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 of Shakespeare's text in 1756, it was by no means a complete return to Shakespeare, and he continued to play Tate's Lear in some form to the end of his career. His performances met with enormous success, and continued to draw tears from his audiences, even without Shakespeare's final, tragic scene where Lear enters with Cordelia's body in his arms. As literary critics grew increasingly scornful of Tate, his version still remained "the starting point for performances on the English-speaking stage." John Philip Kemble, in 1809, even dropped some of Garrick's earlier restorations of Shakespeare, and returned several passages to