I

The two texts of King Lear present obvious editorial and critical problems. The Quarto of 1608 prints about 283 lines that are not printed in the 1623 Folio; the Folio prints about 100 that are not printed in the Quarto.¹ A variation of nearly 400 lines in a text of around 3,300 lines is significant;² in addition, there are also a very large number of variant substantive readings. However, far from alarming editors and critics to the delicate problems involved in printing and discussing a single play called King Lear, this wealth of material has been treated as an ample blessing from which a “best text” of Shakespeare’s King Lear may be evolved. Indeed, the standard methods of bibliography and editing—the application of critical principles “to the textual raw material of the authoritative preserved documents in order to approach as nearly as may be to the ideal of the authorial fair copy by whatever necessary process of recovery, independent emendation, or conflation of authorities”³—such methods and the accepted assumptions of the origins of each text have led to the editorial habit of establishing and publishing a King Lear text that is produced by a process of conflation, by the exercise of a moderate and quasi-scientific eclecticism, and by a studied disregard for the perils of intentionalism.⁴ In a recent article Kenneth Muir writes:

This statement reveals certain clear attitudes of editors to their task. It is assumed that there is one primal lost text, an “ideal King Lear” that Shakespeare wrote, and that we have two corrupted copies of it. It is hypothesized that F is a less corrupt version of the ideal text than Q, though both preserve features of the ideal original; and that while there is more corruption in Q, some uncorrupted elements remain that can mitigate the admittedly lesser corruption of F. The concept of the “ideal King Lear” is problematic here, first, because its existence cannot be known, and second, because in the absence of such knowledge it is nevertheless further assumed that all alterations of any nature from that imaginary text are by hands other than Shakespeare’s. Such an assumption is based on no evidence, and is counter to our experience of authors and their habits—for example, the modification of texts after first publication by Jonson, Pope, Yeats, James, and Pinter. Of course, it is conceivable that this standard hypothesis may indeed be true, but the confidence with which it is assumed is unwarranted, and the lack of a constant awareness that it is an assumption leads to poorly founded judgments. For instance, a statement such as “editors are still bound to accept a number of readings from the inferior text” is merely an editor’s justification of the right to be eclectic; although editors may well be advised at times to adopt readings where comparison of texts indicates simple misprints or nonsensical readings, circumspection and wariness are always necessary, for nonsense may merely be sense we do not yet understand, and further we cannot know that alterations between Q and F are not authorial in origin. Most editors admit that the examination of the two texts leads to the conclusion that editing has taken place, and yet they are generally reluctant to take that editing seriously.

Having asserted the necessity of a decent skepticism in relation to the concept of the “ideal” text, I wish to argue that in a situation where statements about textual status are never more than hypotheses based upon the current models of thought about textual recension, it is not demonstrably erroneous to work with the possibility (a) that there may be no single “ideal play” of King Lear (all of “what Shakespeare wrote”), that there may never have been one, and that what we create by conflating both texts is merely an invention of editors and scholars; (b) that for all its problems Q is an authoritative version of the play of King Lear; and (c) that F may indeed be a revised version of the play, that its additions and omissions may constitute Shakespeare’s considered modification of the earlier text, and that we certainly cannot know that they are not.⁶

Of course, I am once more introducing, after over fifty years of relative quiescence, the specter of “continuous copy”: not, I would hope, in the confident, fantastic, and disintegrationist mode of Robertson and Dover Wilson, but in a skeptical and conservative way. In his famous lecture The Disintegration of Shakespeare, E. K. Chambers dismissed the excesses of his contemporaries as much by the force of ironic rhetoric and an attractive appeal to common sense as by any real proof; but he nowhere succeeded in denying the possibility of authorial reworking. He instanced the few cases of recorded extensive revision as indicative that revision of any kind was rare; and he asserted as follows: “That any substantial revision, as distinct perhaps from a mere abridgement, would entail a fresh application for the Master’s allowance must, I think, be taken for granted. The rule was that his hand must be ‘at the latter end of the booke they doe play’; and in London, at least, any company seriously departing from the allowed book would run a considerable risk.”⁷ Which is an interesting hypothesis; but what in this connection would constitute “substantial revision” or “serious departure”? Chambers to the contrary, that same common sense which leads me to praise him in his rejection of disintegrationist excesses leads me nevertheless to believe that a play like King Lear may have undergone revision beyond “mere abridgement”—what Chambers, following Henslowe, might classify as “altering”—without the necessity of resubmission to the Master of the Revels.

In putting forward this argument I have ignored many of the complexities of relation that have been the stuff of textual debate for many years. I have done so because they are merely the current working hypotheses of the editing world, and because they are not immediately relevant to my contention. I would maintain that Q and F King Lear are sufficiently dissimilar that they should not be conflated, but should be treated as two versions of a single play, both having authority. To substantiate my argument I wish to present three brief studies. In the first I will deal with a short exchange of dialogue to illustrate the impact of conflation on the text as script for the theater; in the second and third I will discuss the varying presentations of Albany and Edgar in Q and F.

II

In Act 2 Lear discovers Kent in the stocks; the two texts present the following dialogue (2.4.12-23):⁸ first Q:

then F:

Editors here customarily conflate these texts so that both “No no, they would not/ Yes they haue,” and Kent’s “By Iuuo, I sweare I” are retained; in consequence four exchanges are produced where three exist in each of the original texts. Muir’s note in the Arden text (p. 83) is concerned with the integrity of the Q lines and critics’ opinions of their quality. But the more important issue is that his text (like most others) presents us with a reading that has no authority. If F was printed from a copy of Q, as is widely and reasonably accepted, then one ought to assume that any omission may have had a purpose: but that assumption is doubly imperative when new material is included in F that appears to make up for the omission. However, even if one ignores the standard theory concerning the recension, there is still no case for four exchanges. In each text the climax on the third exchange is powerful, and sufficient; neither can be proved to be un-Shakespearean—they are both probably “what Shakespeare wrote”; and so respect for the theatrical proportions of the play dictates that conflation cannot be other than textual tinkering, distortion. Either Q or F; not both together.

III

As the above passage indicates, the editor, like any other reader of Shakespeare, must always be conscious that play texts are scripts for performance; when they are realized on the stage, presence, absence, action, inaction, speech, and silence have far more impact than when they are noted on the printed page. With this observation in mind I wish to argue that Q and F reveal significant differences in the roles of Albany and Edgar, differences sufficiently great that one is obliged to interpret their characters differently in each, and, especially in relation to the alterations in the last scene, to appreciate a notable contrast in the tone and meaning of the close of each text. These differences go beyond those which may be expected when two texts descend in corrupted form from a common original; they indicate that a substantial and consistent recasting of certain aspects of the play has taken place. In brief, the part of Albany is more developed in Q than in F, and in Q he closes the play a mature and victorious duke assuming responsibility for the kingdom; in F he is a weaker character, avoiding responsibility. The part of Edgar is shorter in F than in Q; however, whereas in Q he ends the play a young man overwhelmed by his experience, in F he is a young man who has learned a great deal, and who is emerging as the new leader of the ravaged society.

In both texts Albany speaks little in the first act. Neither Albany nor Cornwall speaks in the first scene in Q; their joint exclamation “Deare Sir forbeare” (1.1.162) appears in F only. In the fourth scene, which Goneril dominates in both texts, Q lacks two of the eight brief speeches that F assigns to Albany, and a phrase that completes a third. Missing are “Pray Sir be patient” (1.4.270) and “Well, you may feare too farre” (1.4.338), and the phrase “Of what hath moued you” (1.4.283), which in F succeeds “My Lord, I am guiltlesse, as I am ignorant.” Albany, who is bewildered and ineffectual in either text, is more patently so in Q, where he is given no opportunity to urge patience in response to Lear’s question—“is it your will that wee prepare any horses” (F “Is it your will, speake Sir? Prepare my Horses”) (1.4.267)—and no opportunity to warn Goneril of the unwisdom of her acts. Goneril’s part also is smaller in Q than in F—she lacks 1.4.322-43—but she dominates the scene nevertheless.

However, when Albany enters in the fourth act after a period in which he does not ride to Gloucester’s house with Goneril and is mentioned only in the context of the always incipient conflict between himself and Cornwall, his reappearance is different in quality in each text. In both texts the scene begins with Oswald reporting Albany’s disaffection (4.2.3-11) while Goneril scorns “the Cowish terror of his spirit” (4.2.12). In F Albany’s speech on entering is very brief:

However, Q continues:

And Goneril’s prompt dismissal “No more, the text is foolish” leads to a longer speech of powerful moral reproach, likening the sisters to tigers, and reaching its climax in the pious pronouncement that

The speeches that follow in Q are much reduced in F, and both Albany and Goneril lose lines. The cuts in Goneril’s part are largely references to Albany as a “morall foole,” statements critical of his mild response to the invasion of France; her stature is not notably diminished by the loss. The reduction of Albany’s part, by contrast, severely reduces his theatrical impact. In F he is left with barely six lines between his entrance and that of the messenger, and there is no sense of the new strong position that lines such as the following, even allowing for Goneril’s belittling rejection, establish in Q:

In Q the succeeding lines of moral outrage at the news of the blinding of Gloucester present Albany as a man of righteous wrath, outraged by injustice; the same sequence in F presents Albany as equally outraged, but because of the brevity of his previous rebukes he appears more futile in context, less obviously a man capable of action. The cutting diminishes his stature.

Although Albany does assert himself in the fifth act in both texts, he is much stronger in Q by virtue of the presence of three passages that are not his in F. At his entrance he asserts control over the situation in both texts with his first speech; Q reads:

The speech continues in Q, but not in F:

The inclusion of this passage in Q gives immediate prominence to the complexity and scrupulousness of Albany’s understanding of the political and moral issues. More important, however, are the two alterations in the closing moments of the play: at 5.3.251 Q assigns to Albany the order “Hast thee for thy life,” which F gives to Edgar; and Q assigns the final four lines to Albany, which again F gives to Edgar. I shall discuss these changes more fully as I deal with Edgar, but it is sufficient to point out at this stage that Albany is in command throughout the last scene in Q, while in F he is considerably effaced at the close.

IV

In both Q and F Edgar presents far more complex problems than Albany, not least because he is intrinsically a more complex and difficult character even before textual variations are considered. Edgar’s part, which in conflated texts is second only to that of Lear in length,¹⁰ is reduced in size in F, but unlike Albany, Edgar receives some new material which, however it is interpreted, tends to focus attention more precisely upon him.

The differences in Edgar’s role between Q and F in the first act are not of major significance: at 1.2.98-100 Q includes and F omits an exchange between Edmund and Gloucester about Edgar that reveals more about Gloucester’s character than Edgar’s; F omits Edmund’s imitative discourse upon the current crisis and Edgar’s ironic reply “How long haue you been a sectary Astronomicall?” (1.2.151-57); and F includes a passage not in Q in which Edmund proposes concealing Edgar in his lodging, and recommends going armed, to the surprise of his brother (1.2.172-79). More important variations appear in the third act. At 3.4.37-38 in F (after a stage direction “Enter Edgar, and Foole,” which contradicts Kent’s speech a few lines later “What art thou that dost grumble there i’th’ straw? Come forth”), Edgar utters a line that Q lacks: “Fathom, and halfe, Fathom and halfe; poore Tom”; this offstage cry makes a chilling theatrical introduction to Edgar-as-Tom, and it is moreover the event that, coupled with his entrance, appears to propel Lear finally into madness. Later in the third act F omits material that Q includes. F lacks the trial of Goneril that Lear conducts with the support of Edgar and the Fool (3.6.17-56). While F provides the Fool with a new last line in the play “And Ile go to bed at noone” (3.6.88), it omits Kent’s tender speech over Lear in Q, which begins “Oppressed nature sleepes” (3.6.100-104). However, very important alterations in this middle section of the play follow immediately; they are F’s omission of the soliloquy with which Edgar closes 3.6 in Q and F’s minor amplification of Edgar’s first speech in the fourth act, two speeches that provide the transitions to and from the climactic scene of the blinding of Gloucester. These alterations need to be discussed in the larger context of the character and function of Edgar in the play.

In recent years serious challenges have been made to the traditional conception of Edgar as the good, devoted, abused but patient, loving son. Some of this examination has led to the formulation of extreme positions in which Edgar has appeared as almost as culpable and vicious as Edmund, dedication to an ideal of selfless virtuous support being interpreted as an unconscious psychic violence, a dangerous self-righteousness that must exercise itself on others.¹¹ It is unnecessary, however, to censure Edgar so strongly to accommodate some of the distance that one frequently feels from him; one may allow him his virtue while still seeing its weakness. Speaking much in aside and soliloquy, Edgar is distanced theatrically from many of the events of the play. However, despite his involvement with Lear in the mad scenes, he also appears at times to be distanced emotionally from the events around him; his moral commentary reflects his response to the events, his assessment of his philosophical position in their light. The problem is that his response is frequently inadequate. As the play proceeds Edgar is obliged to confront the shallowness of his rationalizations, and yet much of the time he nevertheless appears impervious to the new knowledge that is being forced upon him. He possesses a naively pious and optimistic faith in the goodness of the world and the justice of the gods, and in his own youthful, romantic vision of his role in this world of conflict. In his mind his father’s despair will be conquered by his endless encouragement; the triumphant climax will be the restoration to Gloucester of the knowledge of his son’s existence and readiness to go off to recover his dukedom for him. The mode of Edgar’s thought is Christian romantic-heroic, in which virtue usually triumphs splendidly. That it bears little relation to the realities of the universe in which the play takes place is evident; but it does save Gloucester from abject misery, and provides incidentally a happy, well-deceived death for him. We can appreciate Edgar’s love and concern for his father, while doubting the maturity of many of his judgments.

It is in the context of this conception of Edgar, which is appropriate to either text, that I wish to demonstrate the major alterations in the role. When the soliloquy beginning “When we our betters see bearing our woes” is spoken at the close of 3.6. in Q (3.6.105-18), we are aware of Edgar’s ability to comment upon the king’s suffering, the power of fellowship, and his capacity to endure; in F, which lacks these meditations, Edgar has played a very small part in a rather brief scene, and the play rushes to the blinding of Gloucester. But F compensates for these cuts by expanding the speech with which Edgar opens the fourth act in both texts by adding an extra sentence. The speech reads:

But F continues:

And then Gloucester enters. In both texts Edgar expresses the philosophic confidence of the man who has reached the bottom, but in F Edgar speaks still more facilely courageous lines of resolution against fortune just prior to having the inadequacy of his vision exposed by the terrible entrance of his father. What the revision in F achieves is this. The play is shortened and speeded by the loss from 3.6 and the opening of 4.1 of about 54 lines (three minutes of playing time at least). The absence of Edgar’s moral meditation from the end of 3.6 brings the speech at 4.1.1 into sharp focus, isolating it more obviously between the blinding and the entrance of Gloucester; in F the two servants do not remain onstage after Cornwall’s exit. The additional lines at this point emphasize the hollowness of Edgar’s assertions; while the quantity of sententiousness is reduced, its nature is made more emphatