakespeare

by William Shakespeare

BRAND NEW, Exactly same ISBN as listed, Please double check ISBN carefully before ordering.

Genres: School

Paperback

Published January 1, 2013

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[Laura Leaney · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been absolute decades since I'd last read King Lear and I've not the remotest clue what made me pull it out and re-read it this last week.

I was a bit rusty at first, and I felt my brain creaking around trying to negotiate the language and syntax, but it really helped having read it in college and knowing the essential plot. This time around, retired and without pressure, I could luxuriate in the language and the absolute maddening stupidity of Lear's "aged tyranny" and the horror of two bitch-daughters whose "glib and oily art" convince Lear to hand over the kingdom to them. His youngest daughter Cordelia refuses to suck up to her father and gets nothing. This all happens straight away and the rest of the play deals with the repercussions of Lear's blindness and need for flattery. God, he's such an ass! Yet, honestly, it was the grossness of the two evil daughters Regan and Goneril that got me engrossed in the play. I'd completely forgotten how filthy they are.

The subplot with Gloucester and his sons Edgar and Edmund (the illegitimate one) was also rather brilliant to read. Gloucester's blindness (to be persuaded by Edmund that Edgar is a villain) is a shadow play of Lear's actions against Cordelia. Unlike my feelings about Lear, I really like Gloucester, who doesn't go mad exactly, but who tries to commit suicide at what he thinks is a cliff at Dover. I really felt for him, but I'd feel the same way too if someone had pried out the "jelly" of my eyes after discovering what a dupe I'd been. Gloucester has a great little speech in Act I when he is partially persuaded that his loving son Edgar might be a traitor to him, and although I love the whole thing, these lines really got me: The King falls from bias of nature -- there's father against child. We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. Somehow, this mirrors what I'm feeling right now about the unnatural direction my country is taking, but more importantly it foreshadows the tragedy to come.

I blame Lear for nearly everything that happens. The violence is stunning, but not surprising. We don't know what happened to his queen, although mothers and wombs are used as metaphors throughout. Were the daughters raised by Lear? If so, he clearly did not teach good values to his two eldest who have no emotional attachment to their father. Lear ends up calling his own flesh and blood a "plague," a "carbuncle" in his "corrupted blood." When the two women evict Lear into a hideous storm, I think every reader or theater-goer knows that the storm represents what's happening in his mind and heart. He's not the only sufferer in the elements though; Gloucester is out there too, and Edgar in disguise, and Kent (Lear's loyal follower). The storm is "the time's plague when madmen lead the blind."

[Georgia Berg]

english class speedrun.

[Jason Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

New radio 4 production with Richard Wilson, Toby Jones and David Tennant

[DJ, · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man may rot even here.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this play! It’s so interesting and has so many relevant themes!

[hollie waterman · Rating 5 out of 5]

anova one

[David Levell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won't add my puny adjectives to this particular mountain! But I will say this Arden edition offers a lot of information about textual variations between the Quarto and Folio versions, as well as discussing the various ways it's been staged over the centuries. And the detailed footnotes are helpful in untangling the occasional semantic obscurity.