Recommendations from our site
“Lear is about all sorts of things but one of the things it’s about is people getting old and not ceding what their kids think they should to them and the kids trying to bully them.” Read more...
Kathleen Taylor, Science Writer
“I think it’s the most profound of the plays. It’s not one you go to for a jolly night out, Shakespeare was deeply serious in writing this play. It does have its comic aspects, but it’s easily the most profound examination of what it means to be human of anything that I know.” Read more...
Stanley Wells recommends the best of Shakespeare’s Plays
Stanley Wells, Literary Scholar
“King Lear is a play that changes your life. How could it not? It asks fundamental questions about who we are……..The very first line of the play is ‘I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall’, and that word ‘affected’, affection, becomes everything this play is about. It is about the human soul, about instincts, about how it is important that royalty, for example, has to be earned through decency. It’s a very powerful and very engaged, committed work.” Read more...
René Weis on The Best Plays of Shakespeare
René Weis, Biographer
“Psychologists ask the same question: Do we learn from our mistakes? Or in other words: Do we get wiser as we grow older? Perhaps not on a Learian scale but on a more mundane scale, do we learn from our imprudence? And the answer is no.” Read more...
