King Lear

William Shakespeare is almost universally considered the English language's most famous and greatest writer. In fact, the only people who might dispute that are those who think he didn't write the surviving 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems still attributed to him. Even people who never get around to reading his works in class are instantly familiar with titles like King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo & Shakespeare.


King Lear is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, and like some of his other plays, it tells the tale of an individual descending into madness after making fateful choices. In this play, it is King Lear, a figure based off English legend, who makes a decision based on the behavior of his daughters that spells disaster.