King Lear as a Bad-Tempered Old Man: Anthony Hopkins and David Hare Tackle Shakespeare

Every midwinter, like the recurring solstice, London's biggest public theaters rise and treat the British public to a strange and noisy freak show. The main, indeed the only, attraction is a vociferous two-headed monster, which looks like Oliver Twist grafted onto the prophet Jeremiah in full cry. The burden of this creature's lamentation is the stinginess of the government and the Arts Council. It rends the air with auguries of gloom, doom, and the cultural demise of British theater - because the multimillion-pound grants to the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre may not be increased.