Location: Cambridge University Shakespeare Summer School, Cambridge

This keynote lecture argues that the way in which eighteenth-century audiences experienced King Lear can provide us with new ways to think about this play (and other tragedies) today. It breaks down into three parts. First a section defining transitions and the aesthetic experience of eighteenth-century art. Second an analysis of how King Lear was rewritten to create transitions in the long eighteenth century. Finally, a study of transitions in both the King Lear of Shakespeare’s day and that of our own.