Could seeing ourselves as good neighbours help us navigate the present-day churn of disconnection, polarisation and uncertainty? Shakespeare invites us to try.
Articles on King Lear
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Unfortunately, despite an impressive cast and some outstanding performances, this King Lear is as exciting as boiled cabbage.
School can turn classic books into a chore. Rereading Eliot or Austen or Shakespeare as we grow older, we can see how we have grown as imaginative, moral beings.
The advantages of being a part of a family are so obvious that losing that affiliation, intentionally or not, is tragic.
Robert Menzies is outstanding as a physically feeble yet emotionally volatile Lear.
Youth theatre encourages actors to connect with characters of canonical plays, but the trajectories of young women within them can make it hard to find redemptive or empowering touch points.
Britain has lost one of its greatest actors in the Irish-born star who found fame in Dennis Potter’s groundbreaking TV drama The Singing Detective.
Worrying environmental issues dominated the time of William Shakespeare as they do now, from depleted fish stocks and food shortages, to overpopulation and animal exploitation.
Shakespeare often portrayed crises of legitimacy and reflected on the politics of his day but the Tories might not fare so well in a modern production.
Understanding consent is key to avoiding ambiguous and socially awkward encounters and reducing the potential to cause harm. There are lessons in Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’.
Scholars have scoured the works of the great playwright for clues about his faith. A scholar of theology and Shakespeare’s works says it isn’t as simple as that.
From ‘islands of pain’ to the ‘peril of exposure,’ writers have captured the fear, emptiness and despair that characterize life during the current pandemic, writes a poet and English scholar.
Plague ravaged England repeatedly during Shakespeare’s lifetime. The playwright translated the experience of sickness and restoration in many ways on the stage.
Even Samuel Johnson found some of Shakespeare’s violent scenes unwatchable.
We may think of Harry Potter as escapist delight, but J.K. Rowling’s books also contain an extended theme that has more in common with King Lear than most English professors might care to admit.
Shakespeare’s play offered me a chance to think about India’s political and social issues from a literary and epic perspective.
King Lear manifests the neurosis of age and abuse. While his behaviour is dramatically exaggerated, we can read universal lessons on toxic family dynamics in Shakespear’s tragedy.
Lear’s mordant images and sonorous cadences throb with dire warning and a sense of imminent catastrophe. So what’s the play’s key message, for current times, with Geoffrey Rush in the title role?
Top contributors
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Lecturer in English and Writing, University of Sydney
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Professor of English, University of Waterloo
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Leverhulme Early Career Reseach Fellow, University of Warwick
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Lecturer in English, Keele University
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Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith University
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Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London
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Reader in Renaissance Drama, University of Huddersfield
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Postdoctoral Fellow, Contemporary English Literature and Critical Theory, University College Dublin
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Rachel Hadas is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor of English, Rutgers University - Newark
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Professor of Systematic Theology, Seminary of the Southwest
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Full Professor of Early Modern Drama, Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence, Bishop's University
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Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies, McGill University
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Emeritus Professor in Media, Glasgow Caledonian University
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Research assistant, Empire, Migration and Belonging, University of Oxford
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Associate Professor of English, Drake University