In the Library
King Lear
William Shakespeare, 1606
- Form
- Form Play
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Moderate
- Reading time
- Reading time 2 hours
- Chapters
- Chapters 26
- Length
- Length 27k words
£1.99
Read in the app, yours for good. Not yet by post.
The book unlocks on your account as soon as you buy it, so the 14-day right to cancel ends once it is unlocked.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!
What buying means
- Yours for good, on every iPhone you sign in to.
- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
- The same price as in the app. Folio already opens every book on this shelf; buying keeps this one after Folio ends. A refund takes it back.
If you like this, try
The Tempest
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's other play about a father, a storm, and what it means to let go of power.
£1.99
Oedipus Rex
Sophocles
Oedipus Rex does the same thing, staging a king's fall from power and sight, though its catastrophe comes from a hidden past rather than a family's betrayal in old age.
£1.99
About the book
Tell me how much you love me, says an old king, and I will measure out my kingdom by the answer. Two daughters lie beautifully; the third, Cordelia, can only say she loves him as a daughter should, no more, no less, and for that honesty she is cast out. King Lear is the play in which Shakespeare withdraws every comfort he grants elsewhere: no innocence is shielded, no late repentance buys mercy, no heaven leans down to set things right. Out on the storm-struck heath, Lear loses crown and shelter and finally his reason, and the tempest outside is the smaller of the two. What makes the play unbearable is its refusal of consolation, the way it carries a father to the brink of seeing clearly only to take from him the one thing that recognition might have saved. Few works look so steadily at suffering and find the universe with nothing to say.