King Lear

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under King Lear (disambiguation) .

King Lear and his daughters . Photography by Julia Margaret Cameron , 1872.

King Lear ( English The Tragedy of King Lear ) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare . The first version was definitely not written before 1603, but probably not before 1605. In the Stationers' Register a performance on December 26, 1606 recorded at the English court. The first print is in the quarto edition of 1608 William Shak-speare: His True Chronicle of the life and death of King Lear and his three Daughters  ; “With the unfortunate life of Edgar, sonne and heire to the Earle of Gloster, and his sullen and assumed humor of TOM of Bedlam:” before. Also in the folio editionfrom 1623 the piece is included under the title The Tragedy of King Lear . The fouro and folio editions, however, show considerable structural differences; More recently, Shakespeare research has increasingly emphasized the independence of the two versions of the text.

The person of King Lear and his story are based on the figure of King Leir (also Llyr or Lir ), one of the legendary kings of Britain from the pre-Roman times. The legend of Leir and his daughters was passed down in various versions in Shakespeare's time and was already used in stories, poems and verses as well as in dramas . Its basic structure can be found in the Historia Regum Britanniae (around 1136) by Geoffrey of Monmouth from Wales ; in the Elizabethan era it found its way into all known historical representations, including in Holinsheds Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577 and 1587), which Shakespeare used as one of his essential sources for English history.

overview

Storylines

"King Lear" is a so-called double drama with a structural conflict development that runs parallel in each case; it tells the fate of two heroes: that of King Lear and his three daughters, and that of his counselor, Count Gloucester and his two sons. At the beginning of the play, Lear banishes his daughter Cordelia and his henchman Kent . Edmund , Gloucester's illegitimate son , intrigues against his brother Edgar , so that he has to flee. Cordelia , Kent and Edgar thus form the core group of righteous characters, those persons who, although ostracized, are loyal to the fathers Lear and Gloucester . Older daughters Goneril and Regan plan to disempower their unpredictable father. At the same time, Edmund, who is only concerned with his own gain, incites his family with cold calculation in order to appropriate the entire inheritance of his father. Regan, Goneril and Edmund thus form the core group of the dishonorable characters who rebel against their fathers and want to usurp power. Regan can count on the support of her power-obsessed, brutal husband, Cornwall . Goneril's husband, the Duke of Albany , on the other hand, does not allow himself to be drawn into the rebellion; he finally changes to the camp of righteous and honorable characters. The catalyst of the two main narratives is the subplot of the invasion of Britain by the French. With the landing of the French army in Dover, the drama receives an impetus that drives events forward and accelerates them in an extreme way.

main characters

The drama’s stage company consists of two groups, the family of King Lear and the family of his counselor, the Earl of Gloucester . Lear is old and abdicates. He divides the empire among his daughters. Because the youngest, Cordelia , fails a love test, he disinherits her and marries her to the French king without a dowry. The preferred older daughters Goneril and Regan and their husbands Duke Albany and Duke Cornwall each receive half of the kingdom. The group of characters around King Lear also includes Oswald , Goneril's obedient and ruthless steward , and the Count of Kent , Lear's loyal follower, whom the king banishes for defending Cordelia . The Earl of Gloucester is the father of Edgar and Edmund . The latter is an illegitimate son. Edmund intrigues against Edgar , so that Edgar has to flee and pretends to be the mad beggar Tom of Bedlam to protect himself from persecution . After his abdication, Lear is initially accompanied by his knights. After his daughters have refused to entertain his entourage, only his fool and the Count of Kent, disguised as servant Caius , stand by him.

Told the time and places of the action

The work is set in ancient Britain, usually the time of the action is the 8th century BC. Adopted. The action at the king's court begins with the first act. Most of the events in acts two, three and the beginning of act four alternate between Earl Gloucester's castle and events on a stormy night on the heather. From the second part of the fourth act, the locations of the action are the surroundings of the city of Dover, the cliffs there and the British and French camps. Between the first and the second act there is an unspecified period of time during which Cordelia and her husband, the King of France, go to their new home and from there prepare an invasion of the island. After the French troops land near Dover, the action starts again with the second act. The following narrated time includes a night and the following day.

plot

Since there are two clearly different versions of the text of the work - the quarto version from 1608 and the folio version from 1623 - the editors of the Shakespeare editions offer different solutions. The single edition of "The Oxford-Shakespeare" by Stanley Wells reproduces a quarto-based text, the "New Cambridge-Shakespeare" by Jay Halio and Jonathan Bates "RSC Edition" print a folio-based text. Reginald Foakes, the editor of the third Arden edition, has produced a so-called compilation , a hybrid text made up of quarto and folio. The editors of the complete edition "The Oxford Shakespeare" print the two early text editions of the work as, from their point of view, equally authoritative versions that were created in different phases of the work's history and stage practice. The presentation of the plot shown here uses the bilingual edition by Frank Günther , the text of which is based on the second Arden edition by Kenneth Muir, which, like the third Arden edition, is a collated text.

Act I.

In the first act, all the conflicts that drive the drama are expanded: Lear's abdication, the division of the empire, the exile of Cordelia and Kent , the older sisters' plans to overthrow their father, and Edmund's intrigue against his father and stepbrother.

[Scene 1] The opening scene takes place at the king's court and begins with a conversation between the feudal men Kent and Gloucester . In the first few sentences you address the question of who Lear prefers and his plan to divide the kingdom. Then Gloucester introduces his illegitimate son Edmund ("... the son of a bitch has to be recognized."). The king appears and announces the reasons for the meeting to the court ("In the meantime we explain our deep plan."). He wants to abdicate, divide the kingdom between his three daughters and marry off his youngest. But first he wants to find out with a love test to whom he can bequeath the greatest treasures of his kingdom ("Which one should we say she loves us most?"). He's probably planning to give preference to his favorite daughter, Cordelia . While the two older ones, Goneril and Regan , make exuberant statements to their father and are then richly rewarded, the youngest refuses to show her affection for her father ("Unhappy as I am, that's why I can't lift my heart to my mouth.") . Lear is so angry that he disinherits her ("... by the sacred sun fire wreath ... herewith I renounce all fatherly duty.") And divides their share of the kingdom between Regan and Goneril ("... swallows dowry to two daughters the third."). An open argument ensues between Lear and Kent , who defend Cordelia and accuse his king of making a big mistake. In immeasurable rage, Lear banishes loyal Kent ("Bastard! Heretic!"). Then he calls Cordelia's suitor, the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France , and offers them his daughter with his curse as the only dowry ("... newly cherished by our hatred"). In contrast to the Duke, the King of France is ready to marry Cordelia out of love for Cordelia , even without an inheritance. At the end of the scene, Regan and Goneril stay behind and discuss what to do to prevent exile, as in the case of Kent , if the king changes his mind ("You can see how moody he gets with age") and his anger also directed against them.

[Scene 2] The second scene takes place in Earl Gloucester's castle. In a monologue, Edmund reveals his plans to avenge the humiliations he has experienced through illegitimate birth by intriguing the entire inheritance of his father ("You are my God, nature!"). He has written a forged letter from his brother in which the latter apparently reveals his plans to incapacitate his father. Gloucester is furious about the alleged betrayal of his legitimate son ("Unnatural, abhorrent, beastly villain!") And orders Edmund to look for him. Alone again, Edmund makes fun of his father's astrological superstitions ("A wonderful back door for the whore-billy man, blaming his billy-goat-horny disposition to a star!"). When Edgar appears, he uses pretexts to get him to flee, thus providing evidence of his guilt. In a short final monologue, Edmund communicates his Machiavellian stance to the audience ("What my birthright defends, my mind creates: every means is right, it is used to an end.").

[Scene 3] In the palace of the Duke of Albany the steward Oswald and his mistress Goneril talk about the wild goings-on of the aged Lear and his rowdy knights ("every hour he roars from one outrage to the next ..."). Goneril is tired of the matter; the latest incidents give her the reason she was looking for to refuse hospitality to her father. She instructs her servant to provoke a scandal by carelessness towards the king, and writes a letter to her sister Regan , in which she calls on her to behave just as dismissively towards her father as she does.

[Scene 4] Kent did not go into exile as the king ordered. He has disguised himself and offers his beloved master service ("No, sir, but there is something about you that I would like to call master"). When he and his entourage come from the hunt and expect to be entertained by the servants of his daughter Goneril , none of the servants of Goneril makes any move to bring the king's food. When Oswald behaves disrespectfully towards Lear - as if incited by Goneril - he is beaten up by Kent ("I'll teach you differences."). Lear is happy that his new servant Cajus has beaten up the cheeky Oswald and wants to pass the time. But his fool doesn't want to joke, he tells the king bitter truths ("you had little brains in your bald crown when you gave away the golden one ...") and makes fun of him ("... just as you Made your daughters your mothers ... and pulled your pants down yourself. "). Goneril appears and announces his obedience to her father, accuses him of fornication and gluttony and demands that he dismiss his knights from the service ("... please be asked that you reduce your supply train a bit."). Lear curses Goneril ("Plague on you, poison and bile!") And leaves in the hope of being accepted into Regan .

[Scene 5] The king wants to prepare his arrival at Regan and sends Kent ahead with a letter. In another conversation with his fool , Lear begins to suspect that his second older daughter will cast him out too, and he fears that he will lose his mind ("Oh, don't let me go insane, don't go insane, you gods.").

Act II

While the reasons for the plot lines are presented in the first act, the second act, which takes place almost exclusively at the castle of Count Gloucester , first deepens the conflict between Gloucester and his legitimate son Edgar and then the complete break between Lear and his two daughters Goneril and Regan depicted. This makes it clear that the work will develop as a double drama - about the fate of Lear and the fate of Gloucester .

