William Shakespeare
King Lear
The full script in Final Draft, Word & PDF
King Lear divides his kingdom by testing his daughters' love, then loses power, sanity and the one child who truly loves him.
PDFs Only
$4.99
- ✓ Stageplay PDF (138 pp.)
- ✓ Screenplay PDF (121 pp.)
- ✓ Instant download
Full Package
$12.99
- ✓ Final Draft (.fdx)
- ✓ Microsoft Word + RTF
- ✓ Screenplay + Stageplay PDFs
Need more than a few plays?
All 37 plays in every format cost $99, less than 8 single Full Packages. PDFs only: $55 for all 37.
- Genre
- Tragedy
- Written
- c. 1605–1606
- Setting
- Ancient Britain
- Scenes
- 26
- Speaking roles
- 27
- Uncut running time
- ~3h 10m
What happens in King Lear
Aged King Lear divides Britain among his three daughters according to how well they profess love for him. Goneril and Regan flatter him, but Cordelia, who loves him most, refuses to exaggerate, and he disowns her. She marries the King of France. Lear's loyal friend Kent is banished for protesting, then returns in disguise. Lear soon finds that Goneril and Regan will not honour their promises and strips him of his retinue.
Lear goes out into a storm with his Fool, and is sheltered by Gloucester, whose own sons are at odds. Edmund, Gloucester's illegitimate son, has framed his half-brother Edgar, who flees disguised as Poor Tom. Gloucester is blinded for helping the king. Cordelia returns with a French force, but is defeated. Lear and Cordelia are captured, and the play ends in deaths and devastation.
See the formatting
The first page of Act I, exactly as it appears in the files you download.
The biggest roles
Share of the play's spoken words, counted from the script. 27 characters speak; 14 of them have under 1% of the text — natural candidates for doubling.
| Role | Share of the text | Speeches |
|---|---|---|
| King Lear | | 213 |
| Edgar | | 103 |
| Kent | | 130 |
| Gloucester | | 121 |
| Edmund | | 86 |
| Fool | | 62 |
| Goneril | | 59 |
| Regan | | 75 |
For directors
Lear holds about 22 percent of the words, less than Hamlet or Macbeth, with Edgar at 11, Kent at 10 and Gloucester at 10, and eight roles over 5 percent. The cast has 27 speaking roles, 14 under 1 percent, which is relatively modest, so doubling is needed mainly for servants, soldiers and knights. At an uncut estimate of 190 minutes, the play is long and has distinct Quarto and Folio texts.
Cutting notes
- Trim the Albany and Cornwall political exchanges and the longer passages of Gloucester's subplot, keeping the blinding and the Dover scenes.
- The Folio omits the mock trial and Act IV scene iii, which some productions cut, depending on the text used.
- Trim the Fool's longer riddling speeches, which are hardest for modern audiences.
For teachers
Students study authority and family, justice and cruelty, blindness and insight, and the subplot paralleling Gloucester's family with Lear's. Frequently taught passages include the love test in Act I, the storm scenes on the heath, Gloucester's blinding, and the reunion of Lear and Cordelia. The existence of two early texts, Quarto and Folio, makes it a standard case for studying textual variation.
Questions
Is this the complete, uncut text of King Lear?
Yes. Every file contains the full play — 26 scenes and about 25,500 spoken words. Cut it yourself in Word or Final Draft to fit your running time.
What is the difference between the stageplay and screenplay layouts?
The stageplay layout indents stage directions and sets dialogue full-width, like a theatre script. The screenplay layout follows film conventions: scene headings and action flush left, character names centred, dialogue in a narrower column. Both tiers include both layouts as PDFs; the Full Package adds editable Final Draft and Word files of each.
Can I use this King Lear script for a production or a class?
Yes. Shakespeare's plays are in the public domain, so there are no royalties to pay for staging them. Edit, stage, film or teach with these files.
How do I receive the files?
Right after checkout you land on a private download page, and the link is also emailed to you. It keeps working, so you can re-download any time.
