King Lear

Name: King Lear
Brand: Findaway Voices
Availability: InStock
Author: William Shakespeare
ISBN: 9781094244792

Author: William Shakespeare

Narrator: Edward James Beesley

Unabridged: 4 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Spotify Audiobooks

Published: 08/04/2020

Categories: Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Performing Arts, Theater

Synopsis

“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.”King Lear has lived a long and difficult life as a king and decides that he wants to retire of his duties. To absolve himself of power, Lear decides to split his kingdom among his three daughters based on their affections toward him. While two of his daughters flatter their father and declare their fealty and respect, his third daughter refuses to flatter his ego and declares that she only loves him because he is her father. This disrespect causes Lear to leave her nothing.People in search of power can be duplicitous though, and as King Lear learns that the two flatterers were false in their declarations, his anger sparks a descent into madness that in turn sparks a chain of murders and betrayals that spread through many kingdoms and people rapidly.King Lear, while written with beautiful poetry and language, is dark and brutal, with lessons of loyalty and the value of family bonds that still ring true centuries later.

About William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was born in April 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, on England’s Avon River. When he was eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—an older daughter Susanna and twins, Judith and Hamnet. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died in childhood. The bulk of Shakespeare’s working life was spent in the theater world of London, where he established himself professionally by the early 1590s. He enjoyed success not only as a playwright and poet, but also as an actor and shareholder in an acting company. Although some think that sometime between 1610 and 1613 Shakespeare retired from the theater and returned home to Stratford, where he died in 1616, others believe that he may have continued to work in London until close to his death.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on February 11, 2020

I've read Lear many times, and, although I didn't learn much about the play this reading, I did learn a little about myself. I have always loved the play, but in the past I found its injustice and evil nigh overpowering, its victims pathetically guiltless, its perspective verging on the nihilistic.......more

Goodreads review by s.penkevich on July 01, 2024

Hot Shakespeare Summer continues with this tale of a King that should have internalized the phrase “flattery gets you nowhere.” Flattery gets you a pile of dead bodies and a collapsed kingdom now, Pops, but hey I guess thats why they call these “tragedies.” Brush the bodies aside for a moment becaus......more

Goodreads review by Amit on July 09, 2019

King Lear can be read in various ways - as a theological drama, as a philosophical one, as a supreme example of Shakespeare's intuitive egalitarianism or even as a melodrama lifted towards tragedy only by its superb poetry. It is the most titanic of Shakespeare's tragedy.......more

Goodreads review by Henry on August 20, 2024

"How sharper than a serpent's ( snake's ) tooth it is to have a thankless child"...Good King Lear, feared in his younger days, has two, in pagan Britain, the inhabitants worship the numerous gods, there, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, the ancient ruler, in his eighties, can no longer......more