King Lear       WS 27,659            SOL 20,710 words                          74.8%                 100 pages
Download and try these excerpts with your students. 

The SOL King Lear is very close to the four productions I have acted in, and the many ones I have seen, over the years. The main cuts, as usual, are from the Fool and Edgar's Mad Tom deception.  The role of King Lear is left almost intact.  

King Lear is rather unique in that it has 12 great characters in it. There is a thirteenth character, however, that is almost never given proper significance - the 100 knights. Historically speaking 100 knights would be a fighting force to be greatly feared. Dramatically speaking, before the return-from-hunting scene, is a great time to have something nasty and knight-related to happen. If they are truly an unstable force, as Goneril and Regan insist, both daughters become understandably motivated. Having 100 riotous knights at his beck and call also makes Lear much less of an innocent victim, and more an unstable and capricious Tyrant. I believe Shakespeare intended such richness.

Two other common simplifications in production are to play Edmund evil and Gloucester stupid. Edmund, like all Shakespearean ‘villains’ , is perfectly motivated. Society’s unjust rules bar him from advancement, so he decides to play by nature’s rules instead. Gloucester is Lear’s chief minister, and despite being superstitious should not be easy for Edmund, or Edgar for that matter, to deceive. Shakespeare the playwright may have his characters tell the audience what they intend to do, but Shakespeare the storyteller never intends those journeys to be easy or predictable. Purchase

I have acted in 4 productions of the play and attended many more.
Ian Holm's Lear is the best I have ever seen.

A much younger me as Edgar in Peter Ustinov's King Lear at Stratford, 1980/81, directed by Robyn Phillips