King Lear of King Lear" (1949), argues that "Lear" dramatizes, among other things, the current meanings of "Nature". The words "nature," "natural" and "unnatural" occur over forty times in the play, reflecting a debate in Shakespeare's time about what nature really was like; this debate pervades the play and finds symbolic expression in Lear's changing attitude to Thunder. There are two strongly contrasting views of human nature in the play: that of the Lear party (Lear, Gloucester, Albany, Kent), exemplifying the philosophy of Bacon and Hooker, and that of the Edmund party (Edmund, Cornwall, Goneril, Regan), akin to the views later formulated
The Shakespeare Center Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted numerous productions of works by Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and Commedia dell'Arte comedies, as well as The Shakespeare Project, and major New York premieres of Bertolt Brecht's "The Life of Edward II of England" and Nahum Tate's adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear", entitled "The History of King Lear", directed by Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Center, W. Stuart McDowell, and sponsored by Riverside Shakespeare Company benefactor, Samuel H. Scripps (left). For further information about "The Shakespeare Center", including detailed production information as well as the Riverside School for Shakespeare and The Shakespeare Project, see the Wikipedia site