King Lear

King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare about an aging king of ancient Britain who divides his kingdom among his three daughters and then loses his power, his sanity and his family. Scholars date its writing to 1605 or 1606. It was performed at court on 26 December 1606 and first printed in 1608, and it survives in two significantly different early versions.

Background and creation of King Lear

The Royal Shakespeare Company explains how the play is dated. An entry in the Stationers’ Register on 26 November 1607 names the play and its author, and it says the play had been performed before the king on St. Stephen’s night, 26 December, the previous Christmas. The play must also postdate 1603, because one of its sources, Samuel Harsnett’s A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures, was published that year. Scholars place it after Timon of Athens and before Macbeth and Antony and Cleopatra.

Shakespeare’s audience knew the story from myth, legend and history. Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, in its second edition of 1587, told of an ancient British king’s unwise division of his lands, drawing on the twelfth-century Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth. In that account Leir disinherits his youngest daughter for refusing to flatter him, only to find the professions of his other daughters false. Versions also appeared in A Mirror for Magistrates in 1574 and in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene in 1590, where the youngest daughter, now called Cordelia, is hanged.

Shakespeare also knew the anonymous play The True Chronicle History of King Leir, performed in 1594 and published in 1605. Its Britain is strongly Christian, unlike the setting he created. The parallel story of a father and his two sons comes from Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia of 1590, in which a king is deposed and blinded by his illegitimate son. The disguise of Edgar as Poor Tom draws on Harsnett’s book. The RSC points to two of Shakespeare’s most significant additions: Lear’s madness and the role of the Fool.

Summary of King Lear

Lear plans to divide his kingdom among Goneril, Regan and Cordelia and asks each how much she loves him. Goneril and Regan flatter him. Cordelia, the youngest, does not, and Lear disowns and banishes her. She marries the king of France.

Goneril and Regan soon turn on their father, leaving him to wander in a furious storm, and his mind begins to give way. In a second plot, the Earl of Gloucester’s illegitimate son Edmund turns Gloucester against his legitimate son Edgar. Edmund later betrays his father to Regan and her husband Cornwall, who puts out Gloucester’s eyes.

A French army arrives with Cordelia and rescues Lear, but it is defeated. Edmund imprisons Cordelia and Lear. Edgar mortally wounds Edmund in a trial by combat, and the dying Edmund confesses that he ordered the deaths of Cordelia and Lear. Help comes too late. Lear enters carrying Cordelia’s body, and then he dies.

Themes and interpretation of King Lear

The Folger editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine begin with the extent of suffering in the play. Other Shakespearean tragedies give their characters some joy before misery arrives, but King Lear offers no such relief, and everyone in it suffers. Some characters harden their hearts, others turn to violence, and many try to ease the pain of others, while Lear rages against his own pain until his reason cracks.

The editors suggest that the story draws audiences back. There are two families, each centered on an aging father who misjudges his children and unleashes greed and ambition in the ones who do not truly love him. Familiar jealousies, demands for love and sibling rivalries are pushed to the extreme, so that readers can see their own small vices magnified.

Old age is a central subject. Lear imagines that old men will keep their authority after giving away money and power, but he learns how helpless age can leave a person. The editors read his closing words to Cordelia as a sign that he also learns that greed and power-hunger finally do not matter. They call it the most devastating of Shakespeare’s tragedies and perhaps his most moving.

Early texts of King Lear

The play was printed in two versions in the early seventeenth century. The first, in 1608, was a quarto known as Q1, with a title page announcing the true chronicle history of Lear and his three daughters and the unfortunate life of Edgar. It has hundreds of lines of verse printed wrongly as prose or the reverse, and it was corrected as it went through the press, so surviving copies differ.

A second quarto appeared in 1619 but kept the 1608 date on its title page, and the true date was not discovered until the early twentieth century. The second version is in the First Folio of 1623, titled The Tragedie of King Lear. It contains more than 100 lines missing from Q1 and lacks about 300 lines that Q1 has, including a whole scene, 4.3. The two differ in their readings of over 800 words.

Editors therefore face real choices. For much of the twentieth century they preferred the Folio, believing Q1 came from shorthand notes or actors’ memories. More recently some have favored Q1 as a version printed from Shakespeare’s own manuscript. A third view holds that the two texts are separate Shakespearean versions, one revised after the other, which should never be combined in a single edition.

Reception and legacy of King Lear

The Folger editors note that the play remains powerful when translated, for example into Japanese, when converted to film, and when set in lands far from ancient Britain. They link this to the strength of the story told in the play, as well as to its language.

The play has also drawn painters. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds Edwin Austin Abbey’s oil painting of the opening scene, called Cordelia’s Farewell, made in 1897 and 1898 on a canvas about 3.2 meters wide, which is shown above. Theaters continue to stage it, and the Folger lists its own Folger Theatre production of 2007 and a 2014 staging at Shakespeare’s Globe among the productions it documents.

Readers who want to compare the texts can consult the Folger Shakespeare Library’s holdings, which include the first quarto, the second quarto and the First Folio. For the broader category the play belongs to, see tragedy.

Editorially reviewed by Specialty Digest Editorial TeamLast reviewed November 5, 2026Researched and drafted with AI assistanceReport an issue