Rating: 
Summary: Not at All Lacking in Blood and Gore
Review: It's a shame Shakespeare has such a bad rap among young adults. The same people who play violent video games and listen to violent music would love this play(I know, I know, I'm stereotyping, but more young adults do this than seventy-year-olds). In King Lear, people's eyes are gouged out and other people are impaled on swords.At the beginning, King Lear decides to step down from the throne and divide the kingdom amongst his three daughters, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. First, he asks each of them how much she loves him. Goneril and Regan suck up grandly to their father, but Cordelia says that her love cannot be described, and says nothing. King Lear disowns Cordelia, who then flees to the king of France, who says that, despite the fact that she is disowned, he wants to marry her. As soon as Cordelia leaves, Goneril and Regan betray their father, who leaves, saddened that the two daughters he thought loved him turned against him. Meanwhile, the Earl of Gloucester is also tricked by his "bad" son Edmund into thinking that his "good" son Edgar is "bad", and Gloucester tries to kill Edgar. Eventually, Edgar is the one who leads the earl after Lear's daughter gouges his eyes out. Shakespeare is the original soap-opera writer, but usually, there is a theme or themes to his stories, in this case, don't trust heresy and flattery. Of course, all of this results in tragedy: most the "bad guys" and the "good guys" end up dying...King Lear dies, heartbroken, after Cordelia is executed.
Rating:
Summary: Thou Shalt Honor Thy Parents
Review: I resent Shakespheare less now that I can read him in modern language. I wish I had known about parallel texts in college; I would have made a better grade and wouldn't have to struggle with the footnotes trying to understand the Elizabethan language, which always gives me a headache. Even the productions of the plays get on my nerves; a lot of mouths with British accents going a mile a minute about I don't know what. Shakespheare is very talky. I simply walked out on one of Kenneth Branaugh's films of Shakespheare. But desiring to become more cultured, I have always wanted to "conquer" Shakespheare, not so much because I liked him but because he was important. This version of King Lear is quite understandable in the modern language and I even read the original text to become more familiar with the older language. After a couple reads I had the plot and characters down and the book is helpful with its suggestions of where the characters are going, or what they're holding, or how they are saying a certain thing, or what letter they are refering to, which isn't listed in the original and causes you to miss the meaning. As for the play itself, King Lear is a vain old man who falls for the flattery of two of his daughters Regan and Goneril, who prove false and he scorns and disinherits the third daughter, Cordelia, who will not flatter him, but only says that taking care of him and honoring him is merely her duty. Appearances are not what they seem; who acts noble is often scorned for being honest and truthful and those who are ignoble may act noble at times but ultimately are not. Even the king is not noble in his wanting to be flattered while his fool says many wise things about the king being a fool. All of nature is in discord as King Lear descends from his vaunted heights to become a homeless man thrown out into a terrible storm by his false daughters, Regan and Goneril, who unnaturally betray their progenitor and benefactor once he has given away his inheritance. The play gives insight into how children may act when it comes time to receive their inheritance. And in the case of Generil, there is some gender bending, in which she seems to be more strong and aggressive than her husband, Albany, who sees her husband as a prig and a wimp. Or you could say that this is just traditional female conniving in case of Regan and Goneril. There is a subplot that has similar themes regarding which child is true or false to their father. The Earl of Gloucester has two sons one the "bastard" Edmund who tries to usurp the inheritance of the legitimate son Edgar. Edmund acts as if Edgar is going to betray Gloucester and tells his father so, but actually Edmund is the one who will betray them both and will attempt to marry either Regan or Goneril who are already married to secure his pre-eminence of position. As usual in Shakespheare, the "bastard" is evil and ignoble whose pretense of nobility is a sham. Edgar goes in disguise as a lowly beggar who ultimately proves that he is noble even though he is not well-dressed. Another character, the earl of Kent, also goes in disguise as a lowly servant and proves true to King Lear, even though Lear banished him for siding with the noble daughter Cordelia. Oswald is an unfaithful servant to the king and makes an allegance with the false daughters to better his position. Shakespheare moralistically explores noble virtues and he seems old-fashioned since our modern plays are much more morally ambivalent-- because we're immoral modern degenerates, I guess.
Rating:
Summary: A Tragedy with Modern Implications
Review: With many people living much longer than they did in Shakespeare's time
and their children putting them in ratty nursing homes
where they are usually or even generally treated badly
and given the minimum of nursing care... going there
mainly to die, this play has something to say to modern man.
We like his daughters too often betray our patents and
they so often mistake our good intentions.
Is madness the cost of old age? Are greed and
envy any less despicable in modern children than
they were in the children of kings?
We all live better than the kings of the past in America today,
but treat our elderly worse than even the worst impoverished of Shakespeare's time.
