King Lear William Shakespeare

Film and video

The first film adaptation of King Lear was a five-minute German version made around 1905, which has not survived.[116] The oldest extant version is a ten-minute studio-based version from 1909 by Vitagraph, which, according to Luke McKernan, made the "ill-advised" decision to attempt to cram in as much of the plot as possible.[117] Two silent versions, both titled Re Lear, were made in Italy in 1910. Of these, the version by director Gerolamo Lo Savio was filmed on location, and it dropped the Edgar sub-plot and used frequent intertitling to make the plot easier to follow than its Vitagraph predecessor.[h] A contemporary setting was used for Louis Feuillade's 1911 French adaptation Le Roi Lear Au Village, and in 1914 in America, Ernest Warde expanded the story to an hour, including spectacles such as a final battle scene.[119]

The Joseph Mankiewicz (1949) House of Strangers is often considered a Lear adaptation, but the parallels are more striking in Broken Lance (1954) in which a cattle baron played by Spencer Tracy tyrannizes his three sons, and only the youngest, Joe, played by Robert Wagner, remains loyal.[120]

The TV anthology series Omnibus (1952–1961) staged a 73-minute version of King Lear on 18 October 1953. It was adapted by Peter Brook and starred Orson Welles in his American television debut.[122]

Two screen versions of King Lear date from the early 1970s: Grigori Kozintsev's Korol Lir,[i] and Peter Brook's film of King Lear, which stars Paul Scofield.[125] Brook's film starkly divided the critics: Pauline Kael said "I didn't just dislike this production, I hated it!" and suggested the alternative title Night of the Living Dead.[j] Yet Robert Hatch in The Nation thought it as "excellent a filming of the play as one can expect" and Vincent Canby in The New York Times called it "an exalting Lear, full of exquisite terror".[k] The film drew on the ideas of Jan Kott, in particular his observation that King Lear was the precursor of absurdist theatre, and that it has parallels with Beckett's Endgame.[127] Critics who dislike the film particularly draw attention to its bleak nature from its opening: complaining that the world of the play does not deteriorate with Lear's suffering, but commences dark, colourless and wintry, leaving, according to Douglas Brode, "Lear, the land, and us with nowhere to go".[128] Cruelty pervades the film, which does not distinguish between the violence of ostensibly good and evil characters, presenting both savagely.[129] Paul Scofield, as Lear, eschews sentimentality: This demanding old man with a coterie of unruly knights provokes audience sympathy for the daughters in the early scenes, and his presentation explicitly rejects the tradition of playing Lear as "poor old white-haired patriarch".[130]

Korol Lir has been praised by critic Alexander Anikst for the "serious, deeply thoughtful" even "philosophical approach" of director Grigori Kozintsev and writer Boris Pasternak. Making a thinly veiled criticism of Brook in the process, Anikst praised the fact that there were "no attempts at sensationalism, no efforts to 'modernise' Shakespeare by introducing Freudian themes, Existentialist ideas, eroticism, or sexual perversion. [Kozintsev] ... has simply made a film of Shakespeare's tragedy."[l] Dmitri Shostakovich provided an epic score, its motifs including an (increasingly ironic) trumpet fanfare for Lear, and a five-bar "Call to Death" marking each character's demise.[132] Kozintzev described his vision of the film as an ensemble piece: with Lear, played by a dynamic Jüri Järvet, as first among equals in a cast of fully developed characters.[133] The film highlights Lear's role as king by including his people throughout the film on a scale no stage production could emulate, charting the central character's decline from their god to their helpless equal; his final descent into madness marked by his realisation that he has neglected the "poor naked wretches".[134][135] As the film progresses, ruthless characters—Goneril, Regan, Edmund—increasingly appear isolated in shots, in contrast to the director's focus, throughout the film, on masses of human beings.[136]

Jonathan Miller twice directed Michael Hordern in the title role for English television, the first for the BBC's Play of the Month in 1975 and the second for the BBC Television Shakespeare in 1982. Hordern received mixed reviews, and was considered a bold choice due to his history of taking much lighter roles.[137] Also for English television, Laurence Olivier took the role in a 1983 TV production for Granada Television. It was his last screen appearance in a Shakespearean role.[138]

