The Tragedy of King Lear (Folger Shakespeare Library) - Softcover

Shakespeare, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743484959 ISBN 13: 9780743484954

Publisher: Washington Square Pr, 2005

Synopsis

The critically acclaimed series from the leading center for Shakespearean studies presents freshly edited texts of each play based on the earliest printed versions, along with detailed explanatory notes on facing pages, scene-by-scene plot summaries, a key to famous lines and phrases, an introduction to the language of Shakespeare's time, and essays by outstanding scholars that furnish a modern perspective on the plays.

About this title

Review:

King Lear stands alongside Hamlet as one of the most profound expressions of tragic drama in literature. Written between 1604 and 1605, it represents Shakespeare at the height of his dramatic power. Drawing on ancient British history, Shakespeare constructs a plot that reads like a fable in its clear-sighted but terrifying simplicity. The ageing King Lear calls his daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia to witness that he wishes "to shake all cares and business from our age" and divide his kingdom between his three children. When Cordelia refuses to flatter her father with sycophantic words of love, her banishment leads to chaos and civil war as Lear's disastrous "division of the kingdom" gives free reign to the greed and ambition of his two remaining daughters.

As Lear sinks into rage and madness he is deserted by everyone except his "bitter" Fool, the loyal Kent and the exiled Cordelia. The play descends into a nighmarish theatre of cruelty and absurdity as Lear realises he has "ta'en / Too little care" of the poverty and corruption of his kingdom, and his loyal but foolish friend Gloucester has his eyes gouged out. Metaphors of monstrosity and perversions of nature structure the dramatic action, and the play's ending remains one of the most harrowing in all of Shakespeare. Many see a profound despair and nihilism in King Lear, and would agree with Kent's conclusion that "All's cheerless, dark and deadly". Other writers have identified a radical but pessimistic critique of contemporary conceptions of kingship and absolutist authority, yet it remains a remarkable tragedy of public misjudgement and intensely private grief and anguish. --Jerry Brotton

Review:

"...an exemplary consideration of all the new bibliographic explication...Halio has done an admirable job. If all editions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries were similarly conceived and presented, study and understanding of Elizabethan-Jacobean-Caroline drama would be greatly improved." William B. Long, TEXT: Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship

About this edition

• Publisher: Washington Square Pr
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0743484959
• ISBN 13: 9780743484954
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 316
• Editor: Mowat Barbara A., Werstine Paul