[Scene 1] Edmund accompanies his brother on his escape and meets the servant Curab in front of his father's castle , who announces the arrival of Regan and Cornwall at Gloucester . Edmund is ready to use this for his plans. He persuades Edgar to continue to flee alone, and when he leaves he stages a fight in which he injures himself and then pretends to his father that Edgar wanted to instigate and attacked him to murder his father together ("Here he was in the dark. .. "). Gloucester has the whole kingdom searched for his son ("I never fathered him"). Gloucester is desperate and makes Edmund his sole heir ("... I make sure that you become hereditary."). Regan and Cornwall arrive as announced and Regan convinces Gloucester that Edgar got off the beaten track because he was persuaded by Lear's knights to betray his father ("Wasn't he a friend of the wild knights ..."). Edmund agrees to serve Cornwall .

[Scene 2] Kent and Oswald also arrive at Gloucester's castle to deliver letters: Kent brings mail from Lear and Oswald brings letters from Goneril . Both get into a heated argument, in which Kent first insults the steward ("Eater of the rest, petty Schubiak ...") and then beats him up again. The two are of Gloucester separated and Cornwall and Regan leave the messengers of the king in the block lock. Kent carries it with composure and closes the scene with a monologue in which he conjures up fate ("Fortuna, turn your bike.").

[Scene 3] The short third scene shows Edgar fleeing in the forest. He decides to disguise himself as Tom the beggar to protect himself from his henchmen and to pretend to have gone mad ("And defiantly offer myself to the storm in sheer nakedness").

[Scene 4] The fourth scene takes place again in Gloucester's castle. First Lear arrives and finds his messenger, Count Kent , disguised as servant Caius , locked in the block. He is appalled that he was arrested by his daughter. Kent describes the circumstances of his arrest and Lear then wants to confront his daughter ("Oh! How suffocation swells up in my heart ... Where is this daughter?"). He tells Gloucester to call Cornwall and Regan . She also refuses to take in her father, spurred on by her sister ("Oh sir! You are old: in you nature is close to the end of the time of existence."). When Goneril and Albany arrive, the two sisters outdo each other with humiliations towards their father by demanding that he give up the company of his knights. Lear leaves Gloucester's castle in anger and desperation and, only in the company of his fool , goes into the stormy night ("You see me gods, poor and old ...").

Act III

The third act takes place alternately on the stormy heather and in Count Gloucester's castle , where the two strands of the double drama are further developed. In the fourth scene all the "heroes" of the drama (except Cordelia ) meet at the same time in one place, the shed on the heather: Lear , his servant Caius ( Kent ) and his fool as well as Gloucester and Tom the beggar (his son Edgar ). The story of Lear culminates in the imaginative courtroom scene in the farmhouse and Gloucester's fate culminates in the glare of the old earl in his castle.

[Scene 1] There is a storm in the open field. In search of his master, Kent meets one of the noblemen of the king's entourage. He describes how Lear only wanders through the heather without protection in the company of the fool ("Tonight, when even the teat-free she-bear does not move, ... he runs barehead and shouts the world out whoever she wants."). Kent tells of the army from France that landed in Dover, sends the nobleman there and gives him a ring for Cordelia .

[Scene 2] The king shouts madly at the storm ("Blow, wind, your cheek will burst!"), His fool urges him to seek shelter in a shelter. When Kent encounters the two, he leads them to a shed nearby.

[Scene 3] The short third scene takes place in Gloucester's house. In a conversation with his illegitimate son Edmund , the count reports on the impending French invasion and a secret letter in which he learned of the preparations for war. He sets out to look for the king - against the orders of Lear's daughters - and asks Edmund to cover him up with excuses. After Gloucester's departure, however, he reveals his dark intention to betray his father in a short monologue: "... and earns me what father is about to lose: all his goods and money: the younger one rises when the old one falls."

[Scene 4] The fourth scene takes place again on the stormy heather. Lear and his companions have found a shed. Faithful Kent tries to persuade his master to seek refuge there, but Lear refuses; he wants to hold out in the storm so as not to have to think of the humiliations his daughters have inflicted on him while listening to the noise of the thunder ("... where there is a greater illness, one hardly feels the minor one"). When the fool enters the shed, he finds Edgar there , who pretends to be Tom the beggar and has hidden there ("Don't come in Nonckelchen; there's a ghost."). When the king tears his clothes off in a seemingly insane conversation with Tom , Gloucester appears, who is greeted by Tom with insane speeches ("There is the bad Flibbertigibbet!"). Gloucester has been looking for the king and reports the daughters' plans to murder his master ("The daughters want him dead."). He leads Lear and his companions to an abandoned farmhouse near his castle.

[Scene 5] The brief fifth scene shows Edmund and Cornwall in Earl Gloucester's castle . Edmund brings Cornwall the secret letter addressed to his father, which convicts him of being a spy for France. Cornwall is furious: "I want my revenge before I leave his house."

[Scene 6] Back on the heather, the king, led by Gloucester , arrives at a farmhouse with Kent , the disguised Edgar and the fool . There she leaves Gloucester and goes back to his castle. Lear is now completely out of his mind and wants to hold an imaginary judgment on his daughters ("That's how it's done; I'll accuse them right now."). He makes Tom a judge and Kent a jury. The fool is supposed to represent the audience. Gloucester is coming back; he has found a carriage that is to take the king to Dover for the French army.

[Scene 7] The next scene shows Gloucester's own servants capturing their master and taking him to his house with Lear's daughters. Gloucester, lamenting the betrayal of hospitality, confesses to Regan that he helped Lear escape: "Because I don't want to watch ... your Fury sister knocking pig teeth into his anointed flesh." Regan and Cornwall are furious. Spurred on by his wife, Cornwall tears the old count's eyes out ("Get out, bad goo!"). A loyal servant of Gloucester attacks Cornwall with a sword and seriously wounds him. Gloucester hopes Edmund will come to his aid. But Regan reveals Edmund's betrayal ("Oh my fool! Then I wronged Edgar.") And the servants drag Gloucester out of the house and push him in front of the gate.

Act IV

The fourth act takes place largely in Dover and the surrounding area. First, we learn of Gloucester's plan to throw himself off the cliffs, and then of Cornwall's death . On the cliffs of Dover, Gloucester is cured of his suicidal attempt, the first catharsis of the drama. In the last scene of the fourth act, Lear and Cordelia reconcile .

[Scene 1] Gloucester was blinded and thrown from his own house. An old man, one of his former tenants ("I was your tenant, was your father's tenant for almost eighty years.") Takes care of him and guides him through the stormy night on the way to Dover as he wishes. Gloucester laments his fate ("What bad boys flies are, we are to the gods. They kill us for fun."), Then they meet Edgar , who in the guise of the beggar offers to accompany his father. Gloucester sends the old tenant away, fearing that his company could only bring him disadvantageous ("The curse of the times, when astray blind lead. Do what I say, rather do what you want; but above all go." ). Blind Gloucester wants Tom to take him to the cliff of Dover to throw himself to his death from there. ("Just take me there to the very last edge, ... from this place on I don't need a guide anymore.").

[Scene 2] In the castle of the Duke of Albany , Goneril's servant Oswald reports that Albany disapproves of Regan , Cornwall and Edmund's actions against Gloucester ("... but changed like no one ever did."). Goneril gives Edmund authority over the drafting of troops against the French army and secretly exchanges tenderness with him ("Your to die."). Albany appears and makes serious reproaches to his wife ("Then it happens that humanity, as predators, tears itself to pieces like monsters from the depths."). The dispute turns into bad abuse ("Satan - Milkheart"), then a messenger brings the news of the death of Cornwall , who died of the injuries that a servant of Gloucester inflicted on him when Cornwall stabbed the old count's second eye out. Albany learns from the messenger that Edmund has betrayed his own father and swears vengeance (" Gloucester , I live that I thank you for your allegiance to the king and avenge your eyes.").

[Scene 3] Kent in disguise and a nobleman from Cordelia's entourage meet at the French camp in Dover . The French king had to return home and handed over the command of the army to his Marshal La Far . The nobleman has delivered Kent's letters for Cordelia and tells of her grief over the fate of her father, who is already near Dover ("Well sir, the sick-tormented Lear is in town ...").

[Scene 4] The brief fourth scene shows Cordelia and a doctor talking about Lear's constitution . Cordelia describes how her father was seen wreathed with flowers and singing in the open field ("wild game like the whipped sea; singing loudly; crowned with wild smoke ...") and sends an officer to look for him. Then a messenger brings the news that the British army is approaching.

[Scene 5] In Gloucester's castle, Oswald , Goneril's steward , meets Regan and reports on the military operations of Albany's army , her sister's husband. Regan is curious about the contents of a letter Goneril wrote to Edmund , arguing that she is in love with Edmund herself , and regrets that she did not kill Gloucester after he was blinded. She tries to win Oswald for her own ends. He is supposed to support her in her love for Edmund and offers him a reward if he kills Gloucester ("And do you happen to hear about this blind villain - a reward awaits whoever dismisses him.").

[Scene 6] The long sixth scene has three parts and takes place on the cliffs of Dover. The first part of the scene shows Edgar disguised as "Beggar Tom" who brought his father, the Earl of Gloucester , to the edge of the cliff. Gloucester wants to throw himself down ("O ye mighty gods! I renounce the world, and before your face I calmly brush off my great suffering."), But Edgar wants to cure his father of his suicidal intentions and convinces him that he is walking a steep path climbs up - although the path is level - and then falls down the cliff - although it has only fallen over. Then he describes in a disguised voice that he miraculously survived the fall ("Be calm and free."). In the second part of the scene, Lear - fantastically dressed in wild flowers - meets the two previous ones ("A lance prick into life, this sight."). Gloucester recognizes his master and the two begin a conversation where reason and madness are mixed up ("O you ruined piece of nature.") The nobleman from Cordelia's entourage arrives in search of Lear and wants to bring the king to the French camp. But the childishly crazy king runs away ("Then there's still life in it. Come here and get it ..."). In the third part of the scene, Oswald finds old Gloucester and his son ("A given prize! What a stroke of luck!") And tries to kill him to get Regan's reward for the murder, but is defeated by Edgar in battle. Dying, Oswald hands his opponent Goneril's conspiratorial letters to her lover Edmund . Edgar immediately recognizes the usefulness of these letters ("To look the enemy's brain, you tear open your heart.").

