English literature poses 2 endings in Ho drama

'How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child,' laments King Lear in the tragic play by William Shakespeare.

The majority of parents have probably agreed with the old monarch's sentiment at least once or twice. But with 16 fractious children by four different wives, Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho has had more occasion than most over the past few weeks to agree with the tragic king about the painful ingratitude of his offspring.

Ever since last Monday when Ho first accused two of his wives and five of his children of fraudulently misappropriating ownership of the company which controls most of his business empire, the parallels with Lear have been striking.

Of course, if you have assiduously avoided all contact with Shakespeare since leaving school, or if you were one of those fortunate enough not to have had his plays rammed forcibly down your throat at school, then the similarities between Ho's family spat and a 400-year-old play about a legendary king of pre-historic Britain may not be so obvious.

But if you've missed Lear, you've missed out. As the huge popularity of the production now playing at London's Donmar Warehouse demonstrates, the tragedy speaks just as powerfully to modern audiences as it did in Jacobean England. And it transcends cultures as easily as it has crossed the centuries. The tragedy was adopted by Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa as the inspiration for his 1985 epic Ran. It has even been adapted as traditional Beijing opera.

In Shakespeare's play, the ageing King Lear seeks to divide his kingdom between his three daughters. Before apportioning the goodies, however, he tries to discover which of the three loves him most by the simple expedient of commanding each to describe their feelings towards him.