And we still have homeless mad people ( like Edgar pretends to be)
on our streets and back roads. We haven't learned any lessons from our literature.
Rating:
Summary: A king brings tragedy unto himself
Review: This star-rating system has one important flaw: you have to rank books only in relation to its peers, its genre. So you must put five stars in a great light-humor book, as compared to other ones of those. Well, I am giving this book four stars in relation to other Shakespeare's works and similar great books. Of course, it's all in the writing. Shakespeare has this genius to come up with magnificent, superb sentences as well as wise utterings even if the plot is not that good. This is the case with Lear. I would read it again only to recreate the pleasure of simply reading it, but quite frankly the story is very strange. It is hard to call it a tragedy when you foolishly bring it about on yourself. Here, Lear stupidly and unnecessarily divides his kingdom among his three daughters, at least two of them spectacularly treacherous and mean, and then behaves exactly in the way that will make them mad and give them an excuse to dispose of him. What follows is, of course, a mess, with people showing their worst, except for poor Edgar, who suffers a lot while being innocent. Don't get me wrong: the play is excellent and the literary quality of Shakespeare is well beyond praise. If you have never read him, do it and you'll see that people do not praise him only because everybody else does, but because he was truly good. The plot is well known: Lear divides the kingdom, then puts up a stupid contest to see which one of his daughters expresses more love for him, and when Cordelia refuses to play the game, a set of horrible treasons and violent acts begins, until in the end bad guys die and good guys get some prize, at a terrible cost. As a reading experience, it's one of the strongest you may find, and the plot is just an excuse for great writing.
Rating: 
Summary: Shakespeare's finest tragedy
Review: King Lear is perhaps Shakespeare's most psychologically dark tragedy, though many may argue for Macbeth. The central theme is that of the family and the emotional and physical exile that can be brought about for simple material gain. The naive and pitiable Lear with his Cinderella-esque children, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia present all that is right and wrong with a father's relationship with his children. From his opening gambit:
"What will thoust say to gain
A third more opulent than thine sisters?"
We see exactly why the terrible tragedy must unfold. The side plot between Edmund and Edgar, the donning of the garb of the madman whilst Lear descends in to madness mirrored by his dying Fool is one of humanity's greatest literary tragedies. Whilst the 'baddies' lose in the end, there is no victory, only self-realisation and, ultimately, death. Lear's supporting cast of characters can only dance to the tune he sets in slow, unalterable motion, and there can be no silver lining at the end. Only a deep and terrible understanding of the destruction of the human psyche.
'Lear' drives home the failings of the human soul but ensures that inner understanding and remorse is attainable at a great price. It is Shakespeare's finest tragedy.
Rating: 
Summary: King Lear was an annoying character
Review: Quite frankly, I can't understand why many people today consider 'King Lear' to be Shakespeare's greatest Tragedy. I found the play to be somewhat interesting and somewhat entertaining, especially when the Fool constantly called Lear 'Nuncle', but for the most part I found the play to be rather annoying. How Lear divided his kingdom among his daughters was very foolish. Lear acted like a senile, immature, mentally-disturbed, foolish old man throughout the entire play. Lear would have been much more of a truly tragic figure like Coriolanus if Lear was purely brought down by the treachery of others, but I think Lear's stupidity and foolishness mostly caused his own downfall. "Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise" is a quote from the Fool to Lear, which basically sums up the entire play. Don't get me wrong. This play was well-written, it has many good quotes, and I recommend it, but the annoying nature of Lear forces me to rank it among the middle tier of Shakespeare's Tragedies.
Rating:
Summary: Not Abridged! 3-CD Set.
Review: With John Gielgud, Kenneth Brannaugh and Bob Hoskins my hopes were high for this. But somehow Gielgud lacks the anger and power of Olivier's 1983 version. Also, actors sitting at a table reading into microphones somehow miss the passion of an actual performance. Still, there are a lot worse versions out there.
Rating:
Summary: Shakespeare's Best, in its best edition
Review: King Lear itself truly needs no comment; it is, simply put, the single greatest work of the single most important writer in world history. What does need comment, however, is the edition published by Pelican Shakespeare. Pelican's King Lear is unquestionably the best edition that one can use to tackle this challenging yet incredible work of drama. The notes are clear, yet not overpowering. Unlike other editions, who force definitions and explanations at the reader, The Pelican Shakespeare subtly signals when an explanation is offered with margin markers, yet does not interrupt the readers flow while reading. In addition, the introductory and concluding essays an explanations further relate and make accessible this timeless play.