[Scene 7] The final scene of the fourth act takes place in the French camp and shows the meeting of Lear and Cordelia on the eve of the battle between the British and French armies. Lear was brought to the camp by Cordelia's entourage and dressed. He sleeps and is carried to Cordelia and Kent by servants . The king and his daughter are reconciled ("Bear with me ... I am old and foolish"). Meanwhile, the British forces are approaching under Edmund's command .

Act V

While in the fourth act, through the rescue of Gloucester and the reconciliation between Lear and Cordelia, the audience's hope is nourished that the tide could turn for the better, the turning point is initiated right at the beginning of the fifth act by a complex first scene and in the very much brief second scene communicated the defeat of the French, the capture of Lear and Cordelia and the escape of Gloucester . In the long third scene, the catastrophic ending unfolds.

[Scene 1] The first scene of the fifth act takes place in the British army camp and consists of five very short individual elements. A: Edmund orders a messenger to remind Duke Albany of his allegiance to fight the French together ("Bring me his intention."). B: Regan is jealous and accuses Edmund of having a love affair with her sister Goneril ("Don't be close to her."). C: Goneril and Albany arrive and the Duke stands by his duty of loyalty for reasons of state. He is loyal because the country is being attacked by the enemy, even if the French support the old king ("... this case here concerns us because France invades us."). D: Edgar appears disguised as a messenger and brings Albany the letters that he took from the dead Oswald . They contain a message from his wife Goneril to Edmund , in which she expresses her intention to kill her husband, Duke Albany , and to marry Edmund ("Before you go to battle, see the letter here."). E: In a monologue at the end of the scene, Edmund admits his willingness to definitely get rid of Albany and then possibly kill both sisters in order to rule alone ("Which one do I take? Both? One? Yes, or neither?").

[Scene 2] The second very short scene takes place on the battlefield between the army camps. Gloucester sits under a tree and waits for the battle to unfold ("Here, father, take the shade of this tree as an inn."). When the defeat of the French became apparent, Edgar returned in haste from the fray to his father and urged him to flee ("Being ripe is everything. Come on"). The French army is defeated, Lear and Cordelia have been taken prisoner.

[Scene 3] In the multi-layered final scene of the work, which consists of ten individual elements, the plot strives towards its tragic end. A: In the British army camp, Edmund orders the prisoners Lear and Cordelia to be incarcerated ("... in hard custody."). B: Edmund also orders a compliant captain to execute the two prisoners for a rich reward. The latter agrees ("... being tender-minded does not belong to a sword."). C: At a victory ceremony, Edmund and Duke Albany fight for supremacy in Britain ("For me you are only a subject in the war."). Albany calls a divine judgment in the form of a duel and has Regan, accompanied by a guard, brought into his tent ("You are not good, lead you to my tent."). D: Edgar appears disguised as a knight and demands the right to a duel with his stepbrother ("... you are a traitor."). Edmund is defeated in battle . E: After the duel, Goneril protests , but her husband, Duke Albany, reveals the possession of her conspiratorial letters to Edmund , in which Goneril tells her lover to murder her husband ("Shut up, wife."). Albany orders an officer to guard his wife. Q: Edmund is fatally injured and asks his opponent to reveal his identity. Edgar reveals himself to him ("My name is Edgar, your father's son. The gods are righteous."). Edmund admits his guilt ("The wheel went round once."). Albany and Edgar make up. G: A nobleman brings a bloody knife and reports that Goneril poisoned her sister Regan and then killed himself with the dagger ("What is the blood dagger?"). While the bodies of the two sisters are being carried in, Kent also comes looking for the king ("I come to say good night to my lord and king. Isn't he here?"). H: As he dies, Edmund reveals that he gave the order to have Lear and Cordelia killed ("... my order depends on Lear and Cordelia's life."). Albany hastily sends a messenger to prevent this ("Run, run! Oh, run!"). I: The messenger is late, Lear appears and carries his dead daughter Cordelia in his arms. He imagines that she is still alive ("The feather billows; she lives!"). Kent reveals himself to his king as the disguised servant Caius ("No, best lord; I am the same man."). J: A messenger brings the news that Edmund died of his wounds from the duel with Edgar . Lear , who is still holding his daughter in his arms, complains that his fool was killed ("And the poor fool's been hanged.") And that there is probably no life left in Cordelia . When he realizes this, he dies of a broken heart ("You will never come back. Never, never, never, never, never!"). Kent carries away the body of his king and declares that he will follow his master, who has called him, on his journey. Albany transfers rule to Edgar , who speaks the closing words:

One now has to bear the pressure of the dreary time;

speak what one feels, not what one should say.

The oldest carried the heaviest: young next to it

we will never see so much nor live so long.

Literary templates and cultural references

Shakespeare's drama partly draws on older traditions of the story of the legendary King Leir and his three daughters. According to legend, Leir is said to have ruled as King of Britain for nearly sixty years around the eighth century BC before he divided his kingdom between his two older daughters after a supposed token of love. After that, however, he was driven out by them and was only able to regain his rule through the support of his youngest daughter, whom he had previously rejected himself. After his death, Leir's youngest daughter took over the rule until a few years later she was overthrown by the two sons of her sisters and took her own life in captivity.

First print of Holinsheds Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande , 1577

The earliest surviving version of this story of Leir and his daughters Gonorilla, Regau and Cordeilla can be found in Book II (Chapters 11-15) of the Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth , which was originally written around 1136 in Latin. The historical representations widespread in the Elizabethan period fall back in many places on Monmouth's Historia ; also Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande of 1577, which were used as historical or material source republished in an expanded version in 1587 and repeated by Shakespeare, based in part on this Historia Regum Britanniae .

Around 1155 Monmouth's Historia was translated into French by the Norman poet Wace ; probably under the influence of Welsh tradition, he changed the name of the legendary British king to Llŷr in his rhyming chronicle Roman de Brut . This Welsh name, which also exists in English in the spelling Llyr or Lir, goes back to a sea god Llŷr in Celtic mythology . Apart from the correspondence in the name, however, there are no further references or connections between the historical legendary figure of King Leir and the mythological sea deity.

The legend of Lear and his daughters was known to the Elizabethans from numerous stories or other representations in different versions, none of which, however, had a tragic end for Lear. The story was also presented as a dramatized stage version in the anonymous piece The True Chronicle History of King Leir , which was first printed as a quarto in 1605, but in all probability had already been performed in Henslowe's Rose Theater in early April 1594 . Today's Shakespeare researchers and editors generally believe that Shakespeare knew this earlier work by an unknown author from memory as a spectator, or possibly even as an actor, and used it as one of his main sources for King Lear . In The True Chronicle History of King Leir , Cordella (Cordelia) and the Gallian (French) king disguised as peasants come to the aid of the destitute and destitute Lear after his disempowerment; In contrast to Shakespeare, the play has a happy ending for the title hero here too. The parallel plot with Gloucester and his two sons, which Shakespeare has taken from Sidney's Arcadia in various borrowings, is also missing .

For the material of the main plot of King Lear , Shakespeare also used the above-mentioned Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande by Holinshed as a source. The name Cordelia probably goes back in this form to Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590). Spenser's Cordelia also dies by hanging, as does Cordelia in King Lear .

Other templates probably Shakespeare's design of King Lear have affected, are A Mirror for Magistrates (1574) by John Higgins , The Malcontent (1604) by John Marston , The London Prodigal (1605) and Montaigne's essays , which in 1603 by John Florio to English have been translated; other sources may include An Historical Description of the Iland of Britaine by William Harrison, Remaines Concerning Britaine by William Camden (1606) and Albion ’s England by William Warner (1589).

In the passages by Edgar and Poor Tom, there are also various text-critical borrowings from A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures by Samuel Harsnett (1603), for example in the list of the devil's names.

For the Elizabethan public, the division of the empire by King Lear was possibly also a symbol of the confessionally deeply divided England under Elizabeth I. At the beginning of her reign, the Catholics were in the majority, but at the end a persecuted minority. Until Mary Stuart's flight to England in 1567 and her execution the following year, according to popular Catholic belief, there were two queens in England; the idea of ​​a possible French invasion was also one of the horror scenarios of the Elizabethan government.

Dating

The exact time of the completion of a first text version of the work by Shakespeare himself is not known; however, the emergence of the drama can be narrowed down to the period between spring 1603 and Christmas 1606 with a very high degree of certainty.

The earliest possible date of origin of the work (so-called terminus post quem or terminus a quo ) results from the numerous unambiguous adoptions and borrowings in Edgar's alias Poor Tom's text from Samuel Harsnett's critical treatise A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures on public expulsions of devils and demons by Catholic priests in the 1580s, entered in the Stationers' Register on March 16, 1603 and first printed in the same year.

A previous court performance of the piece, which must have taken place on December 26th, 1606, is recorded on the title page of the first four-high print from 1608 as the latest possible time for the writing of “King Lear” (so-called terminus ante quem ): As it was played before the Kings Maiestie at Whitehall / upon S. Stephans night in Christmas Hollidayes. / By his Maiesties seruants playing vsually at the Gloabe / on the Bancke-side . Although the first four-high edition appeared in 1608, it is certain that the reference to the court performance is a Christmas performance in 1606 and not 1607, since the entry of the work's printing rights in the Stationers' register on November 26th 1607 similar reference is made to this performance at court: Mr William Shakespeare his historye of Kynge Lear as yt was played before the kings maiestie at Whitehall yppon St Stephans night at Christmas Last by his maiesties servantes playing usually at the globe on the Banksyde .

