Reading this at the same time as Titus Andronicus really downplayed the dark elements of this play. It's nowhere near as bad as that one.

I found myself enjoying this Shakespearean play more than most others I’ve read. Don’t quite know what I’m going to focus on for my essay though…

this was really good (even if Lear was a raging misogynist at times)!

i also love cordelia

This was, not only the first Shakespeare I’ve ever read start to finish, but it was the first play I’ve ever read. While I enjoyed it, I think that Nice Peter and George Watsky’s epic rap battle “Dr. Seuss vs. William Shakespeare” really sums up how I feel about reading this play:

“I entertain a child of any age.
You’ve got to translate what you said on the opposite page.”

I think I COULD have mostly understood it without a little research, but after each act, I read a synopsis of what had just happened and it really solidified what I had read. I might not be smart enough to fully comprehend Shakespeare, but I enjoyed King Lear and might read another of his plays in the future.

My favourite Shakespeare so far! So intense and such a well crafted story

That was a lot.

This was one of Shakespeares best, I will admit. I try to not read too awful many of his works, as I would like to become more familiar with other playwrites, but he did very well in King Lear.

I really enjoyed this, and would definitely recommend as far as Shakespeare goes. I found this penguin edition quite useful; I think it is designed to be accessible to the average reader (hence its 'mass market paperback' format), and gave useful commentary and glossaries and general context and some stuff about the music in the play, and quite significantly with 'King Lear', the discrepancies between different versions of the written play (namely between the Quarto and the Folio), some of which turned out to be surprisingly significant, although I didn't read all the listed changes. The commentary was slightly annoying to access as I had to keep flicking back and forth, and there were no asterisks; pretty much every line had some commentary, and it was mostly explanatory. I personally wish it had been more critical or asking alternative questions about the text, but for its purpose it was fine. In terms of the play itself, I appreciated the double-plot structure although there were some moments where I was getting a bit bored with the Gloucester plot, but in the end it tied together quite nicely. Considering this is a major tragedy, I found a lot of really funny moments, where Shakespeare slips in some absurd phrases or satirical little proverbs into characters' lines which are just hilarious and break the dramatic tension so perfectly, and there were so many good ones that I ended up dedicating a post-it tab colour specifically to the funny quotes. Equally, of course this was laden with many a typical juicy Shakespeare quote, which I enjoyed on more of a poetic level. Overall, definitely had a good time reading this, but I probably would have gotten much more out of it if I studied it with some external nudges, as reading this independently I inevitably missed lots of interesting things going on beneath the surface that need a more critical eye.

This was very tragic indeed.

This was very tragic indeed.