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King Lear is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It depicts the gradual descent into madness of the title character, after he disposes of his kingdom by giving bequests to two of his three daughters egged on by their continual flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. Derived from the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological pre-Roman Celtic king, the play has been widely adapted for the stage and motion pictures, with the title role coveted by many of the world's most accomplished actors.
The first attribution to Shakespeare of this play, originally drafted in 1605 or 1606 at the latest with its first known performance on St. Stephen's Day in 1606, was a 1608 publication in a quarto of uncertain provenance, in which the play is listed as a history; it may be an early draft or simply reflect the first performance text. The Tragedy of King Lear, a more theatrical revision, was included in the 1623 First Folio. Modern editors usually conflate the two, though some insist that each version has its own individual integrity that should be preserved.
After the English Restoration, the play was often revised with a happy, non-tragic ending for audiences who disliked its dark and depressing tone, but since the 19th century Shakespeare's original version has been regarded as one of his supreme achievements. The tragedy is particularly noted for its probing observations on the nature of human suffering and kinship. George Bernard Shaw wrote, "No man will ever write a better tragedy than Lear."[1]
Characters

Lear—King of Britain
Goneril—Lear's eldest daughter
Regan—Lear's second daughter
Cordelia—Lear's youngest daughter
Duke of Albany—Goneril's husband
Duke of Cornwall—Regan's husband
Earl of Gloucester
Earl of Kent—later disguised as Caius
Edgar—Gloucester's son
Edmund—Gloucester's illegitimate son
Oswald—Goneril's loyal steward
Fool—Lear's fool
King of France—suitor and later husband to Cordelia
Duke of Burgundy—suitor to Cordelia
Curan—courtier
Old man—tenant of Gloucester
Officer—employed by Edmund
Gentleman—attends Cordelia

Synopsis

Act I
King Lear of Britain, elderly and wanting to retire from the duties of the monarchy, decides to divide his realm among his three daughters, and declares he will offer the largest share to the one who loves him most. The eldest, Goneril, speaks first, declaring her love for her father in fulsome terms. Moved by her flattery Lear proceeds to grant to Goneril her share as soon as she has finished her declaration, before Regan and Cordelia have a chance to speak. He then awards to Regan her share as soon as she has spoken. When it is finally the turn of his youngest and favourite daughter, Cordelia, at first she refuses to say anything ("Nothing, my Lord") and then declares there is nothing to compare her love to, nor words to properly express it; she says honestly but bluntly that she loves him according to her bond, no more and no less. Infuriated, Lear disinherits Cordelia and divides her share between her elder sisters.
The Earl of Gloucester and the Earl of Kent observe that, by dividing his realm between Goneril and Regan, Lear has awarded his realm in equal shares to the peerages of the Duke of Albany (Goneril's husband) and the Duke of Cornwall (Regan's husband). Kent objects to Lear's unfair treatment of Cordelia; enraged by Kent's protests, Lear banishes him from the country. Lear then summons the Duke of Burgundy and the King of France, who have both proposed marriage to Cordelia. Learning that Cordelia has been disinherited, the Duke of Burgundy withdraws his suit, but the King of France is impressed by her honesty and marries her nonetheless. The King of France is shocked by Lear's decision because up until this time Lear has only praised and favoured Cordelia ("... she whom even but now was your best object, / The argument of your praise, balm of your age, ...").[2] Meanwhile, Gloucester has introduced his illegitimate son Edmund to Kent.

Lear announces he will live alternately with Goneril and Regan, and their husbands. He reserves to himself a retinue of one hundred knights, to be supported by his daughters. Goneril and Regan speak privately, revealing that their declarations of love were fake and that they view Lear as a foolish old man.
Gloucester's bastard son Edmund resents his illegitimate status and plots to dispose of his legitimate older brother Edgar. He tricks his father with a forged letter, making him think that Edgar plans to usurp the estate. Kent returns from exile in disguise (calling himself Caius), and Lear hires him as a servant. At Albany and Goneril's house, Lear and Kent quarrel with Oswald, Goneril's steward. Lear discovers that now that Goneril has power, she no longer respects him. She orders him to reduce the number of his disorderly retinue. Enraged, Lear departs for Regan's home. The Fool reproaches Lear with his foolishness in giving everything to Regan and Goneril and predicts that Regan will treat him no better.
Act II
Edmund learns from Curan, a courtier, that there is likely to be war between Albany and Cornwall and that Regan and Cornwall are to arrive at Gloucester's house that evening. Taking advantage of the arrival of the duke and Regan, Edmund fakes an attack by Edgar, and Gloucester is completely taken in. He disinherits Edgar and proclaims him an outlaw.
Bearing Lear's message to Regan, Kent meets Oswald again at Gloucester's home, quarrels with him again and is put in the stocks by Regan and her husband Cornwall. When Lear arrives, he objects to the mistreatment of his messenger, but Regan is as dismissive of her father as Goneril was. Lear is enraged but impotent. Goneril arrives and supports Regan's argument against him. Lear yields completely to his rage. He rushes out into a storm to rant against his ungrateful daughters, accompanied by the mocking Fool. Kent later follows to protect him. Gloucester protests against Lear's mistreatment. With Lear's retinue of a hundred knights dissolved, the only companions he has left are his Fool and Kent. Wandering on the heath after the storm, Edgar, in the guise of a madman named Tom o' Bedlam, meets Lear. Edgar babbles madly while Lear denounces his daughters. Kent leads them all to shelter.
Act III

Edmund betrays Gloucester to Cornwall, Regan, and Goneril. He reveals evidence that his father knows of an impending French invasion designed to reinstate Lear to the throne; and in fact, a French army has landed in Britain. Once Edmund leaves with Goneril to warn Albany about the invasion, Gloucester is arrested, and Regan and Cornwall gouge out Gloucester's eyes. As they are doing this, a servant is overcome with rage by what he is witnessing and attacks Cornwall, mortally wounding him. Regan kills the servant and tells Gloucester that Edmund betrayed him; then she turns him out to wander the heath, too.
Act IV
Edgar, in his madman's guise, meets his blinded father on the heath. Gloucester, sightless and failing to recognise Edgar's voice, begs him to lead him to a cliff at Dover so that he may jump to his death. Goneril discovers that she finds Edmund more attractive than her honest husband Albany, whom she regards as cowardly. Albany has developed a conscience — he is disgusted by the sisters' treatment of Lear and Gloucester -- and denounces his wife. Goneril sends Edmund back to Regan. After receiving news of Cornwall's death, she fears her newly widowed sister may steal Edmund and sends him a letter through Oswald. Now alone with Lear, Kent leads him to the French army, which is commanded by Cordelia. But Lear is half-mad and terribly embarrassed by his earlier follies. At Regan's instigation, Albany joins his forces with hers against the French. Goneril's suspicions about Regan's motives are confirmed and returned, as Regan rightly guesses the meaning of her letter and declares to Oswald that she is a more appropriate match for Edmund. Edgar pretends to lead Gloucester to a cliff, then changes his voice and tells Gloucester he has miraculously survived a great fall. Lear appears, by now completely mad. He rants that the whole world is corrupt and runs off.
Oswald appears, still looking for Edmund. On Regan's orders, he tries to kill Gloucester but is killed by Edgar. In Oswald's pocket, Edgar finds Goneril's letter, in which she encourages Edmund to kill her husband and take her as his wife. Kent and Cordelia take charge of Lear, whose madness quickly passes. Regan, Goneril, Albany, and Edmund meet with their forces. Albany insists that they fight the French invaders but not harm Lear or Cordelia. The two sisters lust for Edmund, who has made promises to both. He considers the dilemma and plots the deaths of Albany, Lear, and Cordelia. Edgar gives Goneril's letter to Albany. The armies meet in battle, the British defeat the French, and Lear and Cordelia are captured. Edmund sends Lear and Cordelia off with secret-joint orders from him (representing Regan and her forces) and Goneril (representing the forces of her estranged husband, Albany) for the execution of Cordelia.
Act V

The victorious British leaders meet, and the recently widowed Regan now declares she will marry Edmund. But Albany exposes the intrigues of Edmund and Goneril and proclaims Edmund a traitor. Regan falls ill, having been poisoned by Goneril, and is escorted offstage, where she dies. Edmund defies Albany, who calls for a trial by combat. Edgar appears masked and in armour and challenges Edmund to a duel. No one knows who he is. Edgar wounds Edmund fatally, though Edmund does not die immediately. Albany confronts Goneril with the letter which was intended to be his death warrant; she flees in shame and rage. Edgar reveals himself and reports that Gloucester died offstage from the shock and joy of learning that Edgar is alive, after Edgar revealed himself to his father.
Offstage, Goneril, her plans thwarted, commits suicide. The dying Edmund decides, though he admits it is against his own character, to try to save Lear and Cordelia, but his confession comes too late. Soon after, Albany sends men to countermand Edmund's orders. Lear enters bearing Cordelia's corpse in his arms, having survived by killing the executioner. Kent appears and Lear now recognises him. Albany urges Lear to resume his throne, but as with Gloucester, the trials Lear has been through have finally overwhelmed him, and he dies. Albany then asks Kent and Edgar to take charge of the throne. Kent declines, explaining that his master is calling him on a journey and he must follow. Finally, Albany (in the quarto version) or Edgar (in the folio version) implies that he will now become king.
Sources

Shakespeare's play is based on various accounts of the semi-legendary Brythonic figure Leir of Britain, whose name has been linked by some scholars to the Brythonic god Lir/Llŷr, though in actuality the names are not etymologically related.[3][4][5] Shakespeare's most important source is probably the second edition of The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande by Raphael Holinshed, published in 1587. Holinshed himself found the story in the earlier Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which was written in the 12th century. Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, published 1590, also contains a character named Cordelia, who also dies from hanging, as in King Lear.[6]
Other possible sources are the anonymous play King Leir (published in 1605); The Mirror for Magistrates (1574), by John Higgins; The Malcontent (1604), by John Marston; The London Prodigal (1605); Montaigne's Essays, which were translated into English by John Florio in 1603; An Historical Description of Iland of Britaine (1577), by William Harrison; Remaines Concerning Britaine (1606), by William Camden; Albion's England (1589), by William Warner; and A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures (1603), by Samuel Harsnett, which provided some of the language used by Edgar while he feigns madness.[7] King Lear is also a literary variant of a common folk tale, Love Like Salt, Aarne–Thompson type 923, in which a father rejects his youngest daughter for a statement of her love that does not please him.[8][9]
The source of the subplot involving Gloucester, Edgar, and Edmund is a tale in Philip Sidney's Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1580–90), with a blind Paphlagonian king and his two sons, Leonatus and Plexitrus.[10]
Changes from source material
Besides the subplot involving the Earl of Gloucester and his sons, the principal innovation Shakespeare made to this story was the death of Cordelia and Lear at the end; in the account by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Cordelia restores Lear to the throne, and succeeds him as ruler after his death. During the 17th century, Shakespeare's tragic ending was much criticised and alternative versions were written by Nahum Tate, in which the leading characters survived and Edgar and Cordelia were married (despite the fact that Cordelia was previously betrothed to the King of France).[11] As Harold Bloom states: "Tate's version held the stage for almost 150 years, until Edmund Kean reinstated the play's tragic ending in 1823."[11]
Date and text