Due to various, albeit not completely unequivocal, textual indications such as individual parallels or similarities in the wording with the older piece The True Chronicle History of King Leir , which appeared anonymously in print in 1605, or alleged references to the lunar eclipse in September 1605 and the solar eclipse in October 1605 in Gloucester's allusion on “these late eclipses in the sun and the moon” (I.ii, 100), the current discussion mainly assumes that the work was created around 1605; an even later dating to 1606 would mean that Shakespeare must have worked almost simultaneously on Macbeth , whose composition is also believed to have been around 1606.

Text history

King Lear's text transmission is extremely complex and confronts the editors of today's editions with problems that are almost unsolvable, since the text of the work is available in two versions, which have significant differences in key places.

Title page of the first quarto from 1608

The first printed edition of King Lear appeared in 1608 as a four-high edition (Q ₁ ) under the title M. William Shakspeare: HIS True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King LEAR and his three Daughthers . The text was duly registered in the Stationers' Register on November 26, 1607 with the printing rights for publishers and booksellers John Busby and Nathaniel Butter as A booke called Mr William Shakespeare his historye of Kinge Lear before going to press ; Nikolas Okes, a new printer at the time, who had no previous experience in printing, was commissioned with the subsequent printing, which in all probability took place between the beginning of December 1607 and mid-January 1608.

Although this first print was obviously authorized, the print quality is extremely poor and the text is flawed or corrupted in a way that is otherwise only the case with the bad quartos , in which a text has been unlawfully reconstructed from the memory of actors or spectators. In hundreds of places the text does not make sense or is metrically, semantically, or stylistically irregular; Speech passages are assigned incorrectly, punctuation is often missing or verse passages are printed as prose text and vice versa. In addition, the twelve surviving copies of this print exist in ten different versions, since the proofs were apparently corrected at the same time as the actual print and corrected prints were bound together with uncorrected pages.

A number of these mistakes correspond to a type typical of bad quartos, such as memory gaps that lead to jumps or have been filled in through improvisation; however, there are also a large number of reading errors, as are characteristic of copies of Shakespeare's difficult-to-read autographs. Other corrupt passages suggest hearing defects that could have occurred while dictating. To date it has not been possible to clarify how this first print version, with its numerous distortions and obvious changes, came about on the way from the original autograph manuscript to the printed text. In the discussion so far, there are a number of hypotheses (such as the assumption that two people were involved in the creation of the artwork, one of whom read to the other from an incomplete manuscript transcript or a so-called foul paper by Shakespeare, with the gaps then being filled out added to memory); however, all attempts to explain it so far are largely speculative and by no means unchallenged or convincing.

A second four-high edition (Q ₂ ), which appeared in 1619 with the wrong printing date of 1608 and the forged information Printed for Nathaniel Butter on the front page, represents an unauthorized pirated print by William Jaggard for Thomas Pavier and his planned collection of 10 four-high editions of Shakespeare's works (so-called “ False Folio ” or “Pavier's quarto”). This is essentially a reprint of Q ₁ with some corrections, but further errors and distortions, which is therefore for the text transmission is only marginally significant.

First folio edition by King Lear , 1623

The next printed edition of King Lear's text appeared in the 1623 folio edition (F ₁ ). This version has significantly fewer errors than that of the previous quartos. In the current discussion, the question of whether the original for this print was essentially one of the quartos, possibly Q ₁ , or whether the folio print was based on an independent new manuscript possibly revised for theater purposes by Shakespeare himself is a controversial one. If one of the quartos provided the template for the folio print, the improved quality could well be due to corrections of the Q copy used as a basis with the help of a reliable handwriting that is close to the original. In this context, however, the possibility cannot be completely ruled out that Shakespeare wrote two distinctly different versions of King Lear at different times , which were used as the respective printing copy, although the previous quartos were probably used in the folio edition for correction purposes at the time of printing.

The problem with today's text editions is that the folio text not only deviates from the four-sided version in hundreds of details in individual words and phrases, but also contains many more substantial changes that represent a different version of the text in significantly longer passages. On the one hand, the folio text contains more than 100 lines that do not appear in the Q version, while on the other hand more than 300 lines are missing in the Q version, which are central to today's text interpretations, such as the instruction of the fool by Lear and the grotesque Lears imaginary trial of his daughters. In the folio edition, through various additions, Lear's relationship with the fool is closer and more affectionate (e.g. II.ii326 and III.iv. 26). The additional echoing words of the fool at the end of the third act (III.vi.81-2) underline his close relationship with Lear; the preaching of Merlin's prophecy by the fool also highlights the universal fateful human significance of Lear's development, when he wants to shield himself from the judgment of the "great gods" and begins to doubt his mind ((III.ii.49-60, 67) Likewise, Lear's motivation for the division of the empire is made clearer at the beginning of the drama in the folio version, since here Lear connects the relinquishment of power with his old age and approaching death and wants to avoid disputes about his later inheritance Lear's relationship with Cordelia is expressed in numerous places in the folio version in a dramatically more intense way. In addition, Albany occupies a more powerful position at the end of the drama; Cordelia apparently has authority over the French armed forces herself and, compared to the more sentimental version in the four-quarter Overall, the issue takes a more active role. In addition, the End e the folio version gives a reading according to which Lear dies in the hopeful belief that Cordelia is still alive as his legitimate successor.

With regard to the streamlining of the text in the folio version, the elimination of the imaginary court scene, which is difficult to play on stage (III.vi.17-55), a revision of the four-high text either by Shakespeare himself or by a third party for practical theater reasons be owed. Perhaps this should also avoid excessively long performance times. In addition, the folio text lacks the various references from the four-high version to an imminent French invasion; the streamlined, dramatic course of action in the folio version rather suggests a rebellion and a civil war. Further text shortenings in the folio version concern the roles of Edgar and Kent, which in several places soften the dramatic intensity of the emotionally charged suffering in the parallel storylines for the audience. In the folio version, the accent compared to the four-high text is more on the actions of Edgar, Kent and Albany than on their emotional expressions. Kent's role is also pushed back in favor of Edgar's.

For today's editions of Lear , against this background, the problem arises as to which text version is relevant for the output. For a long time, previous editors assumed that there could only be one authentic (original) version of every Shakespeare play, Shakespeare's actual autograph manuscript, so to speak, which had to be reconstructed in the respective edition. According to this idea, all passages that appeared in one of the early printed versions belong to the authentic text of Shakespeare; their absence in the other edition was therefore regarded as a mistake in the text transmission. The tradition of the conflicted editions began with Alexander Pope's edition of 1723, in which the text of the quarto and folio editions were combined after a comparative critical analysis. It was not until the 1980s that a paradigm shift took place: In the course of the greater emphasis on Shakespeare's dramas as theater texts, various recent editors assumed that works such as King Lear were not written down once and for all by the author, but rather changed during the theater performances - and the adaptation process, in which Shakespeare played a key role as an author. From this point of view, Q ₁ and F _{1 represent} two different versions of the text, each of which is considered to be authentic.

The editors of the new Oxford edition , Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, have drawn the important consequence for the entire newer edition practice of publishing two Lear dramas: The History of King Lear: The Quarto Text and The Tragedy of King Lear: The Folio text . Also in the Norton edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works in 1986, as well as in the Oxford Complete Edition, two separate versions of Lear were printed. Likewise, the editors of the 1992 Cambridge edition published two different volumes of King Lear . In contrast , the latest Arden edition by Reginald A. Foakes offers a synoptic edition, which generally prefers the folio version, but at the same time integrates the four-high version. The different Q and F positions are each identified by the superscript Q or F.

Performance history

As with hardly any other play by Shakespeare, the history of the reception of the work in performance practice on the stage on the one hand and the critical appropriation of the work based on pure reading on the other hand in completely different ways, since the drama was long considered unreasonable for the theater audience.

The earliest documented performance of the drama on December 26, 1608 by the King's Men in Whitehall before King James I is, as shown above, documented by the information on the title page of the first four-high print; however, the play has probably already been played at the Globe Theater before. Another early performance during Shakespeare's lifetime is attested to around Christmas 1609 or at Candlemas 1610 in Nidderdale in Yorkshire by traditional documents.

Facsimile of the adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy by Nahum Tate from 1681

The further performance history of the work up to the closure of the theater by the Puritan Parliament in 1642 is not known; From today's point of view, however, the assumption is sometimes made that after its first performance around 1605, due to its cruelty and gloomy moments, the play was less well received by contemporary theater audiences than, for example, Hamlet or Othello .

After the theaters reopened in 1660, the work was included in the repertoire of the Duke's Company in Lincoln's Inn Fields from 1662 to 1665, but does not seem to have made a lasting impression on the audience as it is not mentioned elsewhere.

Since the end of the restoration period , King Lear was only seen on English stages in the 17th and 18th centuries in a version of Nahum Tate from 1681, in which he radically rewrote the drama of the neoclassical aesthetics of his time and with a happy one Had provided the end. Tate deleted the figure of the fool and made Cordelia and Edgar lovers. In what is probably the most significant adaptation in terms of theater history, the play ends with the restoration of a just order; Cordelia and Edgar take control of the kingdom, while Gloucester, Lear and Kent retire. Tate's adaptation of the drama remained successful in English-language theater for over 150 years; Even in well-known American performances of King Lear , only this version was played from the first performance in 1754 to 1875. The success of this adaptation was based primarily on the fact that Tate succeeded in not only adapting Shakespeare's tragedy to the tastes of the theater audience during the restoration period, but also consistently applied the supreme aesthetic regulations of neoclassicism to the plot structure, the character constellations and the linguistic design of the play to implement in the verse. However, with the alleviation of Lear's tragic suffering, his figure lost tragic size; Edmund, who was the character of the Machiavellian villain (in Shakespeare's original villain personified), was lifted by Tate contrast to the "restoration hero".

