King Lear
William Shakespeare · 1606
An aging king divides his kingdom among his daughters based on flattery and loses everything. Shakespeare pushed tragedy past Aristotle here into something crueler and more cosmic. The storm scene on the heath remains the most devastating depiction of human madness ever staged.
The case against
Everything turns on a premise nobody believes: a king staging a love test he has already decided, then disowning the one daughter who answers honestly. Gloucester's blinding happens onstage, the Fool's jokes need footnotes, and the cruelty is so unrelieved that for 150 years the English stage played a rewrite where Cordelia lives. Audiences chose the fake; you will understand why.
Drama · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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