Although an exact date of composition cannot be given, many academic editors of the play date King Lear between 1603 and 1606. The latest it could have been written is 1606, as the Stationers' Register notes a performance on 26 December 1606. The 1603 date originates from words in Edgar's speeches which may derive from Samuel Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603).[12] In his Arden edition, R. A. Foakes argues for a date of 1605–6, because one of Shakespeare's sources, The True Chronicle History of King Leir, was not published until 1605; close correspondences between that play and Shakespeare's suggest that he may have been working from a text (rather than from recollections of a performance).[13] Conversely, Frank Kermode, in the Riverside Shakespeare, considers the publication of Leir to have been a response to performances of Shakespeare's already-written play; noting a sonnet by William Strachey that may have verbal resemblances with Lear, Kermode concludes that "1604-5 seems the best compromise".[14] Dr. Naseeb Shaheen dates the play c1605-6 per line 1.2.103
"These late eclipses in the sun and moon" which relates to the lunar eclipse of 27 September 1605 and the solar eclipse of 2 October 1605.[15]
The modern text of King Lear derives from three sources: two quartos, published in 1608 (Q1) and 1619 (Q2)[lower-alpha 1] respectively, and the version in the First Folio of 1623 (F1). The differences between these versions are significant. Q1 contains 285 lines not in F1; F1 contains around 100 lines not in Q1. Also, at least a thousand individual words are changed between the two texts, each text has a completely different style of punctuation, and about half the verse lines in the F1 are either printed as prose or differently divided in the Q1. The early editors, beginning with Alexander Pope, simply conflated the two texts, creating the modern version that has remained nearly universal for centuries. The conflated version is born from the hypothesis that Shakespeare wrote only one original manuscript, now unfortunately lost, and that the Quarto and Folio versions are distortions of that original. Others, such as Nuttall and Bloom, have identified Shakespeare himself as having been involved in reworking passages in the play to accommodate performances and other textual requirements of the play.[16]
As early as 1931, Madeleine Doran suggested that the two texts had basically different provenances, and that these differences between them were critically interesting. This argument, however, was not widely discussed until the late 1970s, when it was revived, principally by Michael Warren and Gary Taylor. Their thesis, while controversial, has gained significant acceptance. It posits, essentially, that the Quarto derives from something close to Shakespeare's foul papers, and the Folio is drawn in some way from a promptbook, prepared for production by Shakespeare's company or someone else. In short, Q1 is "authorial"; F1 is "theatrical".[17]
The New Cambridge Shakespeare has published separate editions of Q and F; the most recent Pelican Shakespeare edition contains both the 1608 Quarto and the 1623 Folio text as well as a conflated version; the New Arden edition edited by R. A. Foakes is the only recent edition to offer the traditional conflated text. Both Anthony Nuttall of Oxford University and Harold Bloom of Yale University have endorsed the view of Shakespeare having revised the tragedy at least once during his lifetime.[16] As Bloom indicates: "At the close of Shakespeare's revised King Lear, a reluctant Edgar becomes King of Britain, accepting his destiny but in the accents of despair. Nuttall speculates that Edgar, like Shakespeare himself, usurps the power of manipulating the audience by deceiving poor Gloucester."[16]
Analysis and criticism
Analysis and criticism of King Lear over the centuries has been extensive.

What we know of Shakespeare's wide reading and powers of assimilation seems to show that he made use of all kinds of material, absorbing contradictory viewpoints, positive and negative, religious and secular, as if to ensure that King Lear would offer no single controlling perspective, but be open to, indeed demand, multiple interpretations.
R. A. Foakes[18]

Historicist interpretations
John F. Danby, in his Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature – A Study of King Lear (1949), argues that Lear dramatizes, among other things, the current meanings of "Nature". The words "nature," "natural" and "unnatural" occur over forty times in the play, reflecting a debate in Shakespeare's time about what nature really was like; this debate pervades the play and finds symbolic expression in Lear's changing attitude to Thunder. There are two strongly contrasting views of human nature in the play: that of the Lear party (Lear, Gloucester, Albany, Kent), exemplifying the philosophy of Bacon and Hooker, and that of the Edmund party (Edmund, Cornwall, Goneril, Regan), akin to the views later formulated by Hobbes. Along with the two views of Nature, Lear contains two views of Reason, brought out in Gloucester and Edmund's speeches on astrology (1.2). The rationality of the Edmund party is one with which a modern audience more readily identifies. But the Edmund party carries bold rationalism to such extremes that it becomes madness: a madness-in-reason, the ironic counterpart of Lear's "reason in madness" (IV.6.190) and the Fool's wisdom-in-folly. This betrayal of reason lies behind the play's later emphasis on feeling.
The two Natures and the two Reasons imply two societies. Edmund is the New Man, a member of an age of competition, suspicion, glory, in contrast with the older society which has come down from the Middle Ages, with its belief in co-operation, reasonable decency, and respect for the whole as greater than the part. King Lear is thus an allegory. The older society, that of the medieval vision, with its doting king, falls into error, and is threatened by the new Machiavellianism; it is regenerated and saved by a vision of a new order, embodied in the king's rejected daughter. Cordelia, in the allegorical scheme, is threefold: a person; an ethical principle (love); and a community. Nevertheless, Shakespeare's understanding of the New Man is so extensive as to amount almost to sympathy. Edmund is the last great expression in Shakespeare of that side of Renaissance individualism – the energy, the emancipation, the courage – which has made a positive contribution to the heritage of the West. "He embodies something vital which a final synthesis must reaffirm. But he makes an absolute claim which Shakespeare will not support. It is right for man to feel, as Edmund does, that society exists for man, not man for society. It is not right to assert the kind of man Edmund would erect to this supremacy."[19]
The play offers an alternative to the feudal-Machiavellian polarity, an alternative foreshadowed in France's speech (I.1.245–256), in Lear and Gloucester's prayers (III.4. 28–36; IV.1.61–66), and in the figure of Cordelia. Until the decent society is achieved, we are meant to take as role-model (though qualified by Shakespearean ironies) Edgar, "the machiavel of goodness",[20] endurance, courage and "ripeness".[19]

The play also contains references to disputes between King James I and Parliament. In the 1604 elections to the House of Commons, Sir John Fortescue, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was defeated by a member of the Buckinghamshire gentry, Sir Francis Goodwin.[21] Displeased with the result, James declared the result of the Buckinghhamshire election invalid, and swore in Fortescue as the MP for Buckinghamshire while the House of Commons insisted on swearing in Goodwin, leading to a clash between King and Parliament over who had the right to decide who sat in the House of Commons.[21] The MP Thomas Wentworth, the son of another MP Peter Wentworth – often imprisoned under Elizabeth for raising the question of the succession in the Commons – was most forceful in protesting James's attempts to reduce the powers of the House of Commons, saying the King could not just declare the results of an election invalid if he disliked who had won the seat as he was insisting that he could.[22] The character of Kent resembles Peter Wentworth in the way which is tactless and blunt in advising Lear, but his point is valid that Lear should be more careful with his friends and advisers.[22]
Just as the House of Commons had argued to James that their loyalty was to the constitution of England, not to the King personally, Kent insists his loyalty is institutional, not personal, as he is loyal to the realm of which the king is head, not to Lear himself, and he tells Lear to behave better for the good of the realm.[22] By contrast, Lear makes an argument similar to James that as king, he holds absolute power and could disregard the views of his subjects if they displease him whenever he liked.[22] In the play, the characters like the Fool, Kent and Cordelia, whose loyalties are institutional, seeing their first loyalty to the realm, are portrayed more favorably than those like Regan and Goneril, who insist they are only loyal to the king, seeing their loyalties as personal.[22] Likewise, James was notorious for his riotous, debauched lifestyle and his preference for sycophantic courtiers who were forever singing his praises out of the hope for advancement, aspects of his court that closely resemble the court of King Lear, who starts out in the play with a riotous, debauched court of sycophantic courtiers.[23] Kent criticises Oswald as a man unworthy of office who has only been promoted because of his sycophancy, telling Lear that he should be loyal to those who are willing to tell him the truth, a statement that many in England wished that James would heed.[23]
Furthermore, James VI of Scotland inherited the throne of England upon the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, thereby uniting all of the kingdoms of the British isles into one, and a major issue of his reign was the attempt to forge a common British identity.[24] James had given his sons Henry and Charles the titles of Duke of Cornwell and Duke of Albany, the same titles bore by the men married to Regan and Goneril.[25] The play begins with Lear ruling all of Britain and ends with him destroying his realm; the critic Andrew Hadfield argued that the division of Britain by Lear was an inversion of the unification of Britain by James, who believed his policies would result in a well governed and prosperous unified realm being passed on to his heir.[25] Hadfield argued that the play was meant as a warning to James as in the play a monarch loses everything by giving in to his sycophantic courtiers who only seek to use him while neglecting those who truly loved him.[25] Hadfield also argued that the world of Lear's court is "childish" with Lear presenting himself as the father of the nation and requiring all of his subjects, not just his children, to address him in paternal terms, which infantises most of the people around him, which pointedly references James's statement in his 1598 book The Trew Law of Free Monarchies that the king is the "father of the nation", for whom all of his subjects are his children.[26]
Psychoanalytic and psychosocial interpretations
King Lear provides a basis for "the primary enactment of psychic breakdown in English literary history".[27] The play begins with Lear's "near-fairytale narcissism".[28]
Given the absence of legitimate mothers in King Lear, Coppélia Kahn[29] provides a psychoanalytic interpretation of the "maternal subtext" found in the play. According to Kahn, Lear's old age forces him to regress into an infantile disposition, and he now seeks a love that is traditionally satisfied by a mothering woman, but in the absence of a real mother, his daughters become the mother figures. Lear's contest of love between Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia serves as the binding agreement; his daughters will get their inheritance provided that they care for him, especially Cordelia, on whose "kind nursery" he will greatly depend.
Cordelia's refusal to dedicate herself to him and love him as more than a father has been interpreted by some as a resistance to incest, but Kahn also inserts the image of a rejecting mother. The situation is now a reversal of parent-child roles, in which Lear's madness is a childlike rage due to his deprivation of filial/maternal care. Even when Lear and Cordelia are captured together, his madness persists as Lear envisions a nursery in prison, where Cordelia's sole existence is for him. It is only with Cordelia's death that his fantasy of a daughter-mother ultimately diminishes, as King Lear concludes with only male characters living.

