R. A. Foakes is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also taught or held fellowships at Yale, Birmingham, Durham, Kent, Toronto, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Australian National University, Canberra. He has written extensively on King Lear in his book, Hamlet versus Lear: Cultural Politics and Shakespeare's Art.

"Lear is trapped into a position of anger, having embarked on a game of vanity with his daughters: who loves me most?" --Michael Coveney, The Independent, 8.12.10

"Of all the Shakespeare roles, King Lear is the actor's Everest... To play this you need to have lived long enough to know or see suffering, madness, and human folly." --Libby Purves, The Times, 8.12.10

"King Lear is perhaps the greatest of all Shakespeare's dramas, but it is so harrowing, so despairing, so graphic in its cruelty, that it is also a test of endurance." --Charles Spencer, The Daily Telagraph, 8.12.10

"If Shakespeare's plays were mountains, King Lear would be the entire Himalayas." --Paul Callan, Daily Express, 8.12.10

"The play - arguably the Bard's greatest" --Paul Callan, Daily Express, 8.12.10

"''Lear' is an undeniably majestic work;" --Matt Wolf, The International Herald Tribune, 14.12.10