Shakespeare's drama came on German stages a relatively short time after its first performance by wandering English comedians, who presented the work in a heavily edited form. For example, the list of dramas that were performed at court in Dresden in 1626 by a troupe under the direction of John Green contains an entry under September 26 about a tragedy by Lear, King of Englandt . Also in Dresden in 1660 a tragicomoedia by Lear and his two [!] Daughters was performed. In 1665, a ban on theater performances was pronounced in Augsburg; The repertoire of the stage concerned also lists a comedia by King Lier aside from Engelant . The generic names used suggest, although not with complete certainty, a direction in which the Shakespeare model was revised. A reference to a moralizing redesign and interpretation of the original can also be seen in the description of the work from Michael Daniel Treu's Lüneburg play list from 1666: «Von dem Könnich aus Engelandt [...], in which disobedience to their elder is tightened, obedience but rewarded ». Another performance of the work from the 17th century in German-speaking countries is documented on July 22, 1676 in Dresden; In addition, the piece is also included in a list of English comedies listed in Weimar around 1710.

As in England, the original version of the work was still considered unreasonable for audiences in German theater practice in the 18th century. In the successful version of Lear by Friedrich Ludwig Schröder from 1778, which was played well into the 19th century, Shakespeare's text was adapted to the classicist rules and the sentimental needs of the audience and the end was rewritten in the same way. The dramaturgical changes were less drastic than with Tate on the English stage. In this version, Lear dies after a heart attack caused by the false assumption that Cordelia has died. Out of consideration for the audience, she stays alive and then mourns for her dead father in the final scene. Johann Christian Bock made stronger interventions in the text in his staging of Lear from 1779, which was created with knowledge of the text version of Nahum Tate and was just as successful as Schröder's version, even partially displacing it on the German stage. A happy ending in the German-speaking countries was also shown by the otherwise comparatively faithful performance of the Vienna Burgtheater from 1822 in a version by Joseph Schreyvogel ; Cordelia is miraculously brought to life here; the curtain falls after an additional scene in which Cordelia is reunited with her father. In contrast to Schröder and Bock, who used the prose translation by Wieland-Eschenburg in their arrangements, the performance text by Schreyvogel was based on the Lear translation by Johann Heinrich Voss, published in 1806, which, in accordance with the demands of the Romantics, was based on Shakespeare To emulate the original and to reproduce its image-saturated language as much as possible.

Criticism of such changes in the work and the redesign of the tragic ending was initially expressed primarily in intellectual circles. In his 1811 essay On the Tragedies of Shakespeare , Charles Lamb criticized the absurdity of a happy ending. At the same time, however, he emphasized that Shakespeare's Lear is more suitable for reading than for performance , because only reading makes it possible to fully empathize with Lear. In 1817, William Hazlitt saw King Lear in his Characters of Shakespear's Plays as Shakespeare's most successful drama. Other critics of romanticism such as Coleridge , Keats , Shelley or Schlegel equally praised Shakespeare's King Lear , which only applied to them in the original version; They contemptuously declined Tate's treatment of her happy outcome. In doing so, they saw Shakespeare's work primarily as poetry : In their opinion, the text could only come to life in the reader's imagination and could not be adequately represented in the grossly sensual play on the stage.

In performance practice, there was gradually a rather cautious return to the (initially shortened) original version. In February 1823 Edmund Kean played the tragic ending again as Lear, and in January 1838 the complete Shakespeare text was performed again at the Covent Garden Theater (London) with William Charles Macready .

Numerous other performances followed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although the play was mostly considered difficult to perform on stage, it has always featured prominently in the theater's repertoire. Most of the more recent productions in the second half of the 20th century were significantly influenced by Jan Kott 's Shakespeare interpretation . Groundbreaking for this new form of performance of King Lear as an endgame based on the model of modern theater of the absurd was above all the production by Peter Brook in Stratford in 1962, in which he radically broke with the tradition of a Christian-humanist interpretation of tragedy. Brooks' performance, which was played around the world and had a lasting impact on an entire generation of directors, showed Lear full of hopelessness and despair in a universe that was both cruel and senseless, and which for him no longer offered any purification or redemption. Peter Zadek's staging of Shakespeare's Lear in Bochum in 1974 with its emphasis on the absurd through to the bizarre-grotesque also achieved fame in German-speaking countries . The Royal Shakespeare Company's 1982 production, directed by Adrian Noble , was just as strongly influenced by the theater of the absurd; Noble also tried to update the piece by drawing parallels with the Falklands War .

Against the background of feminist-oriented analyzes or new interpretations, the question of the constellation of the sexes and the power relations between them has also been at the center of interest in the recent stage history of the work; In this context, the polarization of the female figures in King Lear was also questioned . In an internationally acclaimed, highly stylized production in the Schauspielhaus in Frankfurt a. M. cast the American director Robert Wilson in 1990 the title role of Lear with a woman, the actress Marianne Hoppe . The British Women's Theater Group had previously staged a feminist adaptation of the play under the title Lear's Daughters in 1987, focusing on the story of Goneril and Regan.

Adaptations

Like many other Shakespearean dramas, King Lear has been filmed several times. The oldest film adaptation dates from 1909 by the film pioneer J. Stuart Blackton . In 1953, Orson Welles played Lear in a television movie. One of the most important adaptations is the version by the Soviet director Grigori Kosinzew from 1969. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the film music . In 1971, Paul Scofield played King Lear in a film adaptation by Peter Brook , which, like his stage production from 1962, was heavily influenced by Jan Kott 's interpretation of Shakespeare .

At the beginning of the 20th century, the British writer and playwright Gordon Bottomley tried to elucidate the prehistory of the Shakespeare model in his tragedy King Lear's Wife, which was completed in the late summer of 1913 and premiered in September 1915 , in order to shed light on the development of the protagonists in Shakespeare's work in its entirety clarify. In his backward-looking adaptation of King Lear, Bottomley takes up the thread of the late wife Lears, who is only mentioned in a single passage in Shakespeare's drama (II, iv, 130-133), and shapes that of Shakespeare in his play a prehistory, though an established one, but running in the indefinite or uncertain. With his additional adaptation, Bottomley does not want to differentiate himself from Shakespeare, but at most claim to bring out those dimensions in Shakespeare's old motif that the Elizabethan playwright left unprocessed or unformed because they did not fit into the dramatic concept fit his work. His primary intention is to show the audience how Lear, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia could become the characters that Shakespeare allows to appear in his work. In his arrangement, Bottomley accordingly follows the tradition of Elizabethan-Jacobean drama in his choice of blank verse and dramatic diction as well as emphasizing the pictorial use of language and the decorative elements, but tries equally to meet the demands of modern drama. The plot of his work begins about a decade before the opening time of Shakespeare's drama and includes - in a condensed form to a few high points - the last hours before the death of his wife Lears, after a marriage full of disappointments and humiliations by being tyrannical and moody and arbitrarily drawn Lear. After she could not give birth to a son as a legitimate heir to the throne, he constantly betrayed her. Cordelia, called "Cordeil" here, appears as a boisterous and defiant child who, however, has a particularly close and passionate relationship with his father. Bottomley thus not only provides the connection to the opening scene of King Lear , but also an explanation for the motives and purposes of both the division of the empire and the test of love, which are uncertain in the original.

In his 1956 adaptation of the Lear material with the title Mister Lear Strives, the English writer Robin Maugham aims to update Shakespeare's original by relocating the plot to England in the 1950s. His adaptation is in the Nahum Tate tradition and transfers the Lear material as a variant of the “well-made play” prevailing at the time into a realistic comedy. Maugham provides his acting characters, who now belong to the affluent English middle class, with the characteristic properties of the main characters from Shakespeare's original and structurally adheres closely to the plot in Shakespeare's drama. Maugham's protagonist Mr Craine as a counterpart to Lear is, however, in contrast to his psychological and physical suffering only endangered by the threat of financial ruin and takes on rather comical features compared to King Lear. Maugham's piece, which ends happily with the prospect of a marriage like Tate's, can be understood as an ironic-satirical commentary on the prevailing values ​​in contemporary England, but it takes away the tragic dimension and depth of the material.

Probably the best-known stage work of the 20th century, in which the Shakespeare's Lear story is rewritten, is Edward Bond's drama Lear , also published in 1971 , which - initially considered to be sacrilege - was taken up by various literary scholars in the 1980s and in a series has led to more recent systemizations. Bond's Anti-Lear turns against the uncritical veneration of Shakespeare's original as a masterpiece and reevaluates the characters in order to redefine the origin of the violence. In order to hold the mirror up to the brutal world today, Bond shows in his drama full of cruelty Lear as a tyrannical ruler, in whose state rebellions and civil wars alternate and who seeks to protect his empire by building a great wall to protect his property and to secure his power. In Bond's play, Cordelia is the daughter of a priest and the wife of a poor carpenter who, after being raped by soldiers and brutally murdered her husband, seizes power, but establishes a state that is as cruel and inhuman as Lear. He, who has grown old and blind, finally realizes that the vicious circle of violence can only be broken through pity. When he tries to tear down the wall he has built, he is shot by soldiers.

In that Bond's piece takes the victim's side more clearly and finally lets Lear's path beyond the resigned insight culminate in an admittedly purely symbolic act, his rewording also indirectly conveys a highly critical interpretation of the original. The two “bad” sisters appear in Bond's Lear even more sadistic or bloody than in Shakespeare's original, but are portrayed in an overly symbolic scene as initially innocent victims of parental morality and violence. In prison, the ghosts of the two little girls who once were his daughters appear to Lear and slip on their mother's shroud, unwittingly or unknowingly, in the garb of social order and alienation from which, according to Bond's theory, we all suffer . In contrast, Cordelia appears as a kind of moral Stalinist in Bond. Correspondingly, the imagery is reversed in Bond's adaptation; the metaphors of violence and denaturation are no longer understood here as those that encroach upon the order of divine nature, but stand for the representatives of this order themselves. Bond's rewording suggests the understanding of various representatives of the later New Historicists , that in Shakespeare Tragedy to discover the traces of complicity with the power to believe.

