 When King Lear played at the Old Vic in 1970, reviews were mixed; J.W. Lambert thought that the "grey sets" and Hordern's "grizzled" costume were how Shakespeare would have intended them to be, while Eric Shorter thought otherwise, stating "I still do not understand those costumes." Of the performance, the dramatist and critic Martin Esslin called Hordern's portrayal "a magnificent creation" before going on to say: "Hordern's timing of the silences from which snatches of demented wisdom emerge is masterly and illuminates the subterranean processes of his derangement." Writing for The Times later that year, the theatre critic Irving Wardle described Hordern's Lear as a "sharp, peremptory pedant; more a law-giver than a soldier, and (as justice is an old man's profession) still in the prime of his life". Hordern played Lear once more that decade, in 1975, which was televised by the BBC for their series Play of the Month.
