Dover Publications

King Lear

William Shakespeare

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Table of contents
  • Title Page2
  • Performance4
  • Bibliographical Note5
  • Copyright Page6
  • Note7
  • Table of Contents8
  • Dramatis Personæ9
  • ACT I10
  • SCENE I—King Lear’s Palace10
  • SCENE II—The Earl of Gloucester’s Castle12
  • SCENE III—The Duke of Albany’s Palace14
  • SCENE IV—A Hall in the Same14
  • SCENE V—Court Before the Same16
  • ACT II18
  • SCENE I—The Earl of Gloucester’s Castle18
  • SCENE II—Before Gloucester’s Castle19
  • SCENE III— A Wood20
  • SCENE IV— Before Gloucester’s Castle20
  • ACT III24
  • SCENE I—A Heath24
  • SCENE II - Another Part of the Heath24
  • SCENE III— Gloucester’s Castle25
  • SCENE IV—The Heath25
  • SCENE V — Gloucester’s Castle27
  • SCENE VI—A Chamber in a Farmhouse Adjoining the Castle27
  • SCENE VII — Gloucester’s Castle28
  • ACT IV30
  • SCENE I — The Heath30
  • SCENE II—Before the Duke of Albany’s Palace30
  • SCENE III— The French Camp Near Dover31
  • SCENE IV— The Same32
  • SCENE V—Gloucester’s Castle32
  • SCENE VI— Fields Near Dover32
  • SCENE VII— A Tent in the French Camp. Lear on a Bed Asleep, Soft Music Playing; Gentleman, and Others Attending35
  • ACT V36
  • SCENEI—The British Camp Near Dover36
  • SCENE II—A Field Between the Two Camps36
  • SCENE III—The British Camp Near Dover36
  • DOVER · THRIFT · EDITIONS40
Book details
  • Vendor Dover Publications
  • SKU 9780486110240
  • ISBN-13 9780486110240
  • Author William Shakespeare
  • Category Drama
  • Subject Shakespeare

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First performed about 1805, King Lear is one of the most relentlessly bleak of Shakespeare's tragedies. Probably written between Othello and Macbeth, when the playwright was at the peak of his tragic power, Lear's themes of filial ingratitude, injustice, and the meaninglessness of life in a seemingly indifferent universe are explored with unsurpassed power and depth. The plot concerns a monarch betrayed by his daughters, robbed of his kingdom, descending into madness. Greed, treachery, and cruelty are rife and the denouement of the play is both brutal and heartbreaking. In fact, so troubling is its vision of man's life that, until the mid-19th century, the play was performed most often with a non-Shakespearean happy ending, with Lear back on his throne and Cordelia, the daughter nearest his heart, happily married to the noble Edgar. But there is a dark magnificence to Shakespeare's original vision of the Lear story, and the play is performed today essentially as he wrote it, uncompromised by later "improvements." King Lear is reprinted here from an authoritative British edition, complete with explanatory footnotes.