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Shakespeare's King Lear is magnificent, appalling, soaring, banal, cruel, tender, funny and complex; the virtuous are punished, justice is rarely served (and lawyers are unloved). Its scope is so demanding that it's virtually impossible to stage and its end is simply shattering — in other words, it's very much like life.

You may be familiar with the plot. Lear, an old and unwise king, decides to divide his kingdom among his three daughters: Regan and Goneril (flattering and sociopathic, respectively) and honest, proud Cordelia, who cannot make the required public boast of how much she loves her father and so gets nothing beyond banishment, heartbreak and a sympathetic husband in the King of France.

When the faithful Earl of Kent objects to this injustice, Lear banishes him, too. Lear's Fool (who is wise) is ignored when he chides the king for his foolishness. The Earl of Gloucester is equally unwise: He trusts his bastard son Edmund, who betrays the legitimate Edgar. More banishment ensues. Regan and Goneril conspire to remove all Lear's material supports and he slides, then catapults, into rage, madness and a final harrowing compassion.

Stripped of everything — crown, land, men, belongings, clothes, faith and sanity — he is tried and transformed by a howling night on a heath. He finally sees clearly — the world, "this great stage of fools," its injustice, its pains, and man, a "poor, bare, forked animal."

Meanwhile, Goneril and her husband, the Duke of Albany, are vying for power with Regan and her husband the Duke of Cornwall. Regan and Cornwall blind Gloucester (at Goneril's blithe suggestion) when he sympathizes with Lear. Cordelia invades with French forces to take back her father's lands. Distraught Gloucester is saved by his son, Edgar, who has been travelling in disguise as a madman. Lear — locked in a strange new peacefulness — is reunited with Cordelia. Edmund, now Earl of Gloucester, promises himself to both Goneril and Regan. Jealous Goneril poisons Regan and then kills herself after Edmund is killed in a duel with Edgar. Cordelia's forces falter, she is captured with Lear. Edmund arranges for Cordelia's suicide to be staged and blamed on her despair. The play ends when Lear enters holding her body — and then simply dies of grief.

This is a world where love is silent, speech lies, self-destruction beckons, nature is unnatural, evil demands reward and loving desires must be denied. The play is densely layered, filled with reflections, inversions and reversals: Fools are wise, madmen are sane, riches are unrewarding and nothing brings in everything that truly matters.

Nothingness echoes through the text: to deserve nothing, to see, have, understand and become nothing. Add in the racing themes of madness and blindness, and you have a plunging, unnerving landscape where compassion and tenderness are born in the eye of a storm, where education is vicious and humour springs from the surreal exhilaration of intolerable pain.

Unsurprisingly, such a massive and challenging beast has been criticized roundly by such as Dr. Johnson and horribly mangled by the addition of extraneous love interest, a happy ending and the complete exclusion of the Fool. The wealth of extraordinary soliloquies and the massive potential of Lear as a role for any actor of ambition are probably all that have saved Lear from being indelibly branded a "problem play." Kean, Macready, Garrick, Olivier, Gambon, Hopkins, Hutt, Redgrave — it's rare that an actor of any reputation doesn't at least attempt an outing as Lear, measuring his skill in maturity against the part just as, even now, Hamlet will mark his entry into the ranks of serious leading men.

Wholly successful productions of Lear are, naturally, rare. Lear may begin by shouting and end by risking an aneurysm. Regan and Goneril can lapse into Ugly Sisters while Cordelia's simply a pain. Shameful "mad acting" can break out on all sides while tricorn-hatted Fools ham it up unforgivably to overcome the fact that they're reciting comic patter very few audience members understand. It is often forgotten that the dark and tender intimacy of king and fool is at the play's heart; only with a great Fool will Lear truly excel in a play that pushes performance and language to its absolute limits.

But Lear's beauty remains — unforgettable, terrible, heart-shocking. Think of everything you're most deeply afraid of; it's here in Lear. Think of everything you couldn't stand to lose; you'll see it lost in Lear. And you'll see humanity survive, nonetheless, the play rising above life's most devastating certainties to sing and burn.

A.L. Kennedy's most recent novel is "Day."

Next week: Critique of Pure Reason.