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King Lear-Arden Shakespeare
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Paperback
Published January 1, 2013
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William Shakespeare
20.2k books48.3k followersWilliam 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".
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".
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 3, 2026
Such an interesting play! I kinda got confused towards the end but I get why everyone loves Shakespeare. I do too.
October 15, 2025
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."
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."
August 22, 2026
“Go to, they are not men o’ their words: they told me I was everything; ’tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.”
King Lear
We follow two parallel men: King Lear and the Earl of Gloucester. Lear is an aging monarch whose poor decisions in the opening scene set the entire tragedy in motion — dividing his kingdom based on which daughter can flatter him best, and banishing the one daughter who loves him honestly because she refuses to perform that love in words. Shakespeare uses Gloucester’s story to illustrate the same failure from another angle: a father who trusts a forged letter and a performance of loyalty over years of known character, and disinherits his true son while elevating the illegitimate one who has been plotting against him all along. Both men are undone by mistaking flattery for love and appearance for truth, and both pay for it with everything they have.
Gloucester’s punishment for his blindness is made literal: his eyes are gouged out ,for the “crime” of showing Lear kindness. And it’s only once his physical sight is gone that he begins to see clearly — “I stumbled when I saw,” he says, finally recognizing his own son’s innocence and his own catastrophic misjudgment only after there’s nothing left to look with but feeling.
Lear’s own awakening comes the same hard way. Stripped of his crown, his knights, his court, his jewels — everything that told him who he was — he’s left standing in a storm asking the only question left to ask: who am I, if I am not the king? What emerges is not a king anymore, but simply a man — old, cold, afraid, and for the first time capable of noticing someone else’s suffering before his own. “Ay, every inch a king,” he says later, in rags, mad, crowned with weeds — as if kingliness was never in the robes or the throne to begin with.
Threaded through Lear’s unraveling is the Fool, whose riddles carry more honesty than anyone at court dares speak plainly. “They’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying, and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace.”
“The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say,
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young,
Shall never see so much , nor live so long.”
King Lear
We follow two parallel men: King Lear and the Earl of Gloucester. Lear is an aging monarch whose poor decisions in the opening scene set the entire tragedy in motion — dividing his kingdom based on which daughter can flatter him best, and banishing the one daughter who loves him honestly because she refuses to perform that love in words. Shakespeare uses Gloucester’s story to illustrate the same failure from another angle: a father who trusts a forged letter and a performance of loyalty over years of known character, and disinherits his true son while elevating the illegitimate one who has been plotting against him all along. Both men are undone by mistaking flattery for love and appearance for truth, and both pay for it with everything they have.
Gloucester’s punishment for his blindness is made literal: his eyes are gouged out ,for the “crime” of showing Lear kindness. And it’s only once his physical sight is gone that he begins to see clearly — “I stumbled when I saw,” he says, finally recognizing his own son’s innocence and his own catastrophic misjudgment only after there’s nothing left to look with but feeling.
Lear’s own awakening comes the same hard way. Stripped of his crown, his knights, his court, his jewels — everything that told him who he was — he’s left standing in a storm asking the only question left to ask: who am I, if I am not the king? What emerges is not a king anymore, but simply a man — old, cold, afraid, and for the first time capable of noticing someone else’s suffering before his own. “Ay, every inch a king,” he says later, in rags, mad, crowned with weeds — as if kingliness was never in the robes or the throne to begin with.
Threaded through Lear’s unraveling is the Fool, whose riddles carry more honesty than anyone at court dares speak plainly. “They’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt have me whipped for lying, and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace.”
“The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say,
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young,
Shall never see so much , nor live so long.”
July 7, 2026
ykw this was actl surprisingly not bad. my previous shakespeare experiences had been kinda mmm. merchant of venice i didn’t really touch it much but r&j was alright but i liked this most i think. it’s very self aware it makes me feel like that shakespeare is really one w the proletariat… the people. i liked the portrayal of one of the most prevalent ways we deal w losing and gaining power and how it interacts in entrenched dynamics — in family. even in a courtly perspective, Lear’s sense of betrayal and anguish as well as the sisters various intentions behind their rise to power (relieved at disposing of the old, filial piety and devotion to someone u love and appreciate) is just so so entrenched in the way our society works doesn’t it? even now, despite all the years in between, the dynamics in traditional family structures manifests such challenges. especially in asian households i must say. oh well. thanks ms prakash for the read thru notes they were helpful
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June 4, 2025english class speedrun.
June 8, 2025
New radio 4 production with Richard Wilson, Toby Jones and David Tennant
July 4, 2025
A man may rot even here.
January 6, 2026
I loved this play! It’s so interesting and has so many relevant themes!
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April 24, 2026Watched a stage show and read along at the same time and that’s good enough for me. Maybe I’ll revisit? Doubtful. Not a shakers fan so far. Sorry not sorry 🤷♀️
April 30, 2026
still haven’t finished act two. i really enjoyed the dramatics of this one!
June 7, 2026
El libro estaría más chulo desde la perspectiva de Edmund, es un duro. Shakespeare es el peak de mi vida. Poor naked wretches.
September 19, 2024
anova one
September 25, 2024
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.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews