King Lear is the Everest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, looming over theatre companies, challenging them to make the perilous ascent. It is also the darkest. Hamlet may finish with almost as many bodies strewn around the stage, and Macbeth delves deep into malign forces unleashed by cravings for power, but with the former ending with the arrival of Fortinbras, Hamlet’s chosen successor, and the latter with the ascension of Malcolm there is some sense of a positive outcome. Of the trio who survive at the end of King Lear, the faithful Kent walks away to die and the ineffectual Albany hands over the kingdom to Edgar. The play ends with the enigmatic and hardly encouraging remark: ‘The oldest have borne most: we that are young / Shall never see so much, nor live so long.’