Sigmund Freud asserted that Cordelia symbolises Death. Therefore, when the play begins with Lear rejecting his daughter, it can be interpreted as him rejecting death; Lear is unwilling to face the finitude of his being. The play's poignant ending scene, wherein Lear carries the body of his beloved Cordelia, was of great importance to Freud. In this scene, Cordelia forces the realization of his finitude, or as Freud put it, she causes him to "make friends with the necessity of dying".[30] Shakespeare had particular intentions with Cordelia's death, and was the only writer to have Cordelia killed (in the version by the Nahum Tate, she continues to live happily, and in Holinshed's, she restores her father and succeeds him).
Alternatively, an analysis based on Adlerian theory suggests that the King's contest among his daughters in Act I has more to do with his control over the unmarried Cordelia.[31] This theory indicates that the King's "dethronement"[32] might have led him to seek control that he lost after he divided his land.
In his study of the character-portrayal of Edmund, Harold Bloom refers to him as "Shakespeare's most original character".[33]
"As Hazlitt pointed out", writes Bloom, "Edmund does not share in the hypocrisy of Goneril and Regan: his Machiavellianism is absolutely pure, and lacks an Oedipal motive. Freud's vision of family romances simply does not apply to Edmund. Iago is free to reinvent himself every minute, yet Iago has strong passions, however negative. Edmund has no passions whatsoever; he has never loved anyone, and he never will. In that respect, he is Shakespeare's most original character."[33]
The tragedy of Lear's lack of understanding of the consequences of his demands and actions is often observed to be like that of a spoiled child, but it has also been noted that his behaviour is equally likely to be seen in parents who have never adjusted to their children having grown up.[34]
Christianity

Critics are divided on the question of whether or not King Lear represents an affirmation of a particular Christian doctrine.[35] Those who maintain this position posit different arguments, which include the significance of Lear's self-divestment.[36] For some critics, this reflects the Christian concepts of the fall of the mighty and the inevitable loss of worldly possessions. By 1569, sermons delivered at court such as those at Windsor declared how "rich men are rich dust, wise men wise dust... From him that weareth purple, and beareth the crown down to him that is clad with meanest apparel, there is nothing but garboil, and ruffle, and hoisting, and lingering wrath, and fear of death and death itself, and hunger, and many a whip of God."[36] Some see this in Cordelia and what she symbolized - that the material body are mere husks that would eventually be discarded so that the fruit can be reached.[35]
Among those who argue that Lear is redeemed in the Christian sense through suffering are A. C. Bradley[37] and John Reibetanz, who has written: "through his sufferings, Lear has won an enlightened soul".[38] Other critics who find no evidence of redemption and emphasise the horrors of the final act include John Holloway[39] and Marvin Rosenberg.[40] William R. Elton stresses the pre-Christian setting of the play, writing that, "Lear fulfills the criteria for pagan behavior in life," falling "into total blasphemy at the moment of his irredeemable loss".[41] This is related to the way some sources cite that at the end of the narrative, King Lear raged against heaven before eventually dying in despair with the death of Cordelia.[42]
Performance history
King Lear has been performed by esteemed actors since the 17thcentury, when men played all the roles. From the 20thcentury, a number of women have played male roles in the play; most commonly the Fool, who has been played (among others) by Judy Davis, Emma Thompson and Robyn Nevin. Lear himself has been played by Marianne Hoppe in 1990,[43] by Janet Wright in 1995,[44] by Kathryn Hunter in 1996–97,[45] and by Glenda Jackson in 2016.[46]
17th century

Shakespeare wrote the role of Lear for his company's chief tragedian, Richard Burbage, for whom Shakespeare was writing incrementally older characters as their careers progressed.[47] It has been speculated either that the role of the Fool was written for the company's clown Robert Armin, or that it was written for performance by one of the company's boys, doubling the role of Cordelia.[48][49] Only one specific performance of the play during Shakespeare's lifetime is known: before the court of King James I at Whitehall on 26 December 1606.[50][51] Its original performances would have been at The Globe, where there were no sets in the modern sense, and characters would have signified their roles visually with props and costumes: Lear's costume, for example, would have changed in the course of the play as his status diminished: commencing in crown and regalia; then as a huntsman; raging bareheaded in the storm scene; and finally crowned with flowers in parody of his original status.[52]
All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government on 6 September 1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them.[53] And from the restoration until the mid-19th century the performance history of King Lear is not the story of Shakespeare's version, but instead of The History of King Lear, a popular adaptation by Nahum Tate. Its most significant deviations from Shakespeare were to omit the Fool entirely, to introduce a happy ending in which Lear and Cordelia survive, and to develop a love story between Cordelia and Edgar (two characters who never interact in Shakespeare) which ends with their marriage.[54] Like most Restoration adapters of Shakespeare, Tate admired Shakespeare's natural genius but saw fit to augment his work with contemporary standards of art (which were largely guided by the neoclassical unities of time, place, and action).[55] Tate's struggle to strike a balance between raw nature and refined art is apparent in his description of the tragedy: "a heap of jewels, unstrung and unpolish't; yet so dazzling in their disorder, that I soon perceiv'd I had seiz'd a treasure."[56][57] Other changes included giving Cordelia a confidante named Arante, bringing the play closer to contemporary notions of poetic justice, and adding titilating material such as amorous encounters between Edmund and both Regan and Goneril, a scene in which Edgar rescues Cordelia from Edmund's attempted kidnap and rape,[58][59] and a scene in which Cordelia wears men's pants that would reveal the actress's ankles.[60] The play ends with a celebration of "the King's blest Restauration", an obvious reference to Charles II.[lower-alpha 2]
18th century
In the early 18th century, some writers began to express objections to this (and other) Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare. For example, in The Spectator on 16 April 1711 Joseph Addison wrote "King Lear is an admirable Tragedy ... as Shakespeare wrote it; but as it is reformed according to the chymerical Notion of poetical Justice in my humble Opinion it hath lost half its Beauty." Yet on the stage, Tate's version prevailed.[lower-alpha 3]
David Garrick was the first actor-manager to begin to cut back on elements of Tate's adaptation in favour of Shakespeare's original: he retained Tate's major changes, including the happy ending, but removed many of Tate's lines, including Edgar's closing speech.[62] He also reduced the prominence of the Edgar-Cordelia love story, in order to focus more on the relationship between Lear and his daughters.[63] His version had a powerful emotional impact: Lear driven to madness by his daughters was (in the words of one spectator, Arthur Murphy) "the finest tragic distress ever seen on any stage" and, in contrast, the devotion shown to Lear by Cordelia (a mix of Shakespeare's, Tate's and Garrick's contributions to the part) moved the audience to tears.[lower-alpha 4]
The first professional performances of King Lear in North America are likely to have been those of the Hallam Company (later the American Company) which arrived in Virginia in 1752 and who counted the play among their repertoire by the time of their departure for Jamaica in 1774.[64]
19th century

Charles Lamb established the Romantics' attitude to King Lear in his 1811 essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, considered with reference to their fitness for stage representation" where he says that the play "is essentially impossible to be represented on the stage", preferring to experience it in the study. In the theatre, he argues, "to see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters on a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting" yet "while we read it, we see not Lear but we are Lear, – we are in his mind, we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms."[65][66]
King Lear was politically controversial during the period of George III's madness, and as a result was not performed at all in the two professional theatres of London from 1811 to 1820: but was then the subject of major productions in both, within three months of his death.[67] The 19th century saw the gradual reintroduction of Shakespeare's text to displace Tate's version. Like Garrick before him, John Philip Kemble had introduced more of Shakespeare's text, while still preserving the three main elements of Tate's version: the love story, the omission of the Fool, and the happy ending. Edmund Kean played King Lear with its tragic ending in 1823, but failed and reverted to Tate's crowd-pleaser after only three performances.[68][69] At last in 1838 William Macready at Covent Garden performed Shakespeare's version, freed from Tate's adaptions.[68] The restored character of the Fool was played by an actress, Priscilla Horton, as, in the words of one spectator, "a fragile, hectic, beautiful-faced, half-idiot-looking boy."[70] And Helen Faucit's final appearance as Cordelia, dead in her father's arms, became one of the most iconic of Victorian images.[71] John Forster, writing in the Examiner on 14 February 1838, expressed the hope that "Mr Macready's success has banished that disgrace [Tate's version] from the stage for ever."[72] But even this version was not close to Shakespeare's: the 19th-century actor-managers heavily cut Shakespeare's scripts: ending scenes on big "curtain effects" and reducing or eliminating supporting roles to give greater prominence to the star.[73] One of Macready's innovations – the use of Stonehenge-like structures on stage to indicate an ancient setting – proved enduring on stage into the 20th century, and can be seen in the 1983 television version starring Laurence Olivier.[74]
In 1843, the Act for Regulating the Theatres came into force, bringing an end to the monopolies of the two existing companies and, by doing so, increased the number of theatres in London.[70] At the same time, the fashion in theatre was "pictorial": valuing visual spectacle above plot or characterisation and often required lengthy (and time consuming) scene changes.[75] For example, Henry Irving's 1892 King Lear offered spectacles such as Lear's death beneath a cliff at Dover, his face lit by the red glow of a setting sun; at the expense of cutting 46% of the text, including the blinding of Gloucester.[76] But Irving's production clearly evoked strong emotions: one spectator, Gordon Crosse, wrote of the first entrance of Lear, "a striking figure with masses of white hair. He is leaning on a huge scabbarded sword which he raises with a wild cry in answer to the shouted greeting of his guards. His gait, his looks, his gestures, all reveal the noble, imperious mind already degenerating into senile irritability under the coming shocks of grief and age."[77]
The importance of pictorialism to Irving, and to other theatre professionals of the Victorian era, is exemplified by the fact that Irving had used Ford Madox Brown's painting Cordelia's Portion as the inspiration for the look of his production, and that the artist himself was brought in to provide sketches for the settings of other scenes.[78] A reaction against pictorialism came with the rise of the reconstructive movement, believers in a simple style of staging more similar to that which would have pertained in renaissance theatres, whose chief early exponent was the actor-manager William Poel. Poel was influenced by a performance of King Lear directed by Jocza Savits at the Hoftheater in Munich in 1890, set on an apron stage with a three-tier Globe-like reconstruction theatre as its backdrop. Poel would use this same configuration for his own Shakespearean performances in 1893.[79]
20th century

By mid-century, the actor-manager tradition had declined, to be replaced by a structure where the major theatre companies employed professional directors as auteurs. The last of the great actor-managers, Donald Wolfit, played Lear in 1944 on a Stonehenge-like set and was praised by James Agate as "the greatest piece of Shakespearean acting since I have been privileged to write for the Sunday Times".[lower-alpha 5][81] Wolfit supposedly drank eight bottles of Guinness in the course of each performance.[lower-alpha 6]
The character of Lear in the 19th century was often that of a frail old man from the opening scene, but Lears of the 20th century often began the play as strong men displaying regal authority, including John Gielgud, Donald Wolfit and Donald Sinden.[83] Cordelia, also, evolved in the 20th century: earlier Cordelias had often been praised for being sweet, innocent and modest, but 20th-century Cordelias were often portrayed as war leaders. For example, Peggy Ashcroft, at the RST in 1950, played the role in a breastplate and carrying a sword.[84] Similarly, the Fool evolved through the course of the century, with portrayals often deriving from the music hall or circus tradition.[85]
At Stratford-upon-Avon in 1962 Peter Brook (who would later film the play with the same actor, Paul Scofield, in the role of Lear) set the action simply, against a huge, empty white stage. The effect of the scene when Lear and Gloucester meet, two tiny figures in rags in the midst of this emptiness, was said (by the scholar Roger Warren) to catch "both the human pathos ... and the universal scale ... of the scene."[86] Some of the lines from the radio broadcast were used by The Beatles to add into the recorded mix of the song "I Am the Walrus". John Lennon happened upon the play on the BBC Third Programme while fiddling with the radio while working on the song. The voices of actors Mark Dignam, Philip Guard, and John Bryning from the play are all heard in the song.[87][88]
Like other Shakespearean tragedies, King Lear has proved amenable to conversion into other theatrical traditions. In 1989, David McRuvie and Iyyamkode Sreedharan adapted the play then translated it to Malayalam, for performance in Kerala in the Kathakali tradition – which itself developed around 1600, contemporary with Shakespeare's writing. The show later went on tour, and in 2000 played at Shakespeare's Globe, completing, according to Anthony Dawson, "a kind of symbolic circle".[89] Perhaps even more radical was Ong Keng Sen's 1997 adaptation of King Lear, which featured six actors each performing in a separate  Asian acting tradition and in their own separate languages. A pivotal moment occurred when the Jingju performer playing Older Daughter (a conflation of Goneril and Regan) stabbed the Noh-performed Lear whose "falling pine" deadfall, straight face-forward into the stage, astonished the audience, in what Yong Li Lan describes as a "triumph through the moving power of noh performance at the very moment of his character's defeat".[90][91]
In 1974, Buzz Goodbody directed Lear, a deliberately abbreviated title for Shakespeare's text, as the inaugural production of the RSC's studio theatre The Other Place. The performance was conceived as a chamber piece, the small intimate space and proximity to the audience enabled detailed psychological acting, which was performed with simple sets and in modern dress.[92] Peter Holland has speculated that this company/directoral decision – namely choosing to present Shakespeare in a small venue for artistic reasons when a larger venue was available – may at the time have been unprecedented.[92]
Brook's earlier vision of the play proved influential, and directors have gone further in presenting Lear as (in the words of R. A. Foakes) "a pathetic senior citizen trapped in a violent and hostile environment". When John Wood took the role in 1990, he played the later scenes in clothes that looked like cast-offs, inviting deliberate parallels with the uncared-for in modern Western societies.[93] Indeed, modern productions of Shakespeare's plays often reflect the world in which they are performed as much as the world for which they were written: and the Moscow theatre scene in 1994 provided an example, when two very different productions of the play (those by Sergei Zhonovach and Alexei Borodin), very different from one another in their style and outlook, were both reflections on the break-up of the Soviet Union.[94]
21st century
In 2002 and 2010, the Hudson Shakespeare Company of New Jersey staged separate productions as part of their respective Shakespeare in the Parks seasons. The 2002 version was directed by Michael Collins and transposed the action to a West Indies, nautical setting. Actors were featured in outfits indicative of looks of various Caribbean islands. The 2010 production directed by Jon Ciccarelli was fashioned after the atmosphere of the film The Dark Knight with a palette of reds and blacks and set the action in an urban setting. Lear (Tom Cox) appeared as a head of multi-national conglomerate who divided up his fortune among his socialite daughter Goneril (Brenda Scott), his officious middle daughter Regan (Noelle Fair) and university daughter Cordelia (Emily Best).[95]
In 2012 Peter Hinton directed an all-First Nations production of King Lear at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with the setting changed to an Algonquin nation in the 17th century.[96] The cast included August Schellenberg as Lear, Billy Merasty as Gloucester, Tantoo Cardinal as Regan, Kevin Loring as Edmund, Jani Lauzon in a dual role as Cordelia and the Fool, and Craig Lauzon as Kent.[96] This setting would later be reproduced as part of the Manga Shakespeare graphic novel series published by Self-Made Hero, adapted by Richard Appignanesi and featuring the illustrations of Ilya.
In 2015 Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille staged a production set in Upper Canada, against the backdrop of the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. This production starred David Fox as Lear.[97]
In the summer of 2015–2016, The Sydney Theatre Company staged King Lear, directed by Neil Armfield with Geoffrey Rush in the lead role and Robyn Nevin as the Fool. About the madness at the heart of the play, Rush said that for him "it's about finding the dramatic impact in the moments of his mania. What seems to work best is finding a vulnerability or a point of empathy, where an audience can look at Lear and think how shocking it must be to be that old and to be banished from your family into the open air in a storm. That's a level of impoverishment you would never want to see in any other human being, ever."[98]
In 2016 Talawa Theatre Company and Royal Exchange Manchester co-produced a production of King Lear with Don Warrington in the title role.[99] The production, featuring a largely black cast, was described in The Guardian as being "as close to definitive as can be".[100] The Daily Telegraph said "Don Warrington's King Lear is a heartbreaking tour de force".[101] King Lear was also staged by Royal Shakespeare Company, with Antony Sher in the lead role. The performance was directed by Gregory Doran, and was described as having "strength and depth".[102]
In 2017, the Guthrie Theatre produced a production of King Lear with Stephen Yoakam in the title role. Armin Shimerman appeared as the fool, portraying it with "an unusual grimness, but it works",[103] in a production that was hailed as "a devastating piece of theater, and a production that does it justice."[103]
Adaptations
Film and video
The first film of King Lear was a five-minute German version made around 1905, which has not survived.[104] The oldest extant version is a ten-minute studio-based version from 1909 by Vitagraph, which, according to Luke McKernan, made the "ill-advised" decision to attempt to cram in as much of the plot as possible.[105] Two silent versions, both titled Re Lear, were made in Italy in 1910. Of these, the version by director Gerolamo Lo Savio was filmed on location, and it dropped the Edgar sub-plot and used frequent intertitling to make the plot easier to follow than its Vitagraph predecessor.[lower-alpha 7] A contemporary setting was used for Louis Feuillade's 1911 French adaptation Le Roi Lear Au Village, and in 1914 in America, Ernest Warde expanded the story to an hour, including spectacles such as a final battle scene.[107]
The Joseph Mankiewicz (1949) House of Strangers is often considered a Lear adaptation, but the parallels are more striking in Broken Lance (1954) in which a cattle baron played by Spencer Tracy tyrannises over his three sons, of whom only the youngest, Joe, played by Robert Wagner, remains loyal.[108]
The TV anthology series "Omnibus" (1952 - 1961) staged a 73-minute version of King Lear, on October 18, 1953 on CBS-TV.  It was adapted by Peter Brook and starred Orson Welles in his American television debut.[109]
The only two significant screen performances of Shakespeare's text date from the early 1970s: Grigori Kozintsev was working on his Korol Lir[lower-alpha 8] at the same time as Peter Brook was filming his King Lear.[112] Brook's film starkly divided the critics: Pauline Kael said "I didn't just dislike this production, I hated it!" and suggested the alternative title "Night of the Living Dead".[lower-alpha 9] Yet Robert Hatch in The Nation thought it as "excellent a filming of the play as one can expect" and Vincent Canby in The New York Times called it "an exalting Lear, full of exquisite terror".[lower-alpha 10] The film drew heavily on the ideas of Jan Kott, in particular his observation that King Lear was the precursor of absurdist theatre: in particular, the film has parallels with Beckett's Endgame.[114] Critics who dislike the film particularly draw attention to its bleak nature from its opening: complaining that the world of the play does not deteriorate with Lear's suffering, but commences dark, colourless and wintry, leaving, according to Douglas Brode, "Lear, the land, and us with nowhere to go".[115] Cruelty pervades the film, which does not distinguish between the violence of ostensibly good and evil characters, presenting both savagely.[116] Paul Scofield, as Lear, eschews sentimentality: this demanding old man with a coterie of unruly knights provokes audience sympathy for the daughters in the early scenes, and his presentation explicitly rejects the tradition of playing Lear as "poor old white-haired patriarch".[117]
By contrast, Korol Lir has been praised, for example by critic Alexander Anikst for the "serious, deeply thoughtful" even "philosophical approach" of director Grigori Kozintsev and writer Boris Pasternak. Making a thinly veiled criticism of Brook in the process, Anikst praised the fact that there were "no attempts at sensationalism, no efforts to 'modernise' Shakespeare by introducing Freudian themes, Existentialist ideas, eroticism, or sexual perversion. [Kozintsev] ... has simply made a film of Shakespeare's tragedy."[lower-alpha 11] Dmitri Shostakovich provided an epic score, its motifs including an (increasingly ironic) trumpet fanfare for Lear, and a five-bar "Call to Death" marking each character's demise.[119] Kozintzev described his vision of the film as an ensemble piece: with Lear, played by a dynamic Jüri Järvet, as first among equals in a cast of fully developed characters.[120] The film highlights Lear's role as king by including his people throughout the film on a scale no stage production could emulate, charting the central character's decline from their god to their helpless equal; his final descent into madness marked by his realisation that he has neglected the "poor naked wretches".[121][122] As the film progresses, ruthless characters—Goneril, Regan, Edmund—increasingly appear isolated in shots, in contrast to the director's focus, throughout the film, on masses of human beings.[123]
Jonathan Miller twice directed Michael Hordern in the title role for English television, the first for the BBC's Play of the Month in 1975 and the second for the BBC Television Shakespeare in 1982. Hordern received mixed reviews, and was considered a bold choice due to his history of taking much lighter roles.[124] Also for English television, Laurence Olivier took the role in a 1983 TV production for Granada Television. It was his last screen appearance in a Shakespearean role, its pathos deriving in part from the physical frailty of Olivier the actor.[125]
In 1985 a major screen adaptation of the play appeared: Ran, directed by Akira Kurosawa. At the time the most expensive Japanese film ever made, it tells the story of Hidetora, a fictional 16th-century Japanese warlord, whose attempt to divide his kingdom among his three sons leads to an estrangement with the youngest, and ultimately most loyal, of them, and eventually to civil war.[126] In contrast to the cold drab greys of Brook and Kozintsev, Kurosawa's film is full of vibrant colour: external scenes in yellows, blues and greens, interiors in browns and ambers, and Emi Wada's Oscar-winning colour-coded costumes for each family member's soldiers.[127][126] Hidetora has a back-story: a violent and ruthless rise to power, and the film portrays contrasting victims: the virtuous characters Sue and Tsurumaru who are able to forgive, and the vengeful Kaede (Mieko Harada), Hidetora's daughter-in-law and the film's Lady Macbeth-like villain.[128][129]

A scene in which a character is threatened with blinding in the manner of Gloucester forms the climax of the 1973 parody horror Theatre of Blood.[131] Comic use is made of Sir's inability to physically carry any actress cast as Cordelia opposite his Lear in the 1983 film of the stage play The Dresser.[132] John Boorman's 1990 Where the Heart Is features a father who disinherits his three spoilt children.[133] Francis Ford Coppola deliberately incorporated elements of Lear in his 1990 sequel The Godfather Part III, including Michael Corleone's attempt to retire from crime throwing his domain into anarchy, and most obviously the death of his daughter in his arms. Parallels have also been drawn between Andy García's character Vincent and both Edgar and Edmund, and between Talia Shire's character Connie and Kaede in Ran.[134]
In 1997 Jocelyn Moorhouse directed A Thousand Acres, based on Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, set in 1990s Iowa.[135] The film is described, by scholar Tony Howard, as the first adaptation to confront the play's disturbing sexual dimensions.[134] The story is told from the viewpoint of the elder two daughters, Ginny played by Jessica Lange and Rose played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who were sexually abused by their father as teenagers. Their younger sister Caroline, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh had escaped this fate and is ultimately the only one to remain loyal.[136][137]
The play was again adapted to the world of gangsters in Don Boyd's 2001 My Kingdom, a version which differs from all others in commencing with the Lear character, Sandeman, played by Richard Harris, in a loving relationship with his wife. But her violent death marks the start of an increasingly bleak and violent chain of events (influenced by co-writer Nick Davies' documentary book Dark Heart) which in spite of the director's denial that the film had "serious parallels" to Shakespeare's play, actually mirror aspects of its plot closely.[138][139] Unlike Shakespeare's Lear, but like Hidetora and Sandeman, the central character of Uli Edel's 2002 American TV adaptation King of Texas, John Lear played by Patrick Stewart, has a back-story centred on his violent rise to power as the richest landowner (metaphorically a "king") in General Sam Houston's independent Texas in the early 1840s. Daniel Rosenthal comments that the film was able, by reason of having been commissioned by the cable channel TNT, to include a bleaker and more violent ending than would have been possible on the national networks.[140] 2003's Channel 4-commissioned two-parter Second Generation set the story in the world of Asian manufacturing and music in England.[141]
The 2006 Chinese film Curse of the Golden Flower is loosely based on King Lear, but, the plot is set in Tang Dynasty China instead of Medieval Europe.
Carl Bessai wrote and directed a modern adaptation of King Lear titled The Lears.  Released in 2017, the film starred Bruce Dern, Anthony Michael Hall and Sean Astin.[142]
On 28 May 2018, BBC Two broadcast King Lear starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role and Emma Thompson as Goneril. Directed by Richard Eyre, the play featured a 21st-century setting. Hopkins, at the age of 80, was deemed ideal for the role and "at home with Lear's skin" by critic Sam Wollaston.[143]
Radio and audio
The first recording of the Argo Shakespeare for Argo Records was King Lear in 1957, directed and produced by George Rylands with William Devlin in the title role, Jill Balcon as Goneril and Prunella Scales as Cordelia.[144]
The Shakespeare Recording Society recorded a full-length unabridged audio productions on LP in 1965 (SRS-M-232) directed by Howard Sackler, with Paul Scofield as Lear, Cyril Cusack as Gloucester. Robert Stephens as Edmund, Rachel Roberts, Pamela Brown and John Stride.
King Lear was broadcast live on the BBC Third Programme on 29 September 1967, starring John Gielgud, Barbara Jefford, Barbara Bolton and Virginia McKenna as Lear and his daughters.[145] At Abbey Road Studios, John Lennon used a microphone held to a radio to overdub fragments of the play (Act IV, Scene 6) onto the song "I Am the Walrus", which The Beatles were recording that evening. The voices recorded were those of Mark Dignam (Gloucester), Philip Guard (Edgar) and John Bryning (Oswald).[87][88]
On 10 April 1994 in celebration of Sir John Gielgud's 90th birthday, Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company performed a radio adaptation directed by Glyn Dearman starring Gielgud as Lear, with Keith Michell as Kent, Richard Briers as Gloucester, Dame Judi Dench as Goneril, Emma Thompson as Cordelia, Eileen Atkins as Regan, Kenneth Branagh as Edmund, John Shrapnel as Albany, Robert Stephens as Cornwall, Denis Quilley as Burgundy, Sir Derek Jacobi as France, Iain Glen as Edgar and Michael Williams as The Fool.[146]
Opera
German composer Aribert Reimann's opera Lear premiered on 9 July 1978.
Japanese composer's Toshio Hosokawa's opera Vision of Lear premiered on 18 April 1998 at the Munich Biennale.
Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen's opera Kuningas Lear premiered on 15 September 2000.
See also
Illegitimacy in fiction
Nothing comes from nothing
Shakespearean fool
Fool (novel)
Water and Salt
Cap-o'-Rushes
The Goose-Girl at the Well
The Dirty Shepherdess
The Yiddish King Lear
Notes and references
Notes

All references to King Lear, unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Folger Shakespeare Library's Folger Digital Editions texts edited by Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Under their referencing system, 1.1.246–248 means act 1, scene 1, lines 246 through 248.

Bibliography
Editions of King Lear

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Secondary sources

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 – at Project Gutenberg.
 - Modern version of the play
 – Searchable, online version of the text.
 – Read Online
 at the British Library
 public domain audiobook at LibriVox
. In Our Time, BBC Radio 4 discussion.

When was Shakespeare's King Lear first performed?


This is a list of museums and galleries in Mexico.
Museums and galleries
Aguascalientes
Aguascalientes Museum
Guadalupe Posada Museum
Museo Descubre (IMAX screen)
Museum of Contemporary Art
Museo Espacio - MECA

State History Museum
Museo Ferrocarrilero de Aguascalientes
Museum of Traditional Mexican Toys
Centro Cultural Los Arquitos
Insurgency Museum
Museo Comunitario Tepetzalán
Baja California
Tijuana Cultural Center
Tijuana Wax Museum
Tijuana Trompo Museum
Museo Sol del Niño (IMAX screen)
Museo Universitario Mexicali  (has photos, fossils, etc. of Baja California Norte)
History of the City of Ensenada
El Museo de la Vid y el Vino
Baja California Sur
Museum of Jesuit Misions
Regional Museum of Anthropology and History
Museum of Saint Ignacio paintings
Museum of Telecommunications Tomás Guzmán Cantú
Museum of Natural History
Campeche
Museum of the City of Campeche
Museum of San Miguel Fort
Archaeology Museum
Weapons and Navy Museum
Chiapas
Regional Museum of Anthropology and History of Chiapas
Museum of Santo Domingo Ex Convent
Museum of Tapachula
Museum of Mayan Medicine
Museum of the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez
Archaeological Museum of Comitán
Archaeological Museum of Palenque
Museo del Ámbar de Chiapas (Amber Museum)
Chihuahua

Francisco Villa Museum
Historical Museum of the Mexican Revolution
Museo de las Culturas del Norte
Quinta Gameros
Coahuila
Museo del Desierto (Museum of the Desert)
Museo de las Aves de México (Museum of the Mexican birds)
Museo Arocena (Arocena Museum)
Colima
Regional Museum of the History of Colima
Durango
Regional Museum of Durango
Museo de la Ferrería
Guanajuato
Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo
Mummy Catacombs
Explora Science Center (IMAX screen)
Iconographic Museum of Quixote[1]
San Miguel de Allende Museum
Saint Paul Convent Museum
Museo de la Ciudad, León
Museo Regional de Guanajuato Alhóndiga de Granaditas
Guerrero
Regional Museum of Guerrero
Historic Museum of Acapulco
William Spratling Museum
Hidalgo
Historical Archive and Museum of Mining, Pachuca
National Museum of Mexican Photography
Mining Museum
Photography Museum
Tula Archeological Museum
Jalisco
Tequila and Mariachi Museum
Paleontology Museum of Guadalajara
Medicine History Museum
Huichol Art Museum
Newspaper and Graphic Arts Museum
Army and Air Force Museum
Science and Technology Museum
Ceramics Museum
Wax Museum
Museum of Guadalajara Art
Museum of Zapopan Art
Museum of the City of Guadalajara
Museo "Casa Agustín Rivera".
Museo del Cuale.
Museo Arqueológico de Ciudad Guzmán.
Museo Raúl Anguiano
Mexico City
The Mexican government published a guide to Mexico City museums in 2016.[2]

Alameda Art Laboratory[3]
Altepepialcalli Regional Museum – Milpa Alta
Alvar and Carmen T. de Carrillo Gil Museum of Art[4]
Anahuacalli Museum[5]
Blaisten Collection Museum[6]
UAEM Casa de Cultura Tlalpan
Archeological Museum of Azcapotzalco Príncipe Tlaltecatzin - Azcapotzalco
Archeological Museum of Cuicuilco[7]
Archeological Museum of Xochimilco[8]
Archeological Park of Luis G. Urbina[9]
Archeological Zone of the Templo Mayor[10]
Army and Air Force Museum of Mexico
Automobile Museum of Mexico[11]
Calmecac Cultural Center – Barrio Santa Martha
Cárcamo de Dolores, Bosque de Chapultepec.
Caricature Museum of Mexico 99 Donceles, Centro
Casa del Lago[12]
Casa Lamm Cultural Center[13]
Casa Luis Barragán House of architect Luis Barragá[14]
Casasola Photography Bazaar 26 Madero
Centro de la Imagen[15] (art)
Chapel of San Antonio Panzacola – Barrio Santa Catarina
The Chapultepec Castle National Museum of History[16]
Charrería Museum[17]
Chopo University Museum[18]
Cloister of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz – Plaza de San Jeronimo 47 Centro
Convent El Carmen Museum[19]
Cuauhnahuac Regional Museum[20]
Culhuacan Community Center[21]
Cuitlahuac Museum[22]
Diego Rivera Mural Museum[23]
Dr. Samuel Fastlicht Museum – UNAM
Dolores Olmedo Patiño Museum[24]
El Carmen Museum[25] (art)
Estanquillo Museum[26]
Ex Hacienda El Molino Cultural Center[27]
Ex Hacienda San Gabriel de Barrera[28]
Ex Templo de Santa Teresa La Antigua[29]
Ex Templo San Agustin – (anthropology)
Ex Teresa Convent Modern Art Museum – Centro
Felix de Jesus Museum – Escandon
Franz Mayer Museum[30]
Frida Kahlo Museum (Casa Azul)[31]
Frissac House – Tlalpan borough
Fuego Nuevo Museum[32]
Geles Cabrera Museum of Sculpture – Coyoacan
General Archive of the Nation of Mexico[33] (history)
Geological Museum of UNAM – Jaime Torres Bodet 176 Santa Maria la Ribera Cuauhtemoc
Geology and Sciences of the Herat Museum - National Polytechnic Institute Bldg 9
Gonzalo Lopez Cid Auditorium - Citlalmina
Guadalupe Basílica Museum[34]
Hacienda de San Cristóbal Polaxtla Museum
Hacienda de Santa Mónica Museum
Hellenic Cultural Institute of Mexico (Instituto Cultural Helénico)[35]
Hidalgo Social and Cultual Center – Tlapan
House and Museum of Alfonso Reyes[36]
House Studio of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo[31]
House of the First Print Shop in the Americas
Interactive Museum of Economy – Tacuba Street
Jaime Torres Bodet Cultural Center[37]
Jesús Reyes Heroles Casa de Cultura – Coyoacan
José Luis Cuevas Museum[38]
Jose Maria Velasco Gallery[39]
Lebanese Center of Mexico[40]
The Leon Trotsky Museum[41]
Luis Enrique Erro Planetarium[42]
Mexico City Museum[43]
Mexico City’s Wax Museum[44]
Miguel Hidalgo People’s Social Center– San Juan de Aragon 2nd section
Mixquic Archeological Museum – Tlahuac borough
Museo de Arte Moderno[45]
Museum of Light (Museo de la Luz)[46]
Museo Archivo de la Fotografía
Museum of Mexican Constitutions
Museum of Mexican Medicine – Brasil 33 Centro
Museum of Natural History (Mexico City)[47]
Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts[48]
Museum of Parliament Precinct[49]
Museo de Arte Moderno[50]
Museum of Popular Art[51]
Museo de la Bola Museum[52]
Museum of SHCP[53]
Museo del Estanquillo
National Photography Museum
Museum in Honor of Benito Juarez - National Palace
National Anthropological Museum.[54]
National Center of the Arts of Mexico[55]
National Museum of Art[56]
National Museum of Cultures- Moneda 13 Centro
Museo Nacional de las Culturas Populares
Museo Nacional de Historia. Castillo de Chapultepec.[57]
National Museum of Graphic Arts – Mar Arafura 8 Popotla Miguel Hidalgo
Nacional Museum of Engraving (Museo de la Estampa) - Plaza de Santa Vera Cruz
Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones[58]
Museum of Women[59]
National Museum of Popular Cultures Coyacan
National Museum of Popular Arts and Industries – Ave Juarez 44 Centro Cuauhtemoc
National Museum of Popular Culture[60]
National Museum of the Revolution[61]
Naval History Museum of Mexico – Coyacan
Necroteca Museum – UNAM
Ollin Yoliztli Cultural Center[62]
Palace of Autonomy Museum
Palace of Iturbide[63] (art)
Palace of Mining[64]
Paleontology Museum – UNAM
Papalote Children’s Museum (IMAX screen)[65]
The Postal Museum
Papalote museo del niño (IMAX Screen)
Pinacoteca de la Profesa[66]
R. Flores Magon Casa de la Cultura – Ex Ejido San Pablo Tepetlapa
Rafael Solana Cultural Center[67]
Ripley’s Believe it or not Museum Londres St Juarez
Risco House Museum[68]
The Rufino Tamayo Museum[69]
San Angel Cultural Center– San Angel
The San Carlos Museum Puente de Alvarado 50 Revolucion Cuauhtemoc
San Ildefonso Museum[70] (Art)
Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum[71]
Siquieros Hall of Public Art[72]
The Snail Museum Gallery of Natural History[73]
Soumaya Museum[74]
Spanish Cultural Center – Centro
Technological Museum of the Federal Commission of Electricity[49]
Tlahuac Regional Museum – Tlahuac borough
Tlalpan History Museum – Tlapan
UNAM Sculpture Space (Espacio Escultorico UNAM) Ciudad Universitaria
University Museum of Sciences and Arts[75]
Venustiano Carranza Museum[76] (history)
Victoria Museum of Telephony – Centro
Watercolor Museum (Museo de la Acuarela), Villa Coyoacan
Universum (UNAM)[77]  (science)
Michoacán
Museum of Popular Arts and Industries
Museo Casa de Morelos.
Museo Regional Michoacano "Dr. Nicolás León Calderón".
Museo de Sitio de Tzintzuntzan.
Museo de la Estampa Ex Convento de Santa María Magdalena.
Morelos

Museum of the City of Cuernavaca
El Castillo (Photograph Museum of the City)
Juarez Museum devoted to President Benito Juarez
Museo Regional Cuauhnáhuac (Palace of Cortes)
Museum of Herbal Medicine
David Alfaro Siqueiros Home and Workshop
Brady Museum (private art collection)
Museo y Centro de Documentación Histórica Ex Convento de Tepoztlán.
Museo Histórico del Oriente de Morelos "Casa de Morelos". Museo Local.
Museo de Sitio de Xochicalco. Sitio arqueológico.
Jardín Etnobotánico y Museo de Medicina Tradicional y Herbolaria. Museo Local.
Museo de Sitio de Coatetelco. Sitio arqueológico.
Nayarit
Cuatro Pueblos Museum (museum of four cultures: huicholes, coras, tepehuanos and mexicaneros)
Amado Nervo Museum
Regional Museum of Anthropology
Nuevo León
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MARCO) (Contemporany Museum of Art), Monterrey
Museo de Historia Mexicana (Museum of Mexican History), Monterrey
Museo Metropolitano de Monterrey (Metropolitan Museum of Monterrey), Monterrey
Museo del Palacio de Gobierno (Government Palace Museum), Monterrey
Museo Palacio del Obispado (Bishopric's Palace Museum), Monterrey
Museo Arquidiocesano de Arte Sacro (Archdiocesan Museum of Sacred Art), Monterrey
Museo del Acero Horno 3 (Horno 3 Museum of Steel), Fundidora Park, Monterrey
Museo del Vidrio (Museum of Glass), Monterrey
Museo de Historia del Noreste (Museum of History of the Northeast), Monterrey
Colegio Civil, (Civil College Museum), Monterrey
Planetario Alfa (Alfa Planetarium Science Museum), San Pedro Garza García
Museo del Valle del Pilón (Museum of the Pilon Valley), Montemorelos
Museo Bernabé de las Casas (Bernabé de las Casas Museum), Mina
Hacienda San Pedro (Hacienda of San Pedro), General Zuazua
Papalote museo del niño (Nuevo León) (Children's Museum Papalote), Monterrey
Oaxaca
Cultural Centre of Oaxaca in the Church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán
Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca
Rufino Tamayo Museum (Museum of Prehispanic Art)
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (Museum of Contemporary Art)
Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños (Museum of Oaxacan Painters)
Casa de Juárez (Museum of Mexican President Benito Juárez)
Museo Philatélica de Oaxaca (Stamp Museum)
Railway Museum of Southern Mexico
Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca
Museo Estatal de Arte Popular de Oaxaca
Puebla

Automobile Museum
National Museum of Mexican Railroads
Amparo Museum (Prehispanic, Colonial, Modern and Contemporary Mexican Art)[78]
Museo Poblano de Arte Virreinal
Querétaro
Regional Museum of Querétaro
Quintana Roo
Cancún Archaeological Museum
Museum of Maya Culture
Museo de la Isla de Cozumel (Cozumel Island Museum)
San Luis Potosí
Regional Museum of San Luis
Sinaloa
Mazatlán Archaeological Museum
Sonora
Museo Regional de Sonora
State of Mexico
Museo de Virreinato
Museum of Fine Arts
Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Popular Cultures
Museum of Natural Sciences
Museum of Anthropology and History
Print Museum
Watercolor Museum
House of Handcrafts
Numismatics Museum (the only one in Latin America)
José Vasconcelos Museum
Museo Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez
Luis Nishizawa Workshop Museum
Teotihuacan Museum
Manuel Gamio Museum[79]
Tabasco

