King lear, p.3
King Lear, page 3
A further intensification of the play’s moral bleakness is brought about by a series of cuts to Albany’s role: his castigations of Goneril in Act 4 Scene 2 are severely trimmed back, considerably reducing his moral force. Quarto Albany is a well-developed character who closes the play as a mature and victorious duke assuming responsibility for the kingdom. In Folio he is weaker, he stands by as his wife walks all over both him and the moral order, he avoids responsibility. His ultimate vacation of power is such that the revision ends at the point where my discussion began: with Edgar having no choice but to take over as sustainer of the gored state.
If you look at printers’ handbooks from the age of Shakespeare, you quickly discover that one of the first rules was that, whenever possible, compositors were recommended to set their type from existing printed books rather than manuscripts. This was the age before mechanical typesetting, where each individual letter had to be picked out by hand from the compositor’s case and placed on a stick (upside down and back to front) before being laid on the press. It was an age of murky rushlight and of manuscripts written in a secretary hand that had dozens of different, hard-to-decipher forms. Printers’ lives were a lot easier when they were reprinting existing books rather than struggling with handwritten copy. Easily the quickest way to have created the First Folio would have been simply to reprint those eighteen plays that had already appeared in Quarto and only work from manuscript on the other eighteen.
But that is not what happened. Whenever Quartos were used, playhouse “promptbooks” were also consulted and stage directions copied in from them. And in the case of several major plays where a reasonably well-printed Quarto was available, Lear notable among them, the Folio printers were instructed to work from an alternative, playhouse-derived manuscript. This meant that the whole process of producing the first complete Shakespeare took months, even years, longer than it might have done. But for the men overseeing the project, John Hemings and Henry Condell, friends and fellow actors who had been remembered in Shakespeare’s will, the additional labor and cost were worth the effort for the sake of producing an edition that was close to the practice of the theater. They wanted all the plays in print so that people could, as they wrote in their prefatory address to the reader, “read him and again and again,” but they also wanted “the great variety of readers” to work from texts that were close to the theater-life for which Shakespeare originally intended them. For this reason, the RSC Shakespeare, in both Complete Works and individual volumes, uses the Folio as base text wherever possible. Significant Quarto variants are, however, noted in the Textual Notes and Quarto-only passages are appended after the text of King Lear.
The following notes highlight various aspects of the editorial process and indicate conventions used in the text of this edition:
Lists of Parts are supplied in the First Folio for only six plays, not including Lear, so the list at the beginning of the play is provided by the editors, arranged by groups of character. Capitals indicate that part of the name which is used for speech headings in the script (thus “LEAR, King of Britain”).
Locations are provided by the Folio for only two plays. Eighteenth-century editors, working in an age of elaborately realistic stage sets, were the first to provide detailed locations. Given that Shakespeare wrote for a bare stage and often an imprecise sense of place, we have relegated locations to the explanatory notes, where they are given at the beginning of each scene where the imaginary location is different from the one before. We have emphasized broad geographical settings rather than specifics of the kind that suggest anachronistically realistic staging. We have therefore avoided such niceties as “another room in the palace.”
Act and Scene Divisions were provided in the Folio in a much more thoroughgoing way than in the Quartos. Sometimes, however, they were erroneous or omitted; corrections and additions supplied by editorial tradition are indicated by square brackets. Five-act division is based on a classical model, and act breaks provided the opportunity to replace the candles in the indoor Blackfriars playhouse, which the King’s Men used after 1608, but Shakespeare did not necessarily think in terms of a five-part structure of dramatic composition. The Folio convention is that a scene ends when the stage is empty. Nowadays, partly under the influence of film, we tend to consider a scene to be a dramatic unit that ends with either a change of imaginary location or a significant passage of time within the narrative. Shakespeare’s fluidity of composition accords well with this convention, so in addition to act and scene numbers we provide a running scene count in the right margin at the beginning of each new scene, in the typeface used for editorial directions. Where there is a scene break caused by a momentary bare stage, but the location does not change and extra time does not pass, we use the convention running scene continues. There is inevitably a degree of editorial judgment in making such calls, but the system is very valuable in suggesting the pace of the plays.
Speakers’ Names are often inconsistent in Folio. We have regularized speech headings, but retained an element of deliberate inconsistency in entry directions, in order to give the flavor of Folio.
Verse is indicated by lines that do not run to the right margin and by capitalization of each line. The Folio printers sometimes set verse as prose, and vice versa (either out of misunderstanding or for reasons of space). We have silently corrected in such cases, although in some instances there is ambiguity, in which case we have leaned toward the preservation of Folio layout. Folio sometimes uses contraction (“turnd” rather than “turned”) to indicate whether or not the final “-ed” of a past participle is sounded, an area where there is variation for the sake of the five-beat iambic pentameter rhythm. We use the convention of a grave accent to indicate sounding (thus “turnèd” would be two syllables), but would urge actors not to overstress. In cases where one speaker ends with a verse half-line and the next begins with the other half of the pentameter, editors since the late eighteenth century have indented the second line. We have abandoned this convention, since the Folio does not use it, and nor did actors’ cues in the Shakespearean theater. An exception is made when the second speaker actively interrupts or completes the first speaker’s sentence.
