50 Fun Facts About King Lear

How many daughters does King Lear divide his kingdom among?

He offers a third of the realm to each, provided they declare how much they love him.

What is Cordelia's one-word reply when Lear asks what she can say to earn a richer share?

She says she cannot heave her heart into her mouth, and Lear disowns her on the spot.

One suitor drops the disinherited Cordelia and the other takes her anyway. Which is which?

The King of France is impressed by her honesty and takes her without a dowry.

Which of Lear's daughters is the eldest?

She is married to the Duke of Albany, an archaic name for Scotland.

Regan, the middle daughter, is married to which duke?

Her husband is the one who later gouges out Gloucester's eyes.

How many knights does Lear insist on keeping as his retinue after abdicating?

Goneril soon orders him to dismiss half of them, calling them a disorderly mob, and Regan cuts further.

After Lear banishes him for defending Cordelia, the Earl of Kent returns in disguise under what name?

Lear hires the stranger after he beats Goneril's steward Oswald for insolence.

What punishment do Regan and her husband inflict on the disguised Kent after he quarrels with Oswald?

Lear finds his messenger humiliated in the stocks at Gloucester's house, one more insult on the road to madness.

Edmund, the Earl of Gloucester's illegitimate son, turns his father against his brother Edgar using what?

He then hints that Edgar plans to murder their father, and Gloucester proclaims Edgar an outlaw.

On the run, Edgar disguises himself as a mad beggar under what name?

Lear and the Fool meet him in a hovel during the storm, and he later leads his blinded father toward Dover.

Who finds Lear and the Fool on the heath in the storm and leads them to shelter?

Gloucester then arrives and urges him to take Lear to Dover, where a French army will land.

Which philosopher's Essays, translated by John Florio in 1603, are among the play's possible sources?

Other candidates include Marston's The Malcontent, The London Prodigal and John Higgins's Mirror for Magistrates.

Who mortally wounds Regan's husband right after he gouges out Gloucester's eyes?

The servant objects to the torture of Gloucester; Albany, by contrast, is one of the few main characters left alive at the end.

Edgar tricks the suicidal Gloucester into believing he has survived a leap from what?

There is no cliff at all; the blind man simply falls forward on flat ground.

The steward Oswald is killed by whom while trying to murder Gloucester?

In Oswald's pocket Edgar finds Goneril's letter urging Edmund to kill her husband.

How does Regan die?

She collapses declaring she will marry Edmund, unaware her sister has spiked her drink.

What happens to the eldest daughter after Edmund is mortally wounded?

The play offers little explanation; her plans are thwarted and her poisoning of Regan has been exposed.

Edmund is defeated in trial by combat by whom, appearing as an anonymous champion?

The dying Edmund repents and tries to cancel his order to execute Lear and Cordelia, but too late.

How does Cordelia die?

Edmund had sent her and Lear to prison with secret orders for their execution.

Which 12th-century writer first recorded Leir, the legendary king of the Britons behind the play?

In that version Cordelia restores her father to the throne and succeeds him; the deaths are Shakespeare's invention.

According to the 12th-century chronicler, the legendary Leir founded which English city?

He called it Kaerleir, City of Leir; the name really comes from the old Brittonic name of the River Soar.

Shakespeare's most important direct source was probably the 1587 second edition of whose Chronicles?

The same chronicle supplied Macbeth and the English history plays.

The Gloucester subplot, with a blinded father and two sons, comes from a tale in which Elizabethan work?

Sidney's version has a blind Paphlagonian king and sons named Leonatus and Plexirtus.

Which characters in the play were created wholly by Shakespeare rather than taken from his sources?

The daughters come from the chronicles and the Gloucester family from Sidney.

King Lear's 'late eclipses in the sun and moon' likely refers to two eclipses over London in which year?

A lunar eclipse on 27 September and a solar eclipse on 12 October help date the play to 1605-06.

King Lear's earliest recorded performance, for James I on 26 December 1606, fell on which feast day?

The Stationers' Register notes the court performance, the day after Christmas.

Shakespeare wrote the role of Lear for which leading tragedian of his company?

Shakespeare kept writing older characters for him as both men aged.

The Fool may have been written for which comic actor of Shakespeare's company?

