The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare

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King Lear

King Lear
The third of the so-called ‘great’ tragedies, King Lear differs greatly in structure and tone from its predecessors, Hamlet and Othello. According to its entry in the Stationers' Register on 26 November 1607, it had been performed at court on 26 December 1606. This suggests composition no later than autumn 1606. The play is indebted to Samuel Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures and to Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essais, both published in 1603. Gloucester's reference to ‘late eclipses in the sun and moon’ may or may not allude to actual eclipses of September and October 1605; possible debts to Jonson, Chapman, and Marston's play Eastward Ho and to George Wilkins's Miseries of Enforced Marriage imply composition later than June 1605. The play was probably written late in 1605. Revision represented by the Folio text was made on a copy of the 1608 quarto, probably, judging...

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