I (re)read this as part of Book Riot's Read Harder 2018 challenge, of which one of the tasks was an assigned book that you hated or didn't finish. I was forced to read King Lear in high school and have held a grudge ever since. (Mostly because it committed the grave sin of not being Macbeth, which I was desperately hoping for instead.)

I have held the grudge for some 20+ years and was not looking forward to a repeat but, you know, it's actually pretty good. The language and especially the construction of the story is excellent, and in the first half I particularly enjoyed the fact that pretty much every character, good or evil, was dragging Lear for the stupid fool that he is. The thing is, while I appreciate the play now more as an adult, I still can't fucking stand Lear. He deserves everything he gets, and I can't understand the sympathy he pulls from various people in the second half. He's a bad houseguest, a worse father, and an execrable king. The common folk are better off with him dead, because Lear is a selfish, egotistical and unreasonable tyrant, and I can't help ending the play thinking of all the peasants who were killed in the war that his monstrous, self-obsessed desire for worship ultimately incited.

It's a pretty good play. I do concede that. The reread has been helpful, but as a play about a terrible king it is no Richard II.