Spelling is modernized, but older forms are occasionally maintained where necessary for rhythm or aural effect.
Punctuation in Shakespeare’s time was as much rhetorical as grammatical. “Colon” was originally a term for a unit of thought in an argument. The semicolon was a new unit of punctuation (some of the Quartos lack them altogether). We have modernized punctuation throughout but have given more weight to Folio punctuation than many editors, since, though not Shakespearean, it reflects the usage of his period. In particular, we have used the colon far more than many editors: it is exceptionally useful as a way of indicating how many Shakespearean speeches unfold clause by clause in a developing argument that gives the illusion of enacting the process of thinking in the moment. We have also kept in mind the origin of punctuation in classical times as a way of assisting the actor and orator: the comma suggests the briefest of pauses for breath, the colon a middling one, and a full stop or period a longer pause. Semicolons, by contrast, belong to an era of punctuation that was only just coming in during Shakespeare’s time and that is coming to an end now: we have accordingly only used them where they occur in our copy texts (and not always then). Dashes are sometimes used for parenthetical interjections where the Folio has brackets. They are also used for interruptions and changes in train of thought. Where a change of addressee occurs within a speech, we have used a dash preceded by a full stop (or occasionally another form of punctuation). Often the identity of the respective addressees is obvious from the context. When it is not, this has been indicated in a marginal stage direction.
Entrances and Exits are fairly thorough in Folio, which has accordingly been followed as faithfully as possible. Where characters are omitted or corrections are necessary, this is indicated by square brackets (e.g. “[and Attendants]”). Exit is sometimes silently normalized to Exeunt and Manet anglicized to “remains.” We trust Folio positioning of entrances and exits to a greater degree than most editors.
Editorial Stage Directions such as stage business, asides, indications of addressee and of characters’ position on the gallery stage are only used sparingly in Folio. Other editions mingle directions of this kind with original Folio and Quarto directions, sometimes marking them by means of square brackets. We have sought to distinguish what could be described as directorial interventions of this kind from Folio-style directions (either original or supplied) by placing in the right margin in a smaller typeface. There is a degree of subjectivity about which directions are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an Aside? (often a line may be equally effective as an aside or a direct address—it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a may exit or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various moments within a scene.
Line Numbers are editorial, for reference and to key the explanatory and textual notes.
Explanatory Notes explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to nonstandard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.
Textual Notes at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign, with “Q” indicating one that derives from the principal Quarto, “F2” one that derives from the Second Folio of 1632, and “Ed” one that derives from the editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. A selection of Quarto variants and plausible unadopted editorial readings are also included. Thus, for example, at Act 1 Scene 1 line 299, “plighted = F. Q = pleated.” This indicates that we have retained the Folio reading “plighted” and that “pleated” is an interestingly different reading in the Quarto.
KEY FACTS
MAJOR PARTS: (with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes on stage) Lear (22%/188/10), Edgar (11%/98/10), Earl of Kent (11%/127/12), Earl of Gloucester (10%/118/12), Edmund (9%/79/9), Fool (7%/58/6), Goneril (6%/53/8), Regan (5%/73/8), Duke of Albany (5%/58/5), Cordelia (3%/31/4), Duke of Cornwall (3%/63/5), Oswald (2%/38/7).
LINGUISTIC MEDIUM: 75% verse, 25% prose.
DATE: 1605–6. Performed at court December 1606; draws on old Leir play (published 1605); seems to refer to eclipses of September and October 1605; borrows from books by Samuel Harsnett and John Florio that were published in 1603.
SOURCES: Based on The True Chronicle Historie of King Leir and his Three Daughters, an old play of unknown authorship that was in the London theatrical repertoire in the early 1590s, but makes many changes, including alteration of providential Christian to pagan language and the introduction of a tragic ending. The Lear story also appeared in other sources familiar to Shakespeare: The Mirrour for Magistrates (edition of 1574), Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587), and book 2 canto 10 of Edmund Spenser’s epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590). In all versions of the story before Shakespeare’s, there is a “romance” ending whereby the old king is restored to his daughter Cordelia and to the throne. The Gloucester subplot is derived from the story of the Paphlagonian king in book 2 chapter 10 of The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney (1590): a blind old man is led to the top of a cliff from where he contemplates suicide because he has been deceived by his bastard son; the good son returns and encounters the bad one in a chivalric duel. The story was intended to exemplify both “true natural goodness” and “wretched ungratefulness”; a few chapters later (2.15), Sidney tells of a different credulous king who is tricked into mistrusting his virtuous son. The characters of “Poor Tom” and the Fool are entirely Shakespearean creations, though some of the language of demonic possession feigned by Edgar is borrowed from Samuel Harsnett’s Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603), a work of propaganda about Catholic plots and faked exorcisms that Shakespeare probably read because of the Stratford origins of one of the exorcizing priests, Robert Debdale. The language of the play and some of its philosophical ideas reveal that Shakespeare had also been reading The Essayes of Montaigne in John Florio’s English translation (1603).
