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 Cambridge Shakespeare first quarto of "Henry V", quarto "King Lear", the "Richard III", the quarto of "Othello", the first quarto of "Romeo and Juliet", and "The Taming of a Shrew", an alternate version of "The Taming of the Shrew". The general editors of the series are Philip Brockbank (1984-1990) and Brian Gibbons (1990-present), with individual editors, or pairs of, assigned to cover separate plays and poetry. The Cambridge Shakespeare The Cambridge Shakespeare is a long-running series of critical editions of William Shakespeare's works published by Cambridge University Press. The name encompasses three distinct series: "The Cambridge Shakespeare" (1863–1866), "The New Shakespeare" (1921–1969),