ABSTRACT
Early in 1681, an actress playing Cordelia stepped out on a London stage to deliver a tour-de-force performance as the romantic lead in a new comedy, The History of King Lear. In 1987, a young black woman playing the Fool steps out on a small community stage outside of London to deliver the opening lines of the feminist adaptation Lear’s Daughters. Much has changed in the intervening 300 years; but what, exactly, and why?