Planetarium Tabasco (IMAX screen)
Tabasco Institute of Culture
Natural History Museum
Museo de Sitio de Pomoná.
Museo de Sitio La Venta.
Museo de Sitio de Comalcalco.
Museo de Oxolotán.
Tamaulipas
Museo del Agrarismo. Matamoros
Tlaxcala
Regional Museum of Tlaxcala
Museo de Sitio de Xochitécatl.
Museo de Sitio de Cacaxtla.
Museo de Sitio de Ocotelulco.
Museo de Sitio de Tizatlán.
Veracruz
Museo de Antropología de Xalapa
Museo Interactivo de Xalapa (IMAX screen)
Hacienda del Lencero
Pinacoteca Diego Rivera
Jardín de Esculturas
Museo Casa Xalapa (Museum of the city of Xalapa)
Museo del Fuerte De San Juan de Ulua
Veracruz Wax Museum
Veracruz Institute of Culture
The Museum of the City of Veracruz
Museo del Recinto de la Reforma.
Museo Histórico Naval (Naval History Museum).
Casa Principal.
Museo Baluarte de Santiago.
Casa Museo Salvador Díaz Mirón.
Archivo y Galería del Arte.
Museum of the Mexican Revolution.
Oil Museum
Archaeological Museum of Córdoba
Museum of the City of Córdoba
National Museum of Fantastic Art
Museum of Veracruz Fauna
Museum of Orizaba Art
Marine Museum of Tecolutla
Museum of the State of Veracruz Art Felipe Neri
Yanga Museum; dedicated to Gaspar Yanga who has the first successful slave revolt in the Americas
Museum of the Old Train Station
Museo Fotográfico de Nanchital (Photography Museum of Nanchital)
Agustín Lara Museum
Tuxteco Museum
Jarocho Museum
Museum of Tajín (UNESCO World Heritage Site)
Museo Baluarte de Santiago
Museo el Zapotal
Museo de Cempoala
Museo de Sitio San Lorenzo
Museo de Sitio Tres Zapotes
Museo de Sitio de Higueras
Museo de Sitio de la Matamba
Community Museum of Atoyac
Community Museum of Coscomatepec
Community Museum of Emiliano Zapata
Community Museum of Jalcomulco
Community Museum of Jamapa
Community Museum David Ramírez Lavoignet
Community Museum of Acamalín
Community Museum Paseo del Correo
Community Museum Serafín Olarte
Community Museum el Jonotal
Community Museum of Tenochtitlán
Yucatán
Museo de Historia Natural
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Ateneo de Yucatán (MACAY)
Museo de la Canción Yucateca Asociación Civil
Museo de Arte Popular
Museo de la Ciudad de Mérida
Museo de Antropología e Historia "Palacio Cantón"(Anthropology and History Museum)
Zacatecas
Museo Manuel Felguérez
Museo de Sitio de la zona arqueológica Alta Vista – Chalchihuites
Museo de La Quemada
Museo de Guadalupe
See also
List of archives in Mexico

How many historical museums are there in Cuba?


Martha Washington (née Dandridge; June 2 [O.S. June 2]1731 – May 22, 1802) was the wife of George Washington, the first President of the United States.  Although the title was not coined until after her death, Martha Washington served as the inaugural First Lady of the United States. During her lifetime she was often referred to as "Lady Washington".[1]
She had first married Daniel Parke Custis, with whom she had four children, and was widowed by the age of 25. Two of her children by Custis survived to young adulthood. She brought her vast wealth to her marriage to Washington, which enabled him to buy land to add to his personal estate.  She also brought nearly 100 dower slaves for her use during her lifetime. They and their descendants reverted to her first husband's estate at her death and were inherited by his heirs.[2] She and Washington did not have children together but they did rear her two children by Daniel Parke Custis, including son John "Jacky" Parke Custis. They also helped both of their extended families.
Family and background
Martha Dandridge was born on June 2, 1731 (O.S. June 2)[3] on her parents' plantation Chestnut Grove in the British colony, Province of Virginia.  She was the oldest daughter of John Dandridge (1700–1756), a Virginia planter and immigrant from England, by his wife Frances Jones (1710–1785), who was of American birth and English, Welsh, and French descent.[4] Martha had three brothers and four sisters: John (1733–1749), William (1734–1776), Bartholomew (1737–1785), Anna Maria "Fanny" Bassett (1739–1777), Frances Dandridge (1744–1757), Elizabeth Aylett Henley (1749–1800) and Mary Dandridge (1756–1763).
Martha may have had an illegitimate half-sister, Ann Dandridge Costin (years of birth and death unknown), who was born into slavery.[5]  Costin's enslaved mother was of African and Cherokee descent, and her father was believed to be John Dandridge.[6]  Martha's father may also have fathered an out-of-wedlock half-brother to Martha named Ralph Dandridge (years of birth and death unknown), who was probably white.[6]
First marriage
On May 15, 1750, at age 18, Martha married Daniel Parke Custis, a rich planter two decades her senior, and moved to his residence,  White House Plantation, located on the south shore of the Pamunkey River, a few miles upriver from Chestnut Grove. They had four children together: Daniel, Frances, John, and Martha. Daniel (Nov. 19, 1751–Feb. 19, 1754) and Frances (Apr. 12, 1753–Apr. 1, 1757) died in childhood. The other two children, John (Jacky) Parke Custis (Nov. 27, 1754–Nov. 5, 1781) and Martha ("Patsy") Parke Custis (1756–June 19, 1773), survived to young adulthood. Her husband's death in 1757 left Martha a rich young widow at age 25, with independent control over a dower inheritance for her lifetime, and trustee control over the inheritance of her minor children. In all, she was left in custody of some 17,500 acres of land and 300 slaves, apart from other investments and cash.[7] According to her biographer, "she capably ran the five plantations left to her when her first husband died, bargaining with London merchants for the best tobacco prices."[8]
Second marriage

Martha Custis, age 27, and George Washington, age nearly 27, married on January 6, 1759, at the White House plantation.  As a man who lived and owned property in the area, Washington likely knew both Martha and Daniel Parke Custis for some time before Daniel's death. During March 1758 he visited her twice at the White House; the second time he came away with either an engagement of marriage or at least her promise to think about his proposal. At the time, she was also being courted by the planter Charles Carter, who was even wealthier than Washington.[8]
The wedding was grand. Washington's suit was of blue and silver cloth with red trimming and gold knee buckles.[9] The bride wore purple silk shoes with spangled buckles, which are displayed at Mount Vernon.[8] The couple honeymooned at the White House for several weeks before setting up house at Washington's Mount Vernon estate.  They appeared to have had a solid marriage.[8][9]
Martha and George Washington had no children together, but they raised Martha's two surviving children. Her daughter, nicknamed Patsy, died as a teenager during an epileptic seizure. John Parke "Jacky" Custis returned from college to comfort his mother.
Custis later married and had children; he served as an aide to Washington during the siege of Yorktown in 1781 during the American Revolutionary War.  He died of "camp fever" (probably epidemic typhus).  After his death, the Washingtons raised the youngest two of John's four children, Eleanor (Nelly) Parke Custis (March 31, 1779 – July 15, 1852), and George Washington Parke (Washy) Custis (April 30, 1781 – October 10, 1857). The two older girls remained with their mother. The Washingtons also provided personal and financial support to nieces, nephews and other family members in both the Dandridge and Washington families.
Content to live a private life at Mount Vernon and her homes from the Custis estate, Martha Washington followed Washington to his winter encampments for each of eight years. She helped keep up morale among the officers.
At the 1777–1778 Valley Forge encampment
By tradition, Washington was described as spending her days at the Revolutionary War winter encampments visiting with the common soldiers in their huts.  But Nancy Loane, author of Following the Drum: Women at the Valley Forge Encampment, says there is no evidence that Washington visited with the common soldiers,[10] noting that Martha Washington was fashionably dressed, assertive, and a woman of great wealth and independent means.  Mrs. Washington joined her husband during the Revolution for all the Continental Army's winter encampments. Before the revolution began, she had kept close to home; during it, she traveled thousands of miles to be with her husband.[11] General Lafayette observed that she loved "her husband madly".[12]
The Continental Army settled in Valley Forge, the third of the eight winter encampments of the Revolution, on December 19, 1777.  Martha Washington traveled ten days and hundreds of miles to join her husband in Pennsylvania.[13] Primary documents of the Revolutionary period refer to Lady Washington's activities at the site.

Martha Washington took her familiar role as her husband's hostess at camp. On April 6, Elizabeth Drinker and three friends arrived at Valley Forge to plead with General Washington to release their husbands from jail; the men, all Quakers, had refused to swear a loyalty oath to the United States. Because the commander was not available at first, the women visited with Mrs. Washington. Martha Washington was regarded as a matriarch in the camps she visited.[14] Drinker described her later in her diary as "a sociable pretty kind of Woman."[15] Although unable to satisfy the women's demands, General Washington invited them to dine at headquarters that day. Drinker said the dinner with General and Mrs. Washington and fifteen officers was "elegant" but "soon over."[15]
Martha Washington also socialized with the wives of the senior officers at Valley Forge. Years later, Pierre DuPonceau, an aide to Baron von Steuben, recalled that in the evenings the ladies and officers at camp would meet at each other's quarters for conversation. During these social evenings, each lady and gentleman present was "called upon in turn for a song" as they sipped tea or coffee.[16] There was no card-playing during these Valley Forge social gatherings, games of chance having been forbidden by General Washington.[17]
Charles Willson Peale painted a miniature of Washington—for which he charged his usual "56 Dollars"—and presented it to Martha, along with painting other miniatures of Washington.[18]  He also painted 50 other officers and their wives that winter.[19]
Lady Washington took part in the camp's May 6 celebration of the formal announcement of the French-American alliance.[20] Soon after the thunderous feu de joie, when thousands of soldiers fired off their muskets, General Washington and his wife received other officers under a large marquee fashioned from dozens of officers' tents. General Washington was said to have worn "a countenance of uncommon delight and complacence."[21]
Five days later, on May 11, 1778, Martha Washington and the commander attended the camp production of Joseph Addison's play Cato, a favorite of the General's. The play was performed by the staff officers for a "very numerous and splendid audience," including many officers and several of their wives.[22] One officer wrote that he found the performance "admirable" and the scenery "in Taste."[22]
First Lady 1789–1797

