Rush, Russell Beale, Salminen & Skovhus: four Lears tackle the tortured monarch.

For many, King Lear is Shakespeare’s greatest play. Over the years it has been chopped about to suit the times, served as a vehicle for a host of legendary actors and even become an opera or two. As Geoffrey Rush prepares for the title role, a quartet of Lears talk to Clive Paget about the challenges of portraying the Bard’s complex, tortured monarch.

Ask any actor which of Shakespeare’s plays they consider the greatest and chances are they will come back with either Hamlet or King Lear. If the moody Dane is the Everest of the canon for the ambitious younger actor, then surely the irascible Lear is the summit to which their elders aspire. But while oft quoted lines like “Nothing will come of nothing”, “I am a man more sinned against than sinning”, and the grisly “Out, vile jelly!” are familiar to many, somehow Shakespeare’s darkest creation remains less overtly popular, less well-known than its more fêted junior.

Why is that? Is it simply that Hamlet has a larger share of the glamour factor? Will star-struck fans queue around the block more readily for a...