King Lear is a 1999 adaptation of William Shakespeare's play of the same name. The film stars Brian Blessed (who also co-directed the film, along with Tony Rotherham) in the title role. Apart from Peter Brook's King Lear in 1971, it is the only other feature-length film adaptation to preserve Shakespeare's verse. Yvonne Griggs, in Shakespeare's King Lear: A close study of the relationship between text and film (2009), characterised it as "a very stilted costume drama".