The tragedy of King Lear continues to be the most emotionally overpowering work of literature I have ever experienced.

The tragedy of Hamlet is cognitively overpowering, and that play speaks right to and beyond our intellects, whilst Lear works its way into the core of our being

and tears us apart from the inside out. If you imagine the works of Shakespeare as a crown,

then these are the two jewels at the forefront. Though perhaps it's best to imagine Shakespeare's

works as a mountain range, and if we do that, then we will see that Hamlet and King Lear are the highest, most

sublime and awe-inspiring peaks.

Such was the power of this tragedy about an aging king, foolishly dividing his kingdom.

Such was its power to emotionally overwhelm that it would not be performed as Shakespeare wrote it for much of its performance history.

And many consider the play to be essentially unperformable. It was long considered too bleak,

too depressing, too nihilistic, and even today, when performances are in abundance, the play continues

to pose intense challenges. King Lear was first performed on Boxing Day in the year of 1606 in

front of the new monarch, King James I. And this is actually the only specific performance we

know of in Shakespeare's lifetime. Some 75 years after this performance, and after close to two

decades of the theatres being shut down under the Puritans, we see a rewritten version of the play by poet laureate Nahum Tate,

who presented King Lear with a happy ending.

For the longest time, this was the version that was performed.

By the time we get to the mid-19th century, we see that when companies do dare to perform Shakespeare's original, audiences end up

vastly preferring the rewritten Nahum Tate version. The romantic poets who owe an enormous

debt of influence to the bard would find this upsetting, but many of them would also state that King Lear should be read, not viewed,

and it should be treated as a closet drama, where you the reader, in solitude,

put on a performance in the theatre of your mind.

Charles Lamb thought that the role of Lear himself simply couldn't be

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