Rating:
Summary: A great piece of literature
Review: After being forced to read Romeo and Juliet in 8th grade, I vowed I'd never pick up another book by William Shakespeare again. It was hard to read, boring, and I couldn't understand it. Now in high school, with interest in British history, I came across the tale of King Lear in another book, and decided that if it was really going to make much sense that I would have to read King Lear by Shakespeare. So, I did...and I LOVED it...when I put my mind to it, I could understand it, and I found it a great tale told by a great writer. A+!
Rating:
Summary: but what's it all mean ?
Review: One of the things you can assume when you write about Shakespeare--given the hundreds of thousands of pages that have already been written about him in countless books, essays, theses and term papers--is that whatever you say will have been said before, and then denounced, defended , revised and denounced again, ad infinitum. So I'm certain I'm not breaking any new ground here. King Lear, though many, including David Denby (see Orrin's review of Great Books) and Harold Bloom consider it the pinnacle of English Literature, has just never done much for me. I appreciate the power of the basic plot--an aging King divides his realm among his ungrateful children with disastrous results--which has resurfaced in works as varied as Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres (see Orrin's review), and Akira Kurosawa's last great film, Ran. But I've always found the play to be too busy, the characters to be too unsympathetic, the speeches to be unmemorable and the tragedy to be too shallow. By shallow, I mean that by the time we meet Lear he is already a petulant old man, we have to accept his greatness from the word of others. Then his first action in the play, the division of the kingdom, is so boneheaded and his reaction to Cordelia so selfishly blind, that we're unwilling to credit their word. Then there's the fact that Shakespeare essentially uses the action of the play as a springboard for an examination of madness. The play was written during the period when Shakespeare was experimenting with obscure meanings anyway; add in the demented babble of several of the central characters, including Lear, and you've got a drama whose language is just about impossible to follow. Plus you've got seemingly random occurrences like the disappearance of the Fool and Edgar's pretending to help his father commit suicide. I am as enamored of the Bard as anyone, but it's just too much work for an author to ask of his audience trying to figure out what the heck they are all saying and what their actions are supposed to convey. So I long ago gave up trying to decipher the whole thing and I simply group it with the series of non-tragic tragedies (along with MacBeth, Hamlet, Julius Caesar), which I think taken together can be considered to make a unified political statement about the importance of the regular transfer of power in a state. Think about it for a moment; there's no real tragedy in what happens to Caesar, MacBeth, Hamlet or Lear; they've all proven themselves unfit for rule. Nor are the fates of those who usurp power from Caesar, Hamlet and Lear at all tragic, with the possible exception of Brutus, they pretty much get what they have coming to them. Instead, the real tragedy lies in the bloody chain of events that each illegitimate claiming of power unleashes. The implied message of these works, when considered as a unified whole, is that deviance from the orderly transfer of power leads to disaster for all concerned. (Of particular significance to this analysis in regards to King Lear is the fact that it was written in 1605, the year of the Gunpowder Plot.) In fact, looking at Lear from this perspective offers some potential insight into several aspects of the play that have always bothered me. For instance, take the rapidity with which Lear slides into insanity. This transition has never made much sense to me. But now suppose that Lear is insane before the action of the play begins and that the clearest expression of his loss of reason is his decision to shatter his own kingdom. Seen in this light, there is no precipitous decline into madness; the very act of splitting up the central authority of his throne, of transferring power improperly, is shown to be a sign of craziness. Next, consider the significance of Edgar's pretense of insanity and of Lear's genuine dementia. What is the possible meaning of their wanderings and their reduction to the status of common fools, stripped of luxury and station? And what does it tell us that it is after they are so reduced that Lear's reason (i.e. his fitness to rule) is restored and that Edgar ultimately takes the throne. It is probably too much to impute this meaning to Shakespeare, but the text will certainly bear the interpretation that they are made fit to rule by gaining an understanding of the lives of common folk. This is too democratic a reading for the time, but I like it, and it is emblematic of Shakespeare's genius that his plays will withstand even such idiosyncratic interpretations. To me, the real saving grace of the play lies not in the portrayal of the fathers, Lear and Gloucester, nor of the daughters, but rather in that of the sons. First, Edmund, who ranks with Richard III and Iago in sheer joyous malevolence. Second, Edgar, whose ultimate ascent to the throne makes all that has gone before worthwhile. He strikes me as one of the truly heroic characters in all of Shakespeare, as exemplified by his loyalty to his father and to the King. I've said I don't consider the play to be particularly tragic; in good part this is because it seems the nation is better off with Edgar on the throne than with Lear or one of his vile daughters. Even a disappointing, and often bewildering, tragedy by Shakespeare is better than the best of many other authors (though I'd not say the same of his comedies.) So of course I recommend it, but I don't think as highly of it as do many of the critics. GRADE : B-
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