The British writer and playwright Howard Barker , on the other hand, tries in his free adaptation Seven Lears , published in print in 1990, to depict the wife and mother, who are not present in Shakespeare's work, one more time. In his desperate efforts to rule his empire as a good king amid wars and intrigues, Barker's Lear vacillates between his beloved Prudentia and her daughter Clarissa, his wife. Prudentia flatters Lear with her boundless desire for him, while Clarissa supports him with her clear strategic analysis and leadership skills in war. Lear himself vacillates in Barker's play between his conscience on the one hand and the cruelty of his actions that he considers necessary on the other. Ultimately, Barker's pursuit of justice and truth only leads to chaos and misfortune.

As early as 1987, Elaine Feinstein, on a feminist background, in her dramatic prequel Lear's Daughters, focused on the dysfunctional dynamics in the family structure that led to the tragic end in Shakespeare's play.

The composer Aribert Reimann set the drama to music in the 1970s, and his opera Lear premiered on July 9, 1978 in Munich . The Japanese director Akira Kurosawa filmed Shakespeare's work again under the title Ran ; the film won an Oscar for best costume in 1986 . The events are shifted to Japan in the Sengoku period of the 16th century and adjusted accordingly, for example the three daughters become sons. In contrast, the American writer Jane Smiley tried in 1991 to modernize the Lear theme from a feminist perspective; her the Pulitzer Prize excellent novel A Thousand Acres , in 1997 under the title A Thousand Acres was filmed, focuses on the history of the two older daughters in the spotlight. In his novel Fool from 2009, Christopher Moore retells the drama from the point of view of the court jester Pocket. The British author Edward St. Aubyn retold the story as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare project. His novel Dunbar is about a media mogul who bequeaths his company to two of his daughters, who then deport him to a sanatorium.

In addition to the large number of adaptations of King Lear for theater, film adaptations and musical adaptations, Shakespeare's tragedy also inspired numerous other literary offshoots in various genres, which take up the story of Lear or tell it in freely transferred form. Amelia Opie's novel Father and Daughter from 1806 is one of the earliest adaptations in other literary genres , which in turn was transformed by William Moncrieff into his drama The Lear of Private Life (1828). Both works tell the story of a girl who is first seduced, then runs away with her lover, driving her father crazy. After her return she nurses him back to health, whereupon he dies happily.

One of the much better-known narrative adaptations is Honoré de Balzac's novel Le Père Goriot (1834) with a free transfer of the material to a bourgeois milieu. In Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev's novella A King Lear of the Steppe (1870), the Lear theme is transferred to the gloomy landlord milieu of provincial Russia. Even Emile Zola's La Terre , with its allusions to Shakespeare's play takes place in a rural environment.

In the 20th century, the 1991 novel Thousand Acres by the American author Jane Smiley is one of the more significant narrative paraphrases of Shakespeare's King Lear . Smiley's novel is an attempt at a literary implementation of the feminist interpretive approach, according to which Lear had an incestuous relationship with his daughters.

Canadian university professor and author David Arnason presents the rewritten Lear story in his 2003 campus novel, King Jerry .

In 2018, an adaptation was made with King Lear, directed by Richard Eyre , who also wrote the script.

sources

• Aaron Thompson, JA Giles. (Ed.): Geoffrey of Monmouth: History of the Kings of Britain. Cambridge, Ontario 1999.
• Günther Jürgensmeier (Ed.): Shakespeare and his world. Galiani Berlin, 2016. ISBN 978-3-86971-118-8

Text output

English

• Charlton Hinman, Peter WM Blayney (Ed.): The Norton Facsimile. The First Folio of Shakespeare. Based on the Folios in the Folger Library Collection. 2nd Edition. WW Norton, New York 1996, ISBN 0-393-03985-4 .
• John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor, Stanley Wells (Eds.): The Oxford Shakespeare. The Complete Works. 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, ISBN 978-0-19-926718-7 .
• Kenneth Muir (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Second series. Methuen, London 1952, 1961, 9th rev. 1972 edition.
• Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, ISBN 978-1-903436-59-2
• Jay L. Halio (Ed.): William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 978-0-521-61263-0
• Stanley Wells (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, ISBN 978-0-19-953582-8
• Jonathan Bate, Eric Rasmussen (Eds.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The RSC Shakespeare. MacMillan, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-230-57614-8

German

• Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-12489-8

literature

English overview representations

• John Russell Brown: The Shakespeare Handbooks. King Lear. A Guide to the Text and the Play in Performance. MacMillan, New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-4039-8689-4
• Anthony Davies: King Lear. In: Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells (Eds.): The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001, ISBN 978-0-19-280614-7 , pp. 244-248. Second Edition 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5 , pp. 279-282.
• Claire McEachern (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Tragedy. 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2013, ISBN 978-1-107-64332-1
• Jay L. Halio: King Lear: A Guide to the Play. Greenwood Press 2001, ISBN 978-0-313-31618-0 .
• Grace Ioppolo (Ed.): William Shakespeare's King Lear: A Sourcebook. Routledge 2003, ISBN 978-0-415-23472-6 , p. 10 ff.
• J. Lawrence Guntner: Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear on film. In: Russell Jackson (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film. 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-68501-6 , pp. 120-140.
• Mark Sokolyansky: Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet and King Lear. In: Russell Jackson (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film. 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-0-521-68501-6 , pp. 203-215.

German overview representations

• Hans-Dieter Gelfert : William Shakespeare in his time. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-65919-5 , pp. 359-363.
• Jan Kott : Shakespeare today. Alexander, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-89581-313-9 , pp. 159–204: King Lear or the Endgame .
• Ina Schabert (Ed.): Shakespeare manual. Time, man, work, posterity. 5th, revised and supplemented edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , pp. 546-554.
• Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Ditzingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , pp. 357–371.

Introductions

• Anthony D. Cousins: Shakespeare. The Essential Guide to the Plays. Firefly, Buffalo 2011, ISBN 978-1-55407-928-5 , pp. 180-189.
• Andrew Dickson: The Rough Guide to Shakespeare. 2nd edition, Penguin, New York 2007, ISBN 978-1-85828-443-9 , pp. 184-197.
• Marjorie Garber: Shakespeare after all. Anchor Books, New York 2004, ISBN 978-0-385-72214-8 , pp. 649-694.

Monographs

• Andrew C. Bradley: Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. London 1937, ISBN 978-1-171-85435-7 , pp. 243-330.
• Rachel Bromwich: Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain. University of Wales Press. Fourth Edition 2015. ISBN 978-1-78316-145-4 .
• Alexandra Braun-Rau: William Shakespeare's "King Lear" in its versions: an electronic-dialogical edition model. Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 2004, reprint 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-093989-7 .
• Lesley Ferris: Lear's Daughters and Sons - Twisting the Canonical Landscape. In: Sharon Friedman (Ed.): Feminist Theatrical Revisions of Classic Works - Critical Essays. MacFarland, Jefferson (North Carolina) and London 2009, ISBN 978-0-7864-3425-1 , pp. 97-104.
• Reginald A. Foakes: Hamlet versus Lear. Cultural Politics and Shakespeare's Art. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 978-0-521-60705-6 , pp. 45-77: The reception of King Lear. ; Pp. 181-219: A shaping for King Lear.
• Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer and Felicity Heal (Eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles. Oxford University Press 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-956575-7
• Wilson Knight: The Wheel of Fire. Routledge Classics, London / New York 1989, ISBN 978-0-415-25395-6 , pp. 181-200: King Lear and the comedy of the Grotesque. ; Pp. 201-234: The Lear Universe.
• Janice Norwood: A reference guide to performances of Shakespeare's plays in nineteenth-century London. In: Gail Marshall (Ed.): Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012, ISBN 978-0-521-51824-6 , pp. 348-416.
• Gerd Stratmann : King Lear. In: Interpretations - Shakespeare's Dramas. Reclam ju. Verlag, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-017513-2 , pp. 317-342.
• Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor: William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1987, ISBN 978-0-393-31667-4 , pp. 501-542.
• Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 .

Edition comments

• Kenneth Muir (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Second series. Methuen, London 1952, 1961, pp. 15-64.
• Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, ISBN 978-1-903436-59-2 , pp. 1-151.
• Jay L. Halio (Ed.): William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 978-0-521-61263-0 , pp. 1-96 and 265-292.
• Stanley Wells (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, ISBN 978-0-19-953582-8 , pp. 1-93.
• Frank Günther: From speaking and silence of the text or the ontological clothes. In: Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-12489-8 , pp. 269-288.
• Sabine Schälting: Good Girls - Bad Girls? King Lear and his daughters. In: Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-12489-8 , pp. 354-375.

