Rating: 
Summary: masterpiece, tighter framework and control than hamlet
Review: dense, philosophically comepletely, acheiving catharsis. the best work from the master? quite possibly. we're just waiting for branagh to age . . .
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Summary: My father the king, and Lear the father
Review: I came to Lear later than I came to Hamlet. And yet it too seemed to me to rage in connection with my own father's light. It too seemed to interpret and be interpreted by him. Lear in his great pain driven to madness by grief was like my father a great king wounded into screaming by life. The Lear story , the three daughters , ungrateful Goneril and Regan, and lovely Cordelia true to her troth , loving with the mean and proportion a daughter's love required- that story and the father's dispossession and madness and grief and reconnection with the loving daughter and her death and his grief breaking into madness- that story the story of the tragedy itself- as too the secondary plot with there too a father misapprehending the virtue of one child, and being deceived by another- that plot and the heart of the Lear story did not speak to me at the time. No , just Lear poor bare forked unencumbered man himself this spoke to me .For again in the great language of grief and madness came those metaphors which likened themselves to the kind of thing we heard every night from my father around the kitchen table. So I did not then read Lear truly and wholly, but rather took for myself some part of it which connected with my life.
A great work of art is not simply all the readings made of it, and not even all the misreadings made of it, but all the truth it reveals and inspires in us. Again it told my father's story and suggested that story greater than any Literature could perhaps be Literature one day.
And this without Cordelia's death and without ' Never, never, never , never, never. Why should a horse a rat have life and her no breath at all? With only a different cry and one for us anyway more painful still ' No, a thousand times no '
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Summary: King Lear as read by a Teenager
Review: I just want to say to all the teenagers out there who think Shakespeare is this old fart who only dinosaurs like ... YOU'RE MISSING OUT ON THE BEST THING EVER. I read "King Lear" as dubiously as a regular teenager - and I ended up shouting out loud in horror at some of the bits in it - there is some sick sick sick cool cool cool stuff in there. (If you really hate it, then just read the final scene of Act 3 - it's as brutal as any horror movie!!!!!!!!!!)
Rating: 
Summary: THIS PLAY MAKES NO SENSE
Review: I like plays, but this play was boring and shallow! The dialogues were completely unrealistic and too long. Also, I didn't understand how it kept going back and forth between a bunch of different stories. Hey Shakespeare: Stick with one topic at a time. Nobody's gonna think you're smart just because you use big words and try to be complicated. I didn't like how people died in the end. When i read a play, I want to be entertained, not depressed! Life's too short to waste reading nonsense!
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Summary: A Play that runs the gamut of human emotion.
Review: I love the story of King Lear. The theme of the play is filial ingratitude, and this is portrayed as two parallel stories. The play is actually a parable. It is also a great acting play, and though it's difficult to stage, an actor only in the prime of his career is considered equal to the task of portraying Lear. Lear is a very complex part. He is obstinate, arrogant and hot-tempered at first. When his favourite daughter refuses to treat him in the way he thinks he should be treated he casts her off, and then Lear suffers physical and emotional suffering. He begins a descent into madness. Then from this pit he rediscovers love and tenderness when he is finally reunited with his favourite daughter. So many emotions to portray! No wonder it takes such skill to play this part! Truly a masterpiece!
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: Better audio version is available
Review: I won't review Shakespeare or King Lear but instead focus on the quality of this audio production. I am familiar with the BBC version of Lear, with Sir John Gielgud as Lear and Kenneth Branagh as Kent. I prefer the BBC version of King Lear to the Caedmon version. For example, the clown in the BBC version is an older man, poignant and fascinating, while the clown in the Caedmon production is a young man, shrill and annoying. The Caedmon Audio Skakespeare series is a great resource but has occasional flaws. Their production of Lear is an example.
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Summary: Overlong, but Suspenseful and Wonderfully Nasty
Review: I'm sorry to say that of Shakespeare's four main tragedies (Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth) I think I like this one least. Othello has such suspense, and plays with the idea of fate controlling our every moves. MacBeth is the dark play that deals with our fears and our primal ids. Hamlet is the supreme story that sums up all of life's ups and downs. And Lear, well...Lear is about relationships. It's best scenes involve communication between two souls, or lack thereof (though Gloucester's blinding scene is quite dramatic). Sadly, Lear is just too long for my liking, and I longed to hear more from the daughters--Regan and Goneril are so nasty you love to hate them, and Cordelia is so gentle that you love to love her. I must say that this is a wonderful play, filled with action and double-crossing, sure to satisfy.
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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: Great Format for Reading Shakespeare
Review: King Lear is a fantastic book...if you can ever understand it. I tried several times to get a handle on the plot, which is not as easy a task as it sounds. I even tried watching it on PBS, but I only succeeded in catching a few words and an occasional sentence. However, that changed after I purchased this book, which has the original Shakespeare on one page and the same text in modern English on the following page. Half the book is the original text and half is in modern language, with the pages side by side so that you can use the modern language page to understand the Shakespeare text. You can either read the whole book in modern English first to figure out what is going on, or you can just use the modern English part when you need it (which I found was often with the text of King Lear). I find this so much better than a book that just translates an occasional word here and there. Even if you understand the meaning of every word, sometimes it is still hard to understand what Shakespeare meant, but you won't have that problem with this book. Using this book to read King Lear was for me the key to making this wonderful play finally understandable and highly enjoyable.
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