https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=839 William Charles Macready’s restoration of King Lear in 1838 was indeed a mythical production, which, sweeping Nahum Tate’s happily ending adaptation of King Lear off the boards at once, changed for ever the paradigm of both appreciating Shakespeare and acting King Lear for ever. Nonetheless, no matter how famous and erudite Macready was, or how illustrious his literary and theatre friends were, he had to go against the long tradition of Nahum Tate’s melodramatic version when he endeavoured to restore the original text. It is much less known however, that Macready experimented with the tragic plot and the Shakespearean text as early as in 1834 at his benefit nights to promising critical reception, and that Macready’s promptbook of the 1834 production exists in the Duke Humphrey Archives of the Bodleian Library. Having examined the author(s) and the handwriting(s) of this promptbook in earlier publications, in this paper I will shed light on Macready’s rendering of the title character in 1834 and in 1838 from his promptbooks. The way Macready acted the vigorous and energetic aging royal, and the way he performed Lear’s death attracted audiences of all ranks from 1838 throughout his long career and became Macready’s trademarks. As Paul Schliecke found it, Macready’s close friend Dickens used the material the actor thus provided him with in his novel, The Old Curiosity Shop, to depict the slow tearful deaths of Little Nell and her Grandfather. It was the momentum of an actor and the impetus of a production that re‑established both the Fool and the tragic Lear on British stages, challenging the taste of the contemporary audience, and setting the trend for European and American theatrical practices in the following decades. Macready’s 1838 performance, already shaped by his earlier attempt in 1834, transformed the reading of Lear, a title‑role which he performed successfully until he retired from the stage. Shakespeare en devenir N°9 — 2015 fr mer., 22 avril 2015 16:29:55 +0200 sam., 28 déc. 2019 14:47:21 +0100 https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr:443/shakespeare/index.php?id=839 0