Web links

Commons : King Lear  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• King Lear in the Gutenberg-DE project
• Spark Notes - Summary, Characters, Topics, Motifs
• MIT, English, Arden Version - King Lear
• zeno.org = Schlegel-Tieck version - King Lear
• British Library Shakespeare in Quartos - King Lear First Quarto 1608.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Stanley Wells (ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000. p. 3.
2. ↑ Jay L. Halio (Ed.): William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, p. 95. Jonathan Bate, Eric Rasmussen (Eds.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The RSC Shakespeare. MacMillan, London 2009, p. 25.
3. ^ Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997. pp. 148f.
4. ^ John Jowett, William Montgomery, Gary Taylor, Stanley Wells (Eds.): The Oxford Shakespeare. The Complete Works. 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005. p. 909: The History of King Lear (1605-06): The Quarto Text. P. 1153: The Tragedy of King Lear (1610): The Folio Text. See also Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells : The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2001. ISBN 978-0-19-280614-7 . Second Edition 2015. ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5 , pp. 279–282, here p. 279.
5. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. pp. 289f.
6. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 1, 22.
7. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act, 1, 36.
8. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 1, 51.
9. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 1, 91f.
10. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 1, 109–113.
11. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 1, 128.
12. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 1, 161.
13. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 1, 204.
14. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 1, 288.
15. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 2, 1.
16. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 2, 77.
17. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 2, 126f.
18. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 2, 180f.
19. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 3, 4f.
20. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 4, 27f.
21. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 4, 89.
22. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 4, 160.
23. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 4, 169f.
24. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 4, 242f.
25. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 4, 295.
26. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act I, 5, 41.
27. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 1, 37.
28. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 1, 77.
29. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 1, 84.
30. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 1, 93.
31. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 1, 116.
32. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 2, 13–40.
33. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 2, 168.
34. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 3, 11f.
35. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 4, 54–56.
36. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 4, 143f.
37. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act II, 4, 270.
38. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 1, 12–15.
39. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 2, 1.
40. ↑ Kent's question: "Who's there?" (Lear, III, 2.39) is a quote from the opening scene by Hamlet .
41. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 3, 22–24.
42. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 4, 8f.
43. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 4, 39.
44. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 4, 110.
45. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 4, 157.
46. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 5, 1f.
47. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 6, 20.
48. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 7, 53–55.
49. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 7, 80.
50. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act III, 7, 88.
51. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 1, 13f. Cf. Adam "I came when I was seventeen, sixty years ago." Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: As you like it (As you like it). Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007, act II, 3, 70ff.
52. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 1, 36f. Compare Aaron "Well, I did a thousand horrible things as carefree as you slap a fly." Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2004, act V, 1, 141f.
53. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 1, 46f.
54. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 1, 74–77. Cf. Kent : "I will soon be on a journey: my lord calls for me, must not say: no." Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 321f.
55. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 2, 3.
56. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 2, 25.
57. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 2, 48–50. See Sir Thomas Moore "... and men like ravenous fishes would feed on one another." Ron Rosenbaum: The Shakespeare Wars. Random House, New York 1997, pg. 203. Cf. Ulysses "... and Appetite, an universal wolf ... must make perforce an universal Prey, and last eat up himself ..." Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Troilus und Cressida. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2002, act I, 3, 120–123.
58. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 2, 51, 59.
59. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 2, 94ff.
60. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 3, 38.
61. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 4, 3f. Cf. Queen "There, hanging her crown of weeds on the falling branches, she climbed up ..." Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Hamlet. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2010, act IV, 7, 172f.
62. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 5, 37f.
63. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 6, 34–36.
64. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 6, 80.
65. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 6, 85.
66. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 6, 132.
67. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 6, 199.
68. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 6, 223.
69. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 6, 257.
70. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act IV, 7, 83f.
71. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 1, 4.
72. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 1, 16.
73. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 1, 24f.
74. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 1, 40.
75. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 1, 57f.
76. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 2, 1f.
77. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 2, 11. Cf. Hamlet : "Already, that's all." Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: Hamlet. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2010, act V, 2, 216
78. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 1.
79. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 33.
80. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 62.
81. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 107.
82. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 133.
83. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 154.
84. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 169f.
85. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 174.
86. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 223.
87. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 234f.
88. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 245f.
89. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 247.
90. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 265.
91. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 286.
92. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 305.
93. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Act V, 3, 307f.
94. ↑ Frank Günther (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. Bilingual edition. dtv, Munich 2007. Akt V, 3, 323–326.
95. ↑ Cf. Geoffrey of Monmouth: History of the Kings of Britain. Translated by Aaron Thompson, with revisions by JA Giles. Cambridge, Ontario 1999, pp. 28-33. This English version of the Historia Monmouth, translated by Thompson in 1718 and revised by Giles in 1842, is also available as full text on wikisource [1] ; The original Latin version is also partially stored there.
96. ↑ On Holinshed's recourse to the Historia Regum Britanniae by Monmouth Paulina Kewes, Ian W. Archer and Felicity Heal: The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles . Oxford University Press 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-956575-7 , p. 64.
97. ↑ Cf. Rachel Bromwich: Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain. University of Wales Press. Fourth Edition 2015. ISBN 978-1-78316-145-4 , p. 420. In Monmouth's Historia, however , the name Leir most likely does not go back to Welsh sources, but apparently comes from the old English Laegreceaster or Kaerleir or in the old Saxon form Leircestre derived, that is, associated with the city of Leicester . See Rachel Bromwich, ibid. See also Book II, Chapter 11, of the Historia Regum Britanniae in the translation by Thompson and Giles to wikisource [2] .
98. ↑ See in detail Kenneth Muir (ed.): King Lear . The Arden Shakespeare. Second series. 9th rev. Edition, Methuan London 1972, reprint 1975, ISBN 0-416-10170-4 , Introduction, pp. XXIV ff. And especially XXXI ff. See also in detail Stanley Wells (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, ISBN 978-0-19-953582-8 , p. 15 ff. And p. 26 ff. See also Jonathan Bate, Eric Rasmussen (eds.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The RSC Shakespeare. MacMillan, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-230-57614-8 , Introduction, p. 23 f.
99. ↑ See as far as Ina Schabert : Shakespeare Handbook . Kröner, Stuttgart 2009. ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , pp. 547 f., Ulrich Suerbaum : Der Shakespeare-Führer . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Dietzingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 361 f., Hans-Dieter Gelfert: William Shakespeare in his time. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-65919-5 , p. 359. Likewise Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells : The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. OUP 2001. ISBN 978-0-19-280614-7 . Second Edition 2015. ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5 , p. 279, as well as detailed William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Stanley Wells. 2000. ISBN 978-0-19-953582-8 , Introduction, esp. Pp. 15-30, William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear. NCS The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by Jay L. Halio. CUP 1992. Updated Edition 2005. ISBN 978-0-521-61263-0 , Introduction, esp. Pp. 1-6, and William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Edited by RA Foakes. 1997. ISBN 978-1-903436-59-2 , Introduction, esp. Pp. 95 ff., 100-105 and 107.
100. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert : Shakespeare Handbook . Kröner, Stuttgart 2009. ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , pp. 547 f. See also more detailed William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Edited by RA Foakes. 1997. ISBN 978-1-903436-59-2 , Introduction, esp.p. 104 f. And 108, William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Stanley Wells. 2000. ISBN 978-0-19-953582-8 , Introduction, esp. Pp. 27-30, and William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear. NCS The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by Jay L. Halio. CUP 1992. Updated Edition 2005. ISBN 978-0-521-61263-0 , Introduction, esp. Pp. 2 f. And 11 f. See also Grace Ioppolo (Ed.): William Shakespeare's King Lear: A Sourcebook. Routledge 2003, ISBN 978-0-415-23472-6 , p. 10 ff.
101. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert : Shakespeare Handbook . Kröner, Stuttgart 2009. ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 546, and Ulrich Suerbaum : Der Shakespeare-Führer . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Dietzingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 360 f.See also William Shakespeare: King Lear for more details . The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Stanley Wells. 2000. ISBN 978-0-19-953582-8 , Introduction, esp. Pp. 27 ff., And William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Edited by RA Foakes. 1997. ISBN 978-1-903436-59-2 , Introduction pp. 91 f. And 102 104., as well as William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear. NCS The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Edited by Jay L. Halio. CUP 1992. Updated Edition 2005. ISBN 978-0-521-61263-0 , Introduction, esp. P. 8 ff.
102. ↑ See Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , p. 101.
103. ↑ See Kenneth Muir (ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Second series. Methuen, London, 9th rev. 1972, Introduction S. XVII. See also Stanley Wells (ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, Introductio n, p. 10, and Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, Introduction , p. 102 f.
104. ↑ See Kenneth Muir (ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Second series. Methuen, London, 9th rev. Ed. 1972, Introduction S. XVIII. See also Stanley Wells (ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, Introduction , pp. 4 f. And 9 f. And Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, Introduction , p. 111. Foakes also refers at this point to the fact that, according to Peter Blayney's analysis, the first four-high edition was printed between the beginning of December 1607 and mid-January 1608. See Peter AM Blayney: The Texts of “King Lear” and their Origins , Vol .: Nicholas Okes and the First Quarto . Cambridge 1982, pp. 148-150. See also John Russell Brown: The Shakespeare Handbooks. King Lear. A Guide to the Text and the Play in Performance. MacMillan, New York 2009, p. 1.
