William Shakespeare - 72 - King Lear - Paul Scofield & Cyril Cusack 1965

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

Scofield’s Lear is one of the most celebrated stage performances of the twentieth century and this is the 1965 recording Caedmon made of it.

A poll in 2004 of leading actors in England accorded it the distinction of being ‘the greatest Shakespearian performance ever’. One might question ‘ever’, but the actor really stretches human emotion to its limit.

Scofield repeated the role for Naxos late in his career, and this will be uploaded next month (forget the Peter Brook 1971 film which is a botch - if you want a cinematic version of Lear, try Kurosawa’s Ran)

The principals here are Paul Scofield, Rachel Roberts, Pamela Brown, Cyril Cusack, Robert Stephens, and John Stride.

William Shakespeare - 24 - King Lear - John Gielgud 1994
William Shakespeare - 28 - King Lear - bbc 2016
William Shakespeare - 48 - King Lear - Corin Redgrave bbc 2001
William Shakespeare - 67 - King Lear - Alec Guinness

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