King Lear

Mr. William Shakespeare presents
"The true story of King Lear"
to the third grade A

Illustrations and translations by the author

(Tabula Fati - Solfanelli - Chieti)

The birth of the story

Marco Solfanelli publisher	On the genesis of King Lear I cannot add any particular novelty with respect to what has been written about Julius Caesar. The original idea of adapting Shakespeare's works for young people came from Marco Solfanelli one evening when I had invited him to my home in Turin for a dinner with friends.

The initial choice on Julius Caesar was consequential to the publication by Effatà of the yellow story Sherlock Holmes and the conquest of Gaul, set on the De Bello Gallico written by Julius Caesar himself. The problem of which work to choose to write a second adaptation was certainly not easy, there are so many masterpieces including comedies, tragedies, historical dramas. Romeo and Juliet? Hamlet? The tempest? Richard the third…?

George Frederick Bensell - Re Lear - The Knohl Collection

Finally I let myself be convinced by the passion I've always felt for King Lear. Of course, it wasn't an easy decision. The text is complicated, dark, cruel, perhaps not exactly suitable for young readers but, faced with the universal majesty of Shakespeare's thought contained in the tragedy, I no longer hesitated; it was worth taking the risks, embarking on this adventure and taking on the responsibilities.

King Lear is a casket that reveals the path of human coexistence in the multiplicity of its highest and darkest, sweetest and cruelest aspects in a perennial oscillation between madness and wisdom, between blindness and vision. In short, a unique masterpiece, too beautiful and seductive not to be fascinated by it	But perhaps the origin of everything was this story...