Shakespeare's King Lear

Inaugurated in the 1860s, and the standard reference edition of Shakespeare's work, each volume of the New Variorum Shakespeare presents complete textual and critical histories of each line of the play, along with extensive essays on criticism, sources, stage history, and more.

The New Variorum Editions are valuable resources for an international audience of scholars, students, directors, actors, and general readers. Overseen by three general editors and an MLA committee, the production of each edition is conducted by a team of scholars and researchers working over a number of years.

This edition contains a text of the play, textual variants from all subsequent editions of the play, and commentary notes. Includes discussion of important early editions, date of composition, sources, language and style, structure, influences, analogues, criticism, themes, characters, stage productions, film adaptations, operatic adaptations, and music for the play.