What follows is the canon’s most unsparing tragedy — family, state, sanity, and weather collapsing together, with a Fool telling the truth in riddles until truth stops helping.
Lear is regularly called the summit of Shakespeare, and the storm scenes justify it: language pushed to the edge of what it can hold. It asks more of a reader than Hamlet or Othello and returns proportionally more. Keep an evening free afterwards; it does not shake off quickly.
Which edition?
The full guide: The Best Editions of Shakespeare’s King Lear →
1Arden Shakespeare, Third Series
Ed. R. A. Foakes · Bloomsbury, 1997
Foakes prints Quarto and Folio in one conflated text, marked so you can see the seams.
2Oxford World’s Classics
Ed. Stanley Wells · Oxford University Press, 2000
The Quarto Lear on its own terms — the play as it first reached print.
3The New Cambridge Shakespeare
Ed. Jay L. Halio · Cambridge University Press
A Folio-based text with patient, unshowy commentary.
4Folger Shakespeare LibraryFirst read? Start here
Ed. Barbara Mowat & Paul Werstine · Simon & Schuster
The gentlest on-ramp to the canon’s most demanding play.
Cover images from Open Library.
King Lear on stage
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King Lear on screen
1King Lear (1971)
Film · dir. Grigori Kozintsev
2King Lear (1971)
Film · dir. Peter Brook
3Ran (1985)
Film · dir. Akira Kurosawa · inspired by King Lear
4A Thousand Acres (1997)
Film · dir. Jocelyn Moorhouse · inspired by King Lear
5King Lear (2018)
TV film · dir. Richard Eyre
6National Theatre Live: King Lear (2018)
Stage capture · dir. Jonathan Munby
Ian McKellen; broadcast from the Duke of York's
Seven Ages recommends editions on their merits and takes no payment for placement. As an Amazon Associate, Seven Ages earns from qualifying purchases.
Reading King Lear this year?
Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.