This collection of provocative new essays, mainly by French scholars, on Shakespeare’s great tragedy, focuses on linguistic, aesthetic and philosophical issues with specific attention paid to the dimension of early modern desire, sexuality and gender relations.King Lear is here re-examined in the perspective of Lucrece, Montaigne, Renaissance medicine and anatomy, the grotesque, myth and imagery as well as negative theology. It is hoped that this will serve to update our approaches to this elusive, undecided play, neither Christian nor as completely nihilistic as some critics have argued, which nevertheless remains quite popular on French and English stages alike.