Penguin Classics: King Lear

‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child!’

An ageing king rejects the young daughter who loves him and misplaces his trust in her malevolent sisters, who strip him of his power and condemn him to a wretched wasteland of horror and insanity. Set in a pitiless universe, Shakespeare’s bleak and brutal tragedy, written at the height of his powers, is a towering masterpiece of fierce poetry and vast imaginative scope.

‘The most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world.’ Percy Bysshe Shelley