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This shattering drama of isolation and loss is one of the greatest tragedies in world literature.

King Lear of Britain has three daughters: the hard-hearted Goneril and Regan, and the good and gentle Cordelia. He determines to divide his kingdom between them, giving the largest share to she who can say she loves him the best. Lear's tragic lack of judgement and self-knowledge is paralleled by the blindness of the loyal Gloucester who is persuaded to reject his virtuous son Edgar in favor of the villainous Edmund.

Lear is played by Trevor Peacock and Gloucester by Clive Merrison. Penny Downie is Goneril, Samantha Bond is Regan, and Julia Ford is Cordelia. Edgar is played by David Tennant, Edmund by Gerard Murphy, and the Fool by John Rogan.

Clive Merrison is a film, stage, and television actor who has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, and the Old Vic. He and Michael Williams are the only acting duo to have completed the entire canon of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.

Samantha Bond is best known for her role as Miss Moneypenny in several James Bond films, including Die Another Day, The World is Not Enough, Tomorrow Never Dies, and GoldenEye. Her many television credits include Agatha Christie's Poirot, Inspector Morse, Midsomer Murders, Rumpole of the Bailey, and Downton Abbey. She is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and has appeared in multiple performances on Broadway and London's West End. She starred opposite Dame Judi Dench in David Hare's award-winning play Amy's View at the Royal National Theatre. Her audiobook credits include reading works by Agatha Christie and John Milton.

David Tennant is a Scottish actor who, over the last twenty years, has starred on stage, screen, television, and radio. In 2008 he played a widely praised Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company but is probably best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 television serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch Jr. in the 2005 film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Gerard Murphy is an actor who had a long and distinguished career, appearing in such productions as RSC's The Balcony and in films such as Batman Begins.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English poet and dramatist of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean period, is the most widely known author in all of English literature and often considered the greatest. He was an active member of a theater company for at least twenty years, during which time he wrote many great plays. Plays were not prized as literature at the time, and Shakespeare was not widely read until the middle of the eighteenth century, when a great upsurge of interest in his works began that continues today.