The alternative theory is that a boy actor doubled the Fool with another role, since the two never share the stage.

Modern texts of King Lear are drawn from the 1623 First Folio and a quarto first published in which year?

The two versions differ by at least a thousand words, and Alexander Pope started the habit of conflating them.

Which writer's 1681 King Lear had a happy ending and an Edgar–Cordelia romance?

His adaptation also cut the Fool entirely, and it displaced Shakespeare's play from the professional stage until 1838.

Which actor-manager restored Shakespeare's own Lear text, freed from Tate, in 1838?

Kean had tried the tragic ending in 1823 but retreated to Tate after three performances; Garrick had trimmed Tate but kept the happy ending.

Which Romantic essayist argued in 1811 that King Lear is essentially impossible to stage?

He thought an old man tottering about with a stick was merely painful to watch, whereas in reading we become Lear.

Folklorists class King Lear as a variant of which tale type, where a father rejects a daughter's declaration?

It is Aarne-Thompson type 923; the daughter usually says she loves her father like salt.

Which director staged King Lear on a huge empty white stage at Stratford in 1962 and later filmed it?

The production featured a young Ian McKellen as Edgar; Pauline Kael hated the later film and suggested renaming it Night of the Living Dead.

Who played Lear in the stark black-and-white 1971 British film inspired by the theatre of Beckett?

The film drew on the absurdist theatre of Beckett and pointedly refused to play Lear as a poor old white-haired patriarch.

Which Nobel-winning writer scripted Grigori Kozintsev's 1971 Soviet film Korol Lir?

Shostakovich supplied the score, including a five-bar Call to Death that marks each character's demise.

Laurence Olivier played Lear in a 1983 production for which British television company?

It kept Macready's old idea of Stonehenge-like structures on stage, and Olivier was unwell during filming.

Akira Kurosawa's 1985 film Ran moves the Lear story to feudal Japan and replaces the daughters with what?

The warlord Hidetora Ichimonji, played by Tatsuya Nakadai, was also inspired by the legend of Mori Motonari and his loyal sons.

Ran won an Academy Award in which category?

Emi Wada took the prize; Kurosawa received the only Best Director nomination of his career.

In Richard Eyre's 2018 BBC film set in a militarised modern London, who played Lear?

Emma Thompson was Goneril, Emily Watson Regan and Florence Pugh Cordelia, all in 115 minutes.

Jane Smiley's Pulitzer-winning 1991 novel A Thousand Acres retells King Lear on a farm in which US state?

It is told from the eldest daughter's point of view and was filmed in 1997 by Jocelyn Moorhouse.

Christopher Moore's 2009 comic novel Fool retells King Lear from whose point of view?

Later retellings include Edward St Aubyn's Dunbar and Preti Taneja's We That Are Young, set in India.

The names Edmund and Edgar may nod to the sons of which Scottish king, who killed Macbeth?

The younger brother Edgar defeated the usurpers to become king, a neat parallel to the play's ending.

Which Godfather character did critics compare Ran's Lady Kaede to, according to Wikipedia?

Parallels have also been drawn between Andy Garcia's Vincent and both Edgar and Edmund.

Which actor made his American television debut playing Lear?

The performance is poorly documented, as are Scofield's eccentric TV version and Olivier's, filmed when he was ill.

Which future star played Edgar in Peter Brook's 1962 King Lear, later seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music?

Edward Petherbridge was the Fool in the same production, staged on a bare white set.

Which actress played Lear himself on stage in 2016 and again in 2019?

Marianne Hoppe, Janet Wright and Kathryn Hunter had all taken the role in the 1990s.

Which 18th-century actor-manager first began trimming Nahum Tate's rewrite in favour of Shakespeare's original text?

He still kept Tate's happy ending, though; the full restoration had to wait for Macready in 1838.

Which word, with its variants 'natural' and 'unnatural', appears more than forty times in King Lear?

Critic John F. Danby argued the play dramatises the competing meanings the word carried in Shakespeare's day.

Which troupe likely gave North America's first professional King Lear after arriving in Virginia in 1752?

Later known as the American Company, it had the play in its repertoire before leaving for Jamaica in 1774.