Sometimes directors staging the play invent a scene in which the Fool himself is hanged, to explain this line, but the tradition of doubling the characters is the better explanation. More famously, in 5.3, upon learning of Cordelia's death, Lear remarks 'And my poor fool is hanged' (5.3.369).

Tate’s play, titled The History of King Lear, was staged in 1985 at the Shakespeare Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Shakespeare’s King Lear challenges us with the magnitude, intensity, and sheer duration of the pain that it represents. 3) King Lear was rewritten to have a happy ending. 2) The play was banned from the English stage during the reign of King George III. 1) King Lear was inspired by a legendary British King. For a time this play completely replaced Shakespeare’s masterpiece. Cordelia, Lear, Goneril, and Regan die, while the fate of the kingdom is left to Kent, Edgar, and Albany. The first time that Lear summons the Fool, in 1.4, both he and his Knight observe that the Fool has been melancholy ever since Cordelia was sent to France. A not-so-accomplished writer, Nahum Tate, took Shakespeare’s play and rewrote it to soften the tragic scenes and themes of the play. Shakespeare alludes to this fact at several points in the play. In Shakespeare's day, the roles of Cordelia and the Fool were often 'doubled'-played by the same actor-since the two characters are never on stage at the same time. In recent times, some editors have started focusing on the 'original' 1608 edition. Before the 1990s, editors usually 'blended' the two texts, taking what they believed were the best versions of each scene. There are actually two different versions of King Lear- The History of King Lear published in quarto form in 1608 and The Tragedy of King Lear, which was published in the First Folio (1623) and is very substantially revised from the play published in 1608. 'Bedlam' was a slang word for 'Bethlehem,' which was the name of a mental institution in London. The character of Poor Tom or the Bedlam Beggar, as which Edgar disguises himself, is based on vagabonds or madmen considered dangerous in England at the time. William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the worlds pre-eminent dramatist.

Lear william shakespeare