Shakespeare with(out) Spoilers

Yesterday I saw King Lear for the first time. King Lear being one of the great Shakespeare plays, it's one of those ones where it's generally assumed that you know what happens, like Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello etc. I don't remember ever having not known what happens in Romeo & Juliet, in the same way that I don't remember not knowing how to walk, but my mother tells a great story of going to see it with a friend of hers when they were both students, and her friend didn't know what happened and was inconsolable at the end. As a result of which, I've always thought it would be nice to see one of these great plays fresh, as it were, and so have taken great cares over the last 32 years not to find out anything about King Lear. (Avoiding spoilers, as it were - which you will not be able to do, should you read much further).

So, was my experiment a success? Sadly, no. It reminded me of a funny answer I once read from an exam paper, "I found the play very hard to understand due to it being written in Shakespeare". The sad truth is that I could barely follow the dialogue, which meant that I only kept up with the plot on the most basic level (and totally missed Edgar coming back as Old Tom - he was wearing different clothes and his hair was messy, what could I do? - which at least answers the question I always ask in the mistaken identity bits of Shakespeare, ie surely they would notice - well, apparently not. But then again Edgar is not my son.) The acting seemed very heartfelt, but at times I may as well have been watching in a different language, to the extent that I would almost have appreciated some surtitles, although that might have gone slightly against the authenticity, given that we were at the Globe.

The three people I was with, all English teachers or having studied English at degree level, and therefore very familiar with the play, were in floods of tears by the time it finished, while I was still trying to figure out whether Lear was dead or just prostrate with grief. All I could manage was to think, on an intellectual level, that it was a "good" play. I wasn't at all moved. I'd be very interested to know whether the company who staged the play had assumed that everyone would know it already and therefore hadn't bothered to worry about enunciating the lines that much - some of the dialogue shot past incredibly fast; or whether it is just a particularly hard play to understand; whether the Globe's open air, unmic-ed set up is to blame, for letting so many of the lines be swallowed by passing aircraft; or whether I am just thick. Interestingly though, I do want to see it again now - now that I have been "spoilered" and know what happens, so that I can concentrate on *how* it happens.

PS I have just been to the Globe site to set up a link, and one of the pictures they are using to illustrate the show is from the very last scene and features a very dead cast member! So they must be assuming that we all know what happens at the end.