
This Critical Guide helps students sift through and make sense of nearly three centuries of Lear criticism, providing insight into different assessments of the play's merit and its place within Shakespeare's work and the canon of English literature. Highlights include excerpts...

Analyzes the play's scholarly reception from the late 17th century to the late 20th, with long excerpts from examples of each period and approach. Covers neo-classicism, Romanticism, Realism during the 19th century, the shift from Christianity to chaos through the first half...