Dramaturgical Resources
2007
King Lear
By William Shakespeare
Over the course of the season, our assistant directors and student dramaturgs will be compiling dramaturgical resources relating to each production as it develops. Below are some links to websites which relate to the history of the play, the biography of the playwright, and sites that contextualize and, we hope, shed light on the directorial approach to the dramatic material.
We hope you find these resources of interest.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
An enormous amount of online material relating to King Lear exists on the web. Here are a few sites that we hope might be of interest.
King Lear is based on an earlier play, King Leir. gives a good introduction to this original version (you can even read the earlier play) and provides useful background on Shakerspeare's sources and the text of Lear itself.
And excellent resource for Shakespeare in general on the web, is the site, run by the University of Victoria in Canada. Their pages are comprehensive. Don't miss the links to pictures of the first pages of !
The theme of sight, and other thematic elements of the text are discussed in this .
A very brief summary of the cultural and historical context within which the play was written can be found .
Eclipses and other inversions of the natural order feature prominently in King Lear. Superstitions have long been associated with eclipses, as detailed in these web pages:
- from space.com
The Royal Shakespeare Company's website has an interesting article or two on . It deals particularly with 's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel adaptation of Lear, A Thousand Acres.
The RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) site also has from past RSC Lears. The server is quite slow to respond, but the cross section of images is worth the wait.
Here's a recent of the play.