King Lear 80, was deemed ideal for the role and "at home with Lear's skin" by critic Sam Wollaston. The first recording of the Argo Shakespeare for Argo Records was "King Lear" in 1957, directed and produced by George Rylands with William Devlin in the title role, Jill Balcon as Goneril and Prunella Scales as Cordelia. The Shakespeare Recording Society recorded a full-length unabridged audio productions on LP in 1965 (SRS-M-232) directed by Howard Sackler, with Paul Scofield as Lear, Cyril Cusack as Gloucester. Robert Stephens as Edmund, Rachel Roberts, Pamela Brown and John Stride. "King Lear" was broadcast live on the
King Lear traditional conflated text. Both Anthony Nuttall of Oxford University and Harold Bloom of Yale University have endorsed the view of Shakespeare having revised the tragedy at least once during his lifetime. As Bloom indicates: "At the close of Shakespeare's revised "King Lear", a reluctant Edgar becomes King of Britain, accepting his destiny but in the accents of despair. Nuttall speculates that Edgar, like Shakespeare himself, usurps the power of manipulating the audience by deceiving poor Gloucester." Analysis and criticism of "King Lear" over the centuries has been extensive. John F. Danby, in his "Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature – A Study