TEXT: Published in Quarto in 1608 under the title M. William Shakspeare: HIS True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King LEAR and his three Daughters. With the vnfortunate life of Edgar, sonne and heire to the Earle of Gloster, and his sullen and assumed humor of TOM of Bedlam: As it was played before the Kings Maiestie at Whitehall vpon S. Stephans night in Christmas Hollidayes. By his Maiesties seruants playing vsually at the Gloabe on the Bancke-side. This text was very poorly printed, partly because its printer (Nicholas Okes) was unaccustomed to setting plays and also because it seems to derive from Shakespeare’s own working manuscript, which would have been difficult to read. Quarto includes about 300 lines that are not in the 1623 Folio text, which was entitled “The Tragedy of King Lear,” and has clear signs of derivation from the theatrical playbook (though, to complicate matters, the Folio printing was also influenced by a reprint of the Quarto that appeared in 1619 as one of the ten plays published by Thomas Pavier in an attempt to produce a collected Shakespeare). The Folio in turn has about 100 lines that are not in the Quarto, and nearly 1,000 lines have variations of word or phrase. The two early texts thus represent two different stages in the life of the play, with extensive revision having been carried out, either systematically or incrementally. Revisions include diminution of the prominence given to the invading French army (perhaps for political reasons), clarification of Lear’s motives for dividing his kingdom, and weakening of the role of Albany (including reassignment from him to Edgar of the play’s closing speech, and thus by implication—since it was a convention of Shakespearean tragedy that the new man in power always has the last word—of the right to rule Britain). Among the more striking cuts are the mock trial of Goneril in the hovel and the moment of compassion when loyal servants apply a palliative to Gloucester’s bleeding eyes. For centuries, editors have conflated the Quarto and Folio texts, creating a play that Shakespeare never wrote. We endorse the body of scholarship since the 1980s and the new editorial tradition in which Folio and Quarto are regarded as discrete entities. We have edited the more theatrical Folio text but have corrected its errors (which are plentiful, since much of it was set in type by “Compositor E,” the apprentice who was by far the worst printer in Isaac Jaggard’s shop). The influence of Quarto copy on the Folio is of great assistance in making these corrections. Textual notes are perforce more numerous than for any other work by Shakespeare; several hundred Quarto variants are listed. All the most significant Quarto-only passages are printed at the end of the play.
THE TRAGEDY
OF KING LEAR
LIST OF PARTS
LEAR, King of Britain
GONERIL, Lear’s eldest daughter
REGAN, Lear’s middle daughter
CORDELIA, Lear’s youngest daughter
Duke of ALBANY, Goneril’s husband
Duke of CORNWALL, Regan’s husband
King of FRANCE, suitor and later husband to Cordelia
Duke of BURGUNDY, suitor to Cordelia
Earl of KENT, later disguised as Caius
Earl of GLOUCESTER
EDGAR, Gloucester’s son, later disguised as Poor Tom
EDMUND, Gloucester’s illegitimate son
OLD MAN, Gloucester’s tenant
CURAN, Gloucester’s retainer
Lear’s FOOL
OSWALD, Goneril’s steward
GENTLEMAN, a Knight serving Lear
GENTLEMAN, attendant on Cordelia
SERVANT of Cornwall
HERALD
CAPTAIN
Knights attendant upon Lear, other Attendants, Messengers, Soldiers, Servants, and Trumpeters
Act 1 Scene 1
running scene 1
Enter Kent, Gloucester and Edmund
KENT I thought the king had more affected1 the Duke of
Albany than Cornwall.
GLOUCESTER It did always seem so to us: but now in the division
of the kingdom it appears not which of the dukes he values
most, for qualities are so weighed that curiosity in neither5
can make choice of either’s moiety.
KENT Is not this your son, my lord?
GLOUCESTER His breeding8, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so
often blushed to acknowledge him that now I am brazed9 to’t.
KENT I cannot conceive10 you.
GLOUCESTER Sir, this young fellow’s mother could; whereupon
she grew round-wombed and had indeed, sir, a son for her
cradle ere13 she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a
fault14?
KENT I cannot wish the fault undone15, the issue of it being
so proper16.
GLOUCESTER But I have a son, sir, by order of law, some17 year elder
than this, who yet is no dearer in my account18, though this
knave came something saucily to the world before he was
sent for: yet was his mother fair, there was good sport at his
making and the whoreson21 must be acknowledged.— Do you
