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
The History of King Lear Tate. The play was suppressed for several years prior to the death of King George III in 1820, as its focus on a mad king suggested an unfortunate resemblance to the situation of the reigning monarch. But in 1823, Kemble's rival, Edmund Kean (who had previously acted Tate's Lear), "stimulated by Hazlitt's remonstrances and Charles Lamb's essays," became the first to restore the tragic ending, though much of Tate remained in the earlier acts. "The London audience," Kean told his wife, "have no notion of what I can do till they see me over the dead body of Cordelia." Kean