Regan (King Lear) Lear" 1.1.67–74. Later in the play, Lear leaves his kingdom to live with Goneril. She rejects him. After Lear leaves Goneril's house, he asks Regan to take him in. She tells him he has too many servants and knights, just as Goneril had. Unwilling to budge, Regan drives Lear out into the storm. In Act 3, Scene 7, after learning that the Earl of Gloucester has helped Lear escape to Dover, Regan, Goneril, and the Duke of Cornwall discuss what Gloucester's fate should be. While Regan suggests that they "hang him instantly," (3.7. 4), Goneril orders that his eyes be
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