After the war, Martha was against Washington's agreeing to be President of the newly formed United States of America, and she did not attend his inauguration on April 30, 1789.  Once he assumed office, as the First Lady (a term that was later used) she hosted many affairs of state at New York City and Philadelphia during their years as temporary capitals. The socializing became known as "the Republican Court".[23][24]
In July 1790, the artist John Trumbull gave a full-length portrait painting of General George Washington to her as a gift. It was displayed in their home at Mount Vernon in the New Room.[25]
Dower slaves, estate, death and interment
Although her father had owned fifteen to twenty slaves, her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis, owned nearly three hundred, making him one of the largest slaveowners and wealthiest men in the Virginia colony.[26] The full Custis estate contained plantations and farms totaling about 27 square miles (70km2), and 285 enslaved men, women, and children attached to those holdings.
Daniel Parke Custis' death in 1757 without a will meant that, according to law, his and Martha's eldest male child, John (Jacky) Parke Custis, who was at that time a minor, would inherit when he became an adult two-thirds of the Custis estate, its slaves and the children of those slaves.[26] Martha received a "dower share," the lifetime use of (and income from) the remaining one-third of the estate and its slaves.[26]  After her death, the dower slaves and their progeny were to be distributed among the surviving Custis heirs.[26]
Upon his 1759 marriage to Martha, George Washington became the legal manager of the Custis estate, under court oversight. At the time of her marriage, Martha's dower share included more than 80 slaves.[27] She also would control any children they had, as they would become part of the dower.[26]  Estate records indicate that Martha Washington continued to purchase supplies, manage paid staff, and make many other decisions. Although the Washingtons wielded managerial control over the whole estate, they received income only from Martha's "dower" third.  The remainder of the income went to a trust held for Jacky Custis until he reached maturity at age 21.
Washington used his wife's great wealth to buy land and slaves; he more than tripled the size of Mount Vernon (2,650 acres (10.7km2) in 1757; 8,251 acres (33.39km2) in 1787). For more than 40 years, her "dower" slaves farmed the plantation alongside her husband's. By law, neither of the Washingtons could sell Custis lands or slaves, which Martha's dower and the trust owned.[26][27] After Jacky died during the Revolutionary War, his slaves passed to his son, George Washington Parke Custis, who at the time was a minor. If Jacky's trust or Martha's dower owned a slave's mother, her children were included in that holding. Some slaves owned by the Washingtons and the trust married each other, forming linked families.[28] This created complex inheritance issues.
Seven of the nine slaves whom President Washington brought to Philadelphia (the national capital, 1790–1800) to work in the President's House were "dowers". Pennsylvania passed a gradual abolition law in 1780, under which non-residents were allowed to hold slaves in the state for up to six months; after that date, they could claim freedom. The Washingtons rotated their President's House slaves in and out of the state before the six-month deadline to prevent their establishing residency (and legally qualifying for manumission).[2]  Washington reasoned that should the "dowers" attain their freedom due to his negligence, he might be liable to the Custis estate for their value.
Martha Washington promised her lady's maid Oney Judge, a "dower" slave, to her granddaughter Elizabeth Parke Custis as a wedding gift. To prevent being sent back to Virginia, Judge escaped in 1796 from the Philadelphia household during Washington's second term.[26] According to interviews with Judge in the 1840s, the young woman had enjoyed being in Philadelphia and feared she would never gain freedom if taken to Virginia.[29] She hid with free black friends in the city, who helped arrange her travel by ship to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There she married and had three children.
Patricia Brady, in her 2005 biography of Martha Washington, writes:
Martha felt a responsibility for the unsophisticated girl under her care, especially since her mother and sister were expecting to see her back at Mount Vernon. What she could never understand was that [Oney had ...] a simple desire to be free. Ona, as she preferred to call herself, wanted to live where she pleased, do what work she pleased, and learn to read and write ... Ona Judge professed a great regard for Martha and the way she had been treated, but she couldn't face a future as a slave for herself and her children.[30]
After Oney's escape, Martha gave her younger enslaved sister Delphy (also known as Philadelphia) to Elizabeth and her husband as a wedding gift.
Washington's slave Hercules, who had worked as his chief cook at the President's House (Philadelphia) before being returned to Mount Vernon in 1796, escaped from there on February 22, 1797.[31] He was known to have traveled to Philadelphia, and by December 1801 was living in New York City.[32][33] His six-year-old daughter, still enslaved at Mount Vernon, told a visitor that she was glad her father was free.[34]
In his July 1790 will, written a year after he became President of the United States in April 1789 and nine years before his death in December 1799, George Washington left directions for the emancipation, after Martha Washington's death, of all the slaves that he owned.[28]  Of the 318 slaves at Mount Vernon in 1799, a little less than half, 123 individuals, belonged to George Washington.[27]   His will stipulated that his slaves were not to be freed until Martha's death because of his desire to preserve the families of those who had intermarried with Martha's dower slaves.[28]
In accordance with state law, Washington stipulated in his will that elderly slaves or those who were too sick to work were to be supported throughout their lives by his estate. Children without parents, or those whose families were too poor or indifferent to see to their education, were to be bound out to masters and mistresses who would teach them reading, writing, and a useful trade, until they were ultimately freed at the age of twenty-five.[27]
In December 1800, Martha Washington signed a deed of manumission for her deceased husband's slaves, a transaction that was entered into the records of Fairfax County, Virginia. The document was lost during the American Civil War.[35] The slaves received their freedom on January 1, 1801, a little over a year after George's death.[27][36]
Just a few weeks earlier in December, Abigail Adams, wife of the second President, had visited Mount Vernon and wrote: "Many of those who are liberated have married with what are called the dower Negroes, so that they all quit their [family] connections, yet what could she do?" Mrs. Adams suggested a motive for Martha to have freed Washington's slaves early:
In the state in which they were left by the General, to be free at her death, she did not feel as tho her Life was safe in their Hands, many of whom would be told that it was [in] their interest to get rid of her–She therefore was advised to set them all free at the close of the year.—A. A. to Mary Cranch, 21 December 1800[37]

Martha's health, always somewhat precarious, declined after her husband's death.[38] Two and a half years after the death of her husband, Martha died on May 22, 1802 at the age of 70.[38]
Following her death, Martha was interred in George Washington's tomb vault at Mount Vernon.[39] In 1831, the surviving executors of Washington's estate removed the bodies of George and Martha Washington and those of other members of the family from the old vault to a similar structure within the present enclosure at Mount Vernon.[39]
Martha did not emancipate any of her own slaves during her lifetime.[26] Her will bequeathed Elisha, a slave whom she owned outright at the time of her death, to her grandson, George Washington Parke Custis.[40] Upon her death, her dower slaves reverted to the Custis estate and were divided among her four grandchildren.[2][26][27] The division split up families, divided husbands from wives and sent children away from their parents.[26]
Martha Washington
An 1878 portrait by Eliphalet Frazer Andrews
Martha's sarcophagus (left) in the tomb at Mount Vernon
Washington's Family by Edward Savage, painted between 1789 and 1796, shows (from left to right): George Washington Parke Custis, George Washington, Eleanor Parke Custis, Martha, and an enslaved servant: probably William Lee or Christopher Sheels.
Daniel Huntington Lady Washington’s Reception Day, 1861 Brooklyn Museum

Honors
USS Lady Washington
Mrs. Washington had a row galley named in her honor, the USS Lady Washington. It holds the distinction of being the first U.S. military ship to be named in honor of a woman and the first named for a person while the person was still alive (see also List of U.S. military vessels named after living Americans). It has a number of other distinctions as well, such as the first ship named after a (future) First Lady and one of the few active vessels in the U.S. Navy named in honor of a woman (see also USS Hopper).
USS Martha Washington
The USS<i>Martha Washington(ID-3019) was a transport for the United States Navy during World War I. She was originally the ocean liner SS Martha Washington for the Austro-American Line before the war. Before and after her Navy service she was the United States Army transport USAT Martha Washington. The liner was sold to the Italian Cosulich Line in 1922. In 1932, when Cosulich was absorbed into Italia Flotte Riunite (English: United Fleets Italy), the ship was renamed SS Tel Aviv. The ship was scrapped in 1934.
Martha Washington on U.S. postage
The first U.S. postage stamp honoring an American woman honored Martha Washington, and was issued as part of the 1902 stamp series.[41] An 8-cent stamp, it was printed in violet-black ink. The second stamp issued in her honor, a 4-cent definitive stamp printed in orange-brown ink, was released in 1923.[42] The third stamp to honor Martha Washington was issued in 1938, as part of the Presidential Issue series. A 1½-cent stamp, it was printed in yellow-brown ink.[43]

U.S. paper currency

Martha Washington is the only woman (other than allegories of Justice, Liberty, etc.) depicted on the face of a United States Banknote. Her engraved portrait bust was used on the face of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1886 and 1891. Both Martha and George Washington are depicted together on the reverse of the $1 silver certificate of 1896.

Martha Washington on U.S. paper currency
$1 silver certificate, issue 1886
$1 Silver Certificate, issue 1896

U.S. coins
The First Spouse Program under the Presidential $1 Coin Act authorizes the United States Mint to issue 1/2 ounce $10 gold coins and bronze medal duplicates[44] to honor the first spouses of the United States. The Martha Washington coin was released on June 19, 2007, and was sold out in hours.

Martha Washington on U.S. coin currency
Obverse
Reverse
Obverse (bronze medal)
Reverse (bronze medal)

Educational institutions

The Martha Washington College for Women was founded in Abingdon, Virginia in 1860.[46]   In 1918, its administration was merged with Emory & Henry College[47]  and in 1931, Martha Washington ceased to function as a separate entity, merging completely with Emory & Henry. The main original building of Martha Washington College is now known and operated as the Martha Washington Inn.[48]  There was also Martha Washington Seminary, a finishing school for young women in Washington, DC,[49] that was founded in 1905[50] and ceased operations in 1949.[51]
In popular culture

In 1955, the actress Karen Sharpe played Custis in the NBC television film, The Courtship of George Washington and Martha Custis, a production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Marshall Thompson, nine years older than Sharpe, portrayed Washington, who was a year younger than Custis.
Annette Haven played Martha Washington in the 1976 pornographic film Spirit of Seventy Sex.
Emmy-winning actress Patty Duke portrayed Martha Washington in the TV miniseries George Washington (1984) and its sequel George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation (1986).
Martha Washington is the name of a fox in The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, episode 2 ("Blood Brothers").
A member of the geranium (a flower) family, scientific name Pelargonium x domesticum, is named after Martha Washington as the Martha Washington geranium.[52]
Martha Washington was portrayed by Lilli Birdsell in the third and fourth seasons of Turn: Washington's Spies from 2016–2017.
Martha Washington was satirically portrayed as a ghost of the past by Aidy Bryant in the February 4, 2018 episode of Saturday Night Live on NBC television.
See also

Alexander Macomb House — Second Presidential Mansion.
List of slave owners
President's House (Philadelphia) — Third Presidential Mansion.
Samuel Osgood House — First Presidential Mansion.

Further reading

 (primary sources)
 at the White House (biography)
 at the National First Ladies Library (biography)
 (George Washington's Mount Vernon)
 (memorial photos)
 at C-SPAN's First Ladies: Influence & Image