At the very end of King Lear, a frail, old man appears carrying the corpse of his youngest and much-loved daughter. It’s an image, like that of Hamlet holding a skull or Juliet on her balcony, that has imprinted itself on the minds of readers and spectators over the last four hundred years. For some, it is unbearable, even morally irresponsible; for Lear’s lonely, individual grief seems to reinforce the possibility, iterated again and again in the play, that all human life is essentially meaningless.

Whether one accepts that bleak vision or not, here once again is that familiar magic – Shakespeare’s astonishing ability to open out his work, to manipulate a single storyline, so that it includes, implicates and challenges everyone.

The old king and his daughter do not enter alone, however. They are accompanied by at least one soldier, possibly more. This soldier, about whom we know almost nothing, has a single line later in the scene, but his entrance is not marked in either of the authoritative texts that have been handed down to us – the quarto and the Folio – and, consequently, presents the director of King Lear with a problem. When, precisely, should the soldier, or soldiers, enter? Every line spoken by Lear in this short, final scene is a wonder and I suspect that most directors instinctively feel that his words and the image should be left, as it were, to stand alone.

But, as so often, Shakespeare gives us a context for Lear’s pain, a counterpoint. The soldier is there to remind us, amongst other things, that the old king is not simply a grieving father but also a prisoner- of -war (a war for which he is ultimately responsible) and to confirm, with his single line, that Lear is still powerful and angry enough to have killed the man who was murdering his child. […continued]