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BBC SHAKESPEARE King Lear UK Dvd (1982)
Recommended: Complete BBC Shakespeare Collection Dvd Boxset @
amazon.co.uk (direct link to the mother of all boxsets)
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Originally Transmitted: 19th September 1982
Language: English
In 1978, the BBC set itself the task of filming all of William Shakespeare’s plays for television.
The resulting productions, renowned for their loyalty to the text, utilised the best theatrical
and television directors and brought great performances from leading contemporary actors.
"He’s mad that trust in the tameness of a wolf,
When King Lear rejects
his most devoted daughter Cordelia
because she refuses to patronise him with hollow sentiments,
he embarks on a journey into humiliation, loneliness and eventually madness.
In what is widely regarded as Shakespeare’s greatest creative achievement,
a story of family conflict ultimately reveals the bare futility of the human condition.
Director Jonathan Miller has had so many triumphs with this great Shakespearian
tragedy that his name is now synonymous with the play.
In this renowned version, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s
Michael Hordern gives a remarkable performance in the lead role.
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"Meanwhile we shall discuss our darker purpose
Michael Hordern
Directed by Jonathan Miller
Buy Dvd.
Dramatis Personae:
In credits order
John Shrapnel ... Earl of Kent
Brenda Blethyn ... Cordelia
Director: Jonathan Miller
William Shakespeare
King Lear
A Tragical Historie
The story of a king who, angry with the failure
of his virtuous youngest daughter (Cordelia)
to respond as he desires in a love-test, divides his kingdom between
her two malevolent sisters (Goneril and Regan), had been often told; Shakespeare
would have come across it in Holinshed’s Chronicles and in
A Mirror for Magistrates while reading for his plays on English history.
It is told also (though briefly) in Edmund Spenser’s
Faerie Queen (Book 2, canto 10), and had been dramatized in a
play of unknown authorship – The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his three daughters –
published in 1605, but probably written some fifteen years earlier ~
Miller’s stirring production throws a stark and revealing light upon the play’s deeply significant themes.
Available Elsewhere: amazon.co.uk (direct link to Dvd)
BBC Shakespeare Collection Dvd Boxset
Two Gentlemen of Verona (c.1595)
Henry VI, Part 1 1 - Henry VI, Part 2 (c. 1591)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595)
Life and Death of King John (c. 1596)
Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1597)
Much Ado About Nothing (c. 1598)
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (c. 1600)
Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602)
Othello, The Moor of Venice (c. 1604)
All's Well That Ends Well (c. 1605)
Antony and Cleopatra (c. 1606)
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (c. 1607)
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