But the compensating advantage is that without lavish sets and scenery you can concentrate on the actors and their roles. The sets are quite simple and spare, so it doesn't have the advantages of bigger-budget movie Shakespeares like Branagh's Henry V or Much Ado About Nothing, Taymor's The Tempest, or Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. This one, from 2008, has the look and feel of a live-stage production (which it was) but just without the theater audience. The dialog (particular in the hands of first-rate actors) is direct and powerful, and there are lots of scenes that are quite cinematic in nature.
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.King Lear has generated more movie versions than most Shakespeare plays, and it's not hard to see why. More famously, in 5.3, upon learning of Cordelia's death, Lear remarks "And my poor fool is hanged" (5.3.369). 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. 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.
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