King Lear

[leer]

noun

1. a tragedy (1606) by Shakespeare.

King Lear

1. A tragedy by William Shakespeare about an old king who unwisely hands his kingdom over to two of his daughters. The daughters, who had flattered Lear while he was in power, turn on him; their actions reduce him to poverty and eventually to madness. His youngest daughter, Cordelia, whom he had at first spurned, remains faithful to him.

Example Sentences

The actor also played the doomed warlord who divides his kingdom between his sons in "Ran", Kurosawa's 1985 film based on the Shakespeare play "King Lear".

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Mark Mannucci, director of the documentary “American Masters: Decoding Watson,” compared him to King Lear, a man “at the height of his powers and, through his own character flaws, was brought down.”

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Yet the next day he called again to ask if he could text me further thoughts, which was a detailed interpretation of his King Lear in the acclaimed 2018 TV film.

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Shakespeare offers what has become the defining portrait of this inconsolable experience in “King Lear.”

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King Lear, bearing the brunt of a storm, looks at what he thinks is a mad beggar and wonders if “unaccommodated man” is no more than “a poor, bare, forked animal.”

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