In 1985, a major screen adaptation of the play appeared: Ran, directed by Akira Kurosawa. At the time the most expensive Japanese film ever made, it tells the story of Hidetora, a fictional 16th-century Japanese warlord, whose attempt to divide his kingdom among his three sons leads to an estrangement with the youngest, and ultimately most loyal, of them, and eventually to civil war.[139] In contrast to the cold drab greys of Brook and Kozintsev, Kurosawa's film is full of vibrant colour: external scenes in yellows, blues and greens, interiors in browns and ambers, and Emi Wada's Oscar-winning colour-coded costumes for each family member's soldiers.[140][139] Hidetora has a back-story: a violent and ruthless rise to power, and the film portrays contrasting victims: the virtuous characters Sue and Tsurumaru who are able to forgive, and the vengeful Kaede (Mieko Harada), Hidetora's daughter-in-law and the film's Lady Macbeth-like villain.[141][142]

A scene in which a character is threatened with blinding in the manner of Gloucester forms the climax of the 1973 parody horror Theatre of Blood.[143] Comic use is made of Sir's inability to physically carry any actress cast as Cordelia opposite his Lear in the 1983 film of the stage play The Dresser.[144] John Boorman's 1990 Where the Heart Is features a father who disinherits his three spoiled children.[145] Francis Ford Coppola deliberately incorporated elements of Lear in his 1990 sequel The Godfather Part III, including Michael Corleone's attempt to retire from crime throwing his domain into anarchy, and most obviously the death of his daughter in his arms. Parallels have also been drawn between Andy García's character Vincent and both Edgar and Edmund, and between Talia Shire's character Connie and Kaede in Ran.[146]

In 1997, Jocelyn Moorhouse directed A Thousand Acres, based on Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, set in 1990s Iowa.[147] The film is described, by scholar Tony Howard, as the first adaptation to confront the play's disturbing sexual dimensions.[146] The story is told from the viewpoint of the elder two daughters, Ginny played by Jessica Lange and Rose played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who were sexually abused by their father as teenagers. Their younger sister Caroline, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh had escaped this fate and is ultimately the only one to remain loyal.[148][149]

In 1998, the BBC produced a televised version,[150] directed by Richard Eyre, of his award-winning 1997 Royal National Theatre production, starring Ian Holm as Lear. In March 2001, in a review originally posted to culturevulture.net, critic Bob Wake observed that the production was "of particular note for preserving Ian Holm’s celebrated stage performance in the title role. Stellar interpreters of Lear haven't always been so fortunate."[151] Wake added that other performances had been poorly documented because they suffered from technological problems (Orson Welles), eccentric televised productions (Paul Scofield), or were filmed when the actor playing Lear was unwell (Laurence Olivier).[152]

The play was adapted to the world of gangsters in Don Boyd's 2001 My Kingdom, a version which differs from all others in commencing with the Lear character, Sandeman, played by Richard Harris, in a loving relationship with his wife. But her violent death marks the start of an increasingly bleak and violent chain of events (influenced by co-writer Nick Davies' documentary book Dark Heart) which in spite of the director's denial that the film had "serious parallels" to Shakespeare's play, actually mirror aspects of its plot closely.[153][154]

Unlike Shakespeare's Lear, but like Hidetora and Sandeman, the central character of Uli Edel's 2002 American TV adaptation King of Texas, John Lear played by Patrick Stewart, has a back-story centred on his violent rise to power as the richest landowner (metaphorically a "king") in General Sam Houston's independent Texas in the early 1840s. Daniel Rosenthal comments that the film was able, by reason of having been commissioned by the cable channel TNT, to include a bleaker and more violent ending than would have been possible on the national networks.[155] 2003's Channel 4-commissioned two-parter Second Generation set the story in the world of Asian manufacturing and music in England.[156]

The Canadian comedy-drama TV series Slings & Arrows (2003–2006), which follows a fictional Shakespearean theatre festival inspired by the real-life Stratford Festival in Ontario, devotes its third season to a troubled production of King Lear. The fictional actor starring as Lear (played by William Hutt, who in real life played Lear onstage at Stratford three times to great acclaim[157]) is given the role despite concerns over his advanced age and ill health, plus a secret addiction to heroin discovered by the theatre's director. Eventually the actor's mental state deteriorates until he seems to believe he is Lear himself, wandering into a storm and later reciting his lines uncontrollably. William Hutt himself was in failing health when he filmed the TV role and died less than a year after the third season premiered.[158]

In 2008, a version of King Lear produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company premiered with Ian McKellen in the role of King Lear.[159]

In the 2012 romantic comedy If I Were You, there is a reference to the play when the lead characters are cast in a female version of King Lear set in modern times, with Marcia Gay Harden cast in the Lear role and Leonor Watling as "the fool". Lear is an executive in a corporate empire instead of a literal one, being phased out of her position. The off-beat play (and its cast) is a major plot element of the movie. The American musical drama television series Empire is partially inspired by King Lear.[160][161][162]

Carl Bessai wrote and directed a modern adaptation of King Lear titled The Lears. Released in 2017, the film starred Bruce Dern, Anthony Michael Hall and Sean Astin.[163]

On 28 May 2018, BBC Two broadcast King Lear starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role and Emma Thompson as Goneril. Directed by Richard Eyre, the play featured a 21st-century setting. Hopkins, at the age of 80, was deemed ideal for the role and "at home with Lear's skin" by critic Sam Wollaston.[164]

Radio and audio

The first recording of the Argo Shakespeare for Argo Records was King Lear in 1957, directed and produced by George Rylands with William Devlin in the title role, Jill Balcon as Goneril and Prunella Scales as Cordelia.[165]

The Shakespeare Recording Society recorded a full-length unabridged audio productions on LP in 1965 (SRS-M-232) directed by Howard Sackler, with Paul Scofield as Lear, Cyril Cusack as Gloucester. Robert Stephens as Edmund, Rachel Roberts, Pamela Brown and John Stride.

King Lear was broadcast live on the BBC Third Programme on 29 September 1967, starring John Gielgud, Barbara Jefford, Barbara Bolton and Virginia McKenna as Lear and his daughters.[166] At Abbey Road Studios, John Lennon used a microphone held to a radio to overdub fragments of the play (Act IV, Scene 6)[167] onto the song "I Am the Walrus", which The Beatles were recording that evening. The voices recorded were those of Mark Dignam (Gloucester), Philip Guard (Edgar) and John Bryning (Oswald).[97][98]

On 10 April 1994, Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company performed a radio adaptation directed by Glyn Dearman starring Gielgud as Lear, with Keith Michell as Kent, Richard Briers as Gloucester, Dame Judi Dench as Goneril, Emma Thompson as Cordelia, Eileen Atkins as Regan, Kenneth Branagh as Edmund, John Shrapnel as Albany, Robert Stephens as Cornwall, Denis Quilley as Burgundy, Sir Derek Jacobi as France, Iain Glen as Edgar and Michael Williams as The Fool.[168]

Naxos AudioBooks released an audio production in 2002 with Paul Scofield as Lear, Alec McCowen as Gloucester, Kenneth Branagh as The Fool, and a full cast.[169] It was nominated for an Audie Award for Audio Drama in 2003.

In October 2017, Big Finish Productions released an audio adaptation full cast drama. Adapted by Nicholas Pegg. The full cast starred David Warner as the titular King Lear, Lisa Bowerman as Regan, Louise Jameson as Goneril, Trevor Cooper as Oswald / Lear's Gentleman / Third Messenger, Raymond Coulthard (Edmund / Cornwall's Servant / Second Messenger / Second Gentleman), Barnaby Edwards (The King of France / Old Man / Herald), Ray Fearon (The Duke of Cornwall), Mike Grady (The Fool), Gwilym Lee (Edgar / the Duke of Burgundy), Tony Millan (The Earl of Gloucester / First Messenger), Nicholas Pegg (The Duke of Albany / Gloucester's Servant / Curan) and Paul Shelley (The Earl of Kent)[170]

Opera

Giuseppe Verdi commissioned a libretto for a proposed opera, Re Lear, but no music was ever composed.

German composer Aribert Reimann's opera Lear premiered on 9 July 1978.

Japanese composer's Toshio Hosokawa's opera Vision of Lear premiered on 19 April 1998 at the Munich Biennale.

Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen's opera Kuningas Lear premiered on 15 September 2000.[171]

Novels

Jane Smiley's 1991 novel A Thousand Acres, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is based on King Lear, but set in a farm in Iowa in 1979 and told from the perspective of the oldest daughter.[172]

The 2009 novel Fool by Christopher Moore is a comedic retelling of King Lear from the perspective of the court jester.[173]

Edward St Aubyn's 2017 novel Dunbar is a modern retelling of King Lear, commissioned as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series.[174]

On 27 March 2018, Tessa Gratton published a high fantasy adaptation of King Lear titled The Queens of Innis Lear with Tor Books.[175]

Preti Taneja’s 2018 novel We That Are Young is based on King Lear and set in India.[176]

The 2021 novel Learwife by J. R. Thorpe imagines the story of Lear's wife and the mother of his children, who is not present in the play.[177]