Overview
The horrors of King Lear appalled Dr Johnson and exasperated A.C.
Bradley, the most influential of all commentators on Shakespeare. Yet,
like subsequent critics, they could not deny the play's greatness. For
all his reservations Bradley conceded that it was the "fullest
revelation of Shakespeare's power" - up there with Aeschylus's
Prometheus Bound, Dante's Divine Comedy, Beethoven's symphonies and
Michelangelo's Statues. With his customary eloquence and passion, the
distinguished critic Valentine Cunningham shows what it is that
Shakespeare is driving at in Lear and how this extraordinary tragedy
about a foolish old king who goes mad leads directly to Samuel Beckett
and the Theatre of the Absurd.