26 Dec 2022
On This Day
26 December 2022 Cheryl

26 December 1606: Shakespeare’s King Lear is performed for the first time

King Lear and Cordelia

King Lear was not performed in London’s theatres from 1811 to 1820. That’s because King George III, who ruled from 1760 to 1820, developed severe mental illness in his later life and the fictional monarch paralleled the real life ruler’s struggles just a little too much. [1]

The first known performance of any version of William Shakespeare‘s tragedy King Lear was before the court of King James I at Whitehall, London on Saint Stephen’s Day (26 December in Western Christianity) in 1606 as part of the Christmas revels.

King Lear is a tragedy based on the history of a pre-Roman, Celtic king of Britain, the mythological Leir of Britain. The tale tells of King Lear, who, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his three daughters. His daughters strip him of his retinue and cast him out from their homes and he eventually becomes destitute and insane. His third daughter, the shunned Cordelia, leads a French army in Lear’s defence, and is reconciled with her father, however they are both captured, and Cordelia is murdered in prison. The grief of this news kills Lear.

The play was often revised after the English Restoration for audiences who disliked its dark and depressing tone. Both the title role and the supporting roles have been coveted by accomplished actors, and the play has been widely adapted. In his A Defence of Poetry, Percy Bysshe Shelley called King Lear “the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world”, and the play is regularly cited as one of the greatest works of literature ever written, and one of Shakespeare’s supreme achievements.

,