105. ↑ The use of such textual indications for a more precise work dating is not completely indisputable or factually clear among the newer editors, since Shakespeare on the one hand may have known the older Lear play from earlier performances long before it was first printed and on the other hand the astrological references in Goucester's speech may not have been fully known Security can be assigned precisely in terms of time and may also have been added later. See Kenneth Muir (ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Second series. Methuen, London, 9th rev. Ed. 1972, Introduction p. XVIII and p. XX. See also Stanley Wells (ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, Introduction , pp. 12-14. Cf. also Ina Schabert : Shakespeare Handbook . Kröner, Stuttgart 2009. ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 546. A probable date of origin around 1604 or 1605 is assumed here. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, on the other hand, date the creation of the work to the period 1605-1606. See Jonathan Bate, Eric Rasmussen (Eds.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The RSC Shakespeare. MacMillan, London 2009, p. 23. Gary Taylor believes that Shakespeare's drama was based on the play Eastward Ho! which was written by George Chapman , Ben Jonson and John Marston probably in early 1605 and entered in the Stationers' Register on September 4th of that year and printed for the first time shortly afterwards. Accordingly, he assumes that Shakespeare could have written his “King Lear” only after knowing at least one early performance of this work, not before April 1605. Taylor's argument is also based on conjecture and has not remained undisputed. See Stanley Wells (ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, Introduction , p. 13, and Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, Introduction , p. 108 f.
106. ↑ See Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Ditzingen 2015, p. 362. See in more detail also Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, Introduction , p. 110 ff. And Kenneth Muir (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Second series. Methuen, London, 9th rev. 1972, Introduction p. XIII. See also John Russell Brown: The Shakespeare Handbooks. King Lear. A Guide to the Text and the Play in Performance. MacMillan, New York 2009, pp. 1 ff.
107. ↑ See Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Ditzingen 2015, p. 362 f. See also John Russell Brown: The Shakespeare Handbooks. King Lear. A Guide to the Text and the Play in Performance. MacMillan, New York 2009, pp. 2 f. And in great detail Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, Introduction , pp. 119-128.
108. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Ditzingen 2015, p. 363. See also Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, Introduction , p. 111 f. And Kenneth Muir (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Second series. Methuen, London, 9th rev. 1972, Introduction p. XIII. See also John Russell Brown: The Shakespeare Handbooks. King Lear. A Guide to the Text and the Play in Performance. MacMillan, New York 2009, p. 4.
109. ↑ Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Ditzingen 2015, p. 363. See also John Russell Brown: The Shakespeare Handbooks. King Lear. A Guide to the Text and the Play in Performance. MacMillan, New York 2009, p. 4f. See also Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, Introduction , p. 113 ff. And Stanley Wells (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, Introduction , pp. 5ff.
110. ↑ See John Russell Brown: The Shakespeare Handbooks. King Lear. A Guide to the Text and the Play in Performance. MacMillan, New York 2009, p. 5. See also in detail Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , pp. 21-28 and 82 ff as well as Ulrich Suerbaum : Der Shakespeare-Führer . 3rd reviewed and supplemented edition, Reclam, Ditzingen 2015, p. 363. Cf. also in detail Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, Introduction , pp. 113 ff., 126ff., 133ff., 137-139. For further differences, see also Jonathan Bate, Eric Rasmussen (eds.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The RSC Shakespeare. MacMillan, London 2009, About the Text , pp. 14-18.
111. ↑ See in detail Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, Introduction , pp. 140-143. See also John Russell Brown: The Shakespeare Handbooks. King Lear. A Guide to the Text and the Play in Performance. MacMillan, New York 2009, p. 4. Cf. also Ina Schabert : Shakespeare Handbuch . Kröner, Stuttgart 2009. ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 547.
112. ↑ See in detail Steven Urkowitz: Shakespeare's Revision of King Lear. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 1980, pp. 3-15
113. ↑ See Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , pp. 21-28 , here in particular pp. 24 ff., As well as Ulrich Suerbaum : Der Shakespeare-Führer . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Ditzingen 2015, p. 363 f. See also John Russell Brown: The Shakespeare Handbooks. King Lear. A Guide to the Text and the Play in Performance. MacMillan, New York 2009, pp. 5-7, and Ina Schabert : Shakespeare Handbuch . Kröner, Stuttgart 2009. ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , pp. 546 f. And Jonathan Bate, Eric Rasmussen (ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear. The RSC Shakespeare. MacMillan, London 2009, About the Text , p. 14. See Reginald A. Foakes (Ed.): William Shakespeare: King Lear on the edition practice of the last Cambridge edition . The Arden Shakespeare. Third Series. Methuen, London 1997, Introduction , p. 148 ff.
114. ↑ See Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , p. 100.
115. ↑ See Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , p. 100. As Weiss explains, the actors The Simpsons or Cholemely's Men , as they were later called under their later patron, Sir Richard Cholemely, gave regular performances of Shakespeare plays in all of Yorkshire. However, the group's performances and repertoire aroused the suspicion of the authorities, who arrested the group and had their textbooks confiscated. In the surviving interrogation protocols of William Harrison, one of the leading members of the group, it is stated that "one of the playes was Perocles prince of Tire, and the other was King Void". Accordingly, it was on two consecutive days in addition to Pericles and King Lear given.
116. ↑ cf. B. Ralf Weskamp: King Lear. Slightly modified version of the in Roland Petersohn and Laurenz Volkmann (eds.): Shakespeare didaktisch II. Selected dramas and sonnets for teaching , Stauffenburg Verlag, Tübingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-86057-997-8 , pp. 93-106, published article. Available online: (PDF; 110 kB) . Suerbaum expresses himself similarly, who assumes that in the first two centuries after the creation of the work the recipients were not ready to accept the piece in its original form, although they certainly felt its qualities and emotional urgency. With the dazzling of Gloucester, the innocent death of Cordelia, the cruel end of Lear, who was not guilty of any crime worthy of death, as well as the failure to restore order in the end, the work - according to Suerbaum - demanded a lot from the audience, especially at that time . Cf. Ulrich Suerbaum : The Shakespeare Guide . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Dietzingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 364 f. The editor of the New Cambridge edition of Lear, JL Halio, also considers it possible that the work may begin was not one of the more popular plays by Shakespeare, although no more detailed performance reports from this period are known. See Jay L. Halio (Ed.): William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of King Lear. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 978-0-521-61263-0 , Introduction p. 32 f.
117. ↑ See Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , p. 101.
118. ↑ See Annegret Maack: Variations on “King Lear”: Robin Maugham's “Mister Lear” and Rony Robinson's “The Royal Fool” . In: Horst Priessnitz (Ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , pp. 340-352, here p. 340. See also Nahum Tate: The History of King Lear . Edited by James Black, Arnold, London 1975, Introduction by the editor, pp. Xvi ff.
119. ↑ See Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , p. 101 ff.
120. ↑ See in detail Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , p. 106 ff. In his version of Lear, however, Bock does without the love story between Cordelia and Edgar that Tate added. The text adaptations by Schröder and Bock were not only received positively by the contemporary audience, but also by the critics and placed above the original text by Shakespeare, which, according to the opinion of the time, was due to the lack of poetic justice and a supposed lack of style or rough or Flatness in language was seen as far less effective.
121. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert : Shakespeare Handbook . Kröner, Stuttgart 2009. ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , pp. 552 ff. And Ulrich Suerbaum : Der Shakespeare-Führer . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Dietzingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , pp. 364–368. See also Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells : The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. OUP 2001. ISBN 978-0-19-280614-7 . Second Edition 2015. ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5 , p. 282, and Jay L. Halio: King Lear: A Guide to the Play. Greenwood Press 2001, ISBN 978-0-313-31618-0 , Chapter Six: The Play in Performance , esp. Pp. 95-97, and William Shakespeare: King Lear. The Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford Worlds Classics. Edited by Stanley Wells. 2000. ISBN 978-0-19-953582-8 , Introduction, esp. Pp. 62-75. See also Emily Mullin: Macready's Triumph: The Restoration of King Lear to the British Stage for performance dates. In: Penn History Review , Volume 18, Issue 1, 2010, page 17 ff, accessible online on the pages of. University of Pennsylvania under [3] , accessed on 15 January 2016 and Janice Norwood: A reference guide to performances of Shakespeare's plays in nineteenth-century London. In: Gail Marshall (Ed.): Shakespeare in the Nineteenth Century . Cambridge University Press 2012, ISBN 978-0-521-51824-6 , pp. 348-416, esp. P. 374.
122. ↑ See Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , pp. 128-131. See also Ina Schabert : Shakespeare Handbook . Kröner, Stuttgart 2009. ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 553, and Ulrich Suerbaum : Der Shakespeare-Führer . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Dietzingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 367 ff. Cf. on Brook's staging also in detail Jay L. Halio: King Lear: A Guide to the Play. Greenwood Press 2001, ISBN 978-0-313-31618-0 , Chapter Six: The Play in Performance , esp. P. 107 f. A comprehensive overview of recent developments in Lear criticism and reception can be found in Gerd Stratmann : King Lear. In: Interpretations - Shakespeare's Dramas. Reclam ju. Verlag, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-017513-2 , pp. 317-342.
123. ↑ Cf. Ina Schabert : Shakespeare Handbook . Kröner, Stuttgart 2009. ISBN 978-3-520-38605-2 , p. 553, and Ulrich Suerbaum : Der Shakespeare-Führer . 3rd revised and supplemented edition, Reclam, Dietzingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-15-020395-8 , p. 371 f. See also Lesley Ferris: Lear's Daughters and Sons - Twisting the Canonical Landscape. In: Sharon Friedman (Ed.): Feminist Theatrical Revisions of Classic Works - Critical Essays. MacFarland, Jefferson (North Carolina) and London 2009, ISBN 978-0-7864-3425-1 , pp. 97-104, esp. 99 f. And 102. In 1990, the New York Lear production by the theater collective Mabou Mines , directed by Lee Breuer. The female title figure there was a southerner with three sons. See ibid., P. 100 ff. On the productions by Wilson and Breuer, see also the review by Arthur Holmberg 'Lear' Girds for a Remarkable Episode . In: The New York Times , May 20, 1990. Retrieved January 17, 2016. In the literary study of Shakespeare's work, for example, Coppélia Kahn published an entire interpretation of King Lear in 1986 under the title "The Absent Mother in King Lear " from the traces of what they believe is suppressed in Shakespeare's tragedy. Compare with Gerd Stratmann: King Lear. In: Interpretations - Shakespeare's Dramas. Reclam ju. Verlag, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-017513-2 , p. 319f.
124. ↑ See in detail Horst Oppel : Gordon Bottomley, “King Lear's Wife” . In: Horst Priessnitz (Ed.): Anglo-American Shakespeare adaptations of the 20th century . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , pp. 326–339.
125. ↑ See Annegret Maack: Variations on “King Lear”: Robin Maugham's “Mister Lear” and Rony Robinson's “The Royal Fool” . In: Horst Priessnitz (Ed.): A nglo-American Shakespeare arrangements of the 20th century . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07879-9 , pp. 340-352, here pp. 340-345.
126. ↑ See in detail Dieter A. Berger: "The Corrupt Seer": On the Shakespearer reception of Edward Bonds . In: AAA: Works from English and American Studies , Vol. 5, No. 1 (1980), Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, Tübingen, pp. 65-78, online at jstor [4] . See also Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , p. 138, and Gerhard Stratmann: König Lear. In: Interpretations - Shakespeare's Dramas. Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag, Dietzingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-017513-2 , p. 317-342, here p. 327 f.
127. ↑ See Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , p. 138, and Gerhard Stratmann: König Lear. In: Interpretations - Shakespeare's Dramas. Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag, Dietzingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-017513-2 , p. 317-342, here p. 327 f.
128. ↑ See on the other literary adaptations Wolfgang Weiss : King Lear . Kamp Verlag, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-89709-381-2 , pp. 136-138.