Full name: The Tragedy of King Lear

Author: William Shakespeare Year: 1603 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Classic, Play, Free books, Poetry Purchase/reserch links: Goodreads Barns&Noble Amazon OpenLibrary eBooks.com ManyBooks LibraryThing Project Gutenberg ISBNs: 9780743484954 0743484959

Shakespeare's "King Lear" challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. Its figures harden their hearts, engage in violence, or try to alleviate the suffering of others. Lear himself rages until his sanity cracks. What, then, keeps bringing us back to King Lear? For all the force of its language, King Lear is almost equally powerful when translated, suggesting that it is the story, in large part, that draws us to the play. The play tells us about families struggling between greed and cruelty, on the one hand, and support and consolation, on the other. Emotions are extreme, magnified to gigantic proportions. We also see old age portrayed in all its vulnerability, pride, and, perhaps, wisdom - one reason this most devastating of Shakespeare's tragedies is also perhaps his most moving. Similar books: The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare Henry VIII by William Shakespeare Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare King John by William Shakespeare Othello by William Shakespeare Hamlet by William Shakespeare The Tempest by William Shakespeare Macbeth by William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare As You Like It by William Shakespeare The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare