SOURCE: “The Player King,” in Sovereign Shame: A Study of King Lear, Bucknell University Press, 1984, pp. 118-46.

In the following essay, Zak contrasts Shakespeare’s King Lear with the anonymously written The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and examines Lear’s self-destruction.

The king's a beggar, now the play is done. 

Epilogue, All's Well That Ends Well

Shame would have it hid. 

Gloucester, King Lear

From a study of the contrasts between the first scenes of The True Chronicle History of King Leir and Shakespeare's spare, truncated adaptation of them in the first half of scene one in King Lear, we can better inspect several related elements in Shakespeare's design. For one thing, it appears Shakespeare took great care to keep Lear's psyche cloaked, unavailable to immediate inspection, as if our bewilderment—a sense of something hidden in Lear's motives—was a necessary first step toward understanding...