"King Lear Without the Potholes" provides an updated version of Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear. It makes the play more accessible by modernizing the outdated vocabulary and grammar, and by revising the more difficult passages, while retaining almost all of the poetic content. The series "Shakespeare Without the Potholes" is intended to provide updated versions of all of the 37 generally recognized plays of William Shakespeare. The series makes the plays more accessible to students encountering Shakespeare for the first time; it provides an easier reading experience by modernizing some of the text and by revising many of the more difficult passages that in the original can be understood, if at all, only by careful scanning of a footnote, and sometimes not even then. The alterations attempt to retain the meter and maintain almost all of the poetic substance.