Approaches to staging and performance

Abstract

There is a curiously persistent tradition, despite much argument and many productions to the contrary, that King Lear is not an effective play in the theatre. Charles Lamb famously wrote that ‘Lear is essentially impossible to be represented on a stag…. To see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting’ (1812; excerpted in Kermode, 1969, pp. 44–5). A century later A. C. Bradley seemed to agree when he wrote of King Lear as ‘Shakespeare’s greatest achievement … but not his best play’ (1904; excerpted in Kermode, 1969, p. 83), and more recently still Margaret Webster, writing as an experienced actress and director,described it as ‘the least actable’ of the major tragedies (1957, p. 214).