SOURCE: “Lear: Plot and Theme,” in Studia Neophilologica, Vol. 71, No. 1, 1999, pp. 51-61.

In the following essay, Kennedy contrasts the happy ending of The True Chronicle History of King Leir with Shakespeare's version of the play, arguing that Shakespeare’s ending is essential to establishing the theme of King Lear.

When Shakespeare wrote his version of the Lear story, he changed the ending. In all the previous versions, Cordelia and Lear won the battle, and Lear was restored to his throne, but Shakespeare transformed victory into defeat, restoration into death.

Explanations as to why Shakespeare changed the ending have tended to be circumstantial. Thus Kenneth Muir argues that Shakespeare had to condense the loosely connected events of the chronicle into a tighter time frame for stage presentation, a circumstance of genre.¹ The deaths of father and daughter, occurring three and seven years after their victory in Geoffrey of Monmouth's...