The One King Lear

412 Pages·2016·66.355 MB·English

by  Brian Vickers

The
One King Lear

The
One King Lear
./m,./m,./m,./m,
S I R B R I A N V I C K E R S
Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts
London, England 2016
Copyright © 2016 by Sir Brian Vickers
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer ic a
First printing
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n-P ublication Data
Names: Vickers, Brian, author.
Title: The one King Lear / Sir Brian Vickers.
Description: Cambridge, Mass a chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2015038987 | ISBN 9780674504844 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616. King Lear—
Criticism, Textual. | Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616. King Lear. |
Transmission of texts— England— History—17th c entury. | Shakespeare,
William, 1564–1616— Bibliography—F olios. 1623. | Shakespeare,
William, 1564–1616— Bibliography—Q uartos. | Okes, Nicholas.
Classifi cation: LCC PR2819 .V53 2016 | DDC 822.3/3— dc23
LC rec ord available at http:// lccn .l oc. g ov/ 2015038987
For my son Philip
musicus et medicus

Contents
Preface i x
A Note on References x xi
part 1 the quarto, 1608 1
chapter 1 King Lear at the Printer 3
chapter 2 Adjusting Text Space to Print Space in the
Shakespeare Folio and Quartos 3 6
chapter 3 Nicholas Okes Compresses the Play 7 2
chapter 4 Nicholas Okes Abridges It 1 29
part 2 the folio, 1623 171
chapter 5 One Play, One Manuscript, Two Printed Books 1 73
chapter 6 The Folio Editors Regularize Shakespeare 2 00
chapter 7 The King’s Men Abridge a Tragedy 2 25
part 3 the one king lear 267
chapter 8 The “Two Versions” Revisited 2 69
Conclusion: Toward a New Consensus 3 10
Appendix 1 Illustrations and Commentary 3 31
Appendix 2 Space Saving in Q1 King Lear 3 39
Notes 349
Index 3 85

Preface
Ever since I was fi rst attracted by Shakespeare, King Lear has for
me been his greatest play, a unique fusion of cruelty and compas-
sion. It offers a painful challenge to the characters in the action—as
to the spectators—of how to make sense of previously unrepresented
extremes of evil and suffering, and how to respond with moral out-
rage and compassionate help. I know that many other readers and
theatergoers share this view, and I take it that all of us will be con-
cerned to know which text best represents Shakespeare’s conception
of the play.
The two authoritative texts are the single-v olume Quarto edition
(1608), printed by Nicholas Okes for Nathaniel Butter, and the First
Folio (1623), printed by Isaac Jaggard for a consortium of publishers,
which collects thirty- six plays. The two texts differ in their makeup:
the Quarto lacks 102 lines (also many smaller phrases and single
words) not found in the Folio, whereas the Folio lacks 285 lines (and
some phrases and words) not found in the Quarto. Fortunately, the
missing sections are dif fer ent and complementary. If you w ere to
complete e ither version by adding the passages preserved by the
other, you would have, in terms of characters and events, two iden-
tical plays. The texts would still differ in many textual variants, due
to the execrable printing of the Quarto and offi cious editorial inter-
ventions in the Folio, but they would contain the same play. The
remarkable truth is that while other Shakespeare plays have texts
ix