The thing we really need to know on April 23 isALittle why he’s still drawing millions of actors, directors and theatre fans, and offering a source of heart-stopping astonishment almost all my life, from when my big sister, needing an audience for rehearsing a speech for a school recital, introduced a wide-eyed 5-year-old to the strange, wondrous-sounding language of a ham omelette mysteriously troubled by a bee.

And it’s the most important one:
A LITTLE TOUCH OF SHAKESPEARE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN.
This is especially to wish you a belated happy birthday, dearest Dr Ann Mitchell, 

* A silly old man thinks he can cut into three a cartographical representation of his kingdom with impunity and leaves him, finally, cradling the corpse of his beloved daughter, asking his heart to break. He has ordered his children to take part in a ‘love contest’ believes the ones who use false rhetoric and banishes the one who tells the truth.

And it’s the subtlest of touches that do their magic. Lear has gone mad, and screams in what is beyond language, and in the midst of his torment, he asks someone to help him undo the button of his jacket as he is choking. That exquisite tiny moment is for all of us who have lost loved ones or pray they won't die.

Re-enter KING LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his arms; EDGAR, Captain, and others following
KING LEAR
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones: Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so
That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever! I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass; If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, Why, then she lives.
KENT
Is this the promised end
EDGAR
Or image of that horror?
ALBANY
Fall, and cease!
KING LEAR
This feather stirs; she lives! if it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows That ever I have felt.
KENT
[Kneeling] O my good master!
KING LEAR
Prithee, away.
EDGAR
'Tis noble Kent, your friend.
KING LEAR
A plague upon you, murderers, traitors all!
I might have saved her; now she's gone for ever! Cordelia, Cordelia! stay a little. Ha!
What is't thou say'st? Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.
I kill'd the slave that was a-hanging thee.
Captain
'Tis true, my lords, he did.
KING LEAR
Did I not, fellow?
I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion I would have made them skip: I am old now, And these same crosses spoil me. Who are you? Mine eyes are not o' the best: I'll tell you straight.
KENT
If fortune brag of two she loved and hated, One of them we behold.
KING LEAR
This is a dull sight. Are you not Kent?
KENT
The same,
Your servant Kent: Where is your servant Caius?
KING LEAR
He's a good fellow, I can tell you that;
He'll strike, and quickly too: he's dead and rotten.
KENT
No, my good lord; I am the very man,--
KING LEAR
I'll see that straight.
KENT
That, from your first of difference and decay, Have follow'd your sad steps.
KING LEAR
You are welcome hither.
KENT
Nor no man else: all's cheerless, dark, and deadly.
Your eldest daughters have fordone them selves, And desperately are dead.
KING LEAR
Ay, so I think.
ALBANY
He knows not what he says: and vain it is That we present us to him.
EDGAR
Very bootless.
Enter a Captain
Captain
Edmund is dead, my lord.
ALBANY
That's but a trifle here.
You lords and noble friends, know our intent. What comfort to this great decay may come Shall be applied: for us we will resign, During the life of this old majesty,
To him our absolute power:
To EDGAR and KENT
you, to your rights:
With boot, and such addition as your honours Have more than merited. All friends shall taste The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings. O, see, see!
KING LEAR
And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!
Pray you, undo this button: thank you, sir.
Do you see this? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there!

Dies.

- Paul Scofield and Anne-Lise Gabold. Directed by Peter Brook.