King Lear: Text and Performance

by Gamini Salgado

A king foolishly divides his kingdom between his scheming two oldest daughters and estranges himself from the daughter who loves him. So begins this profoundly moving and disturbing tragedy that, perhaps more than any other work in literature, challenges the notion of a coherent and just universe. The king and others pay dearly for their shortcomings–as madness, murder, and the anguish of insight and forgiveness that arrive too late combine to make this an all-embracing tragedy of evil and suffering.

Each Edition
Comprehensive explanatory notes
Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography

From the Paperback edition.

96 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1987

Reviews

[Jeffrey Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is actually a book *about* King Lear in the Text and Performance series. The book's editor is Gamini Salgado. It is a discussion of the play and of production and dramatic choices in particularly four productions: Old Vic, 1940 (dir: Casson and Granville-Barker; Lear: Gielgud); Royal Shakespeare, 1962 (dir: Peter Brook; Lear: Paul Scofield); Royal Shakespeare 1968 (dir: Trevor Nunn); Russian film version, 1970 (dir: Grigori Kozintsev; Lear: Yuri Yarvet).

Pretty good; rather short, but useful within its limitations. I caught it in a couple of factual errors (one had a review of an 1838 production being published in 1808; I'll be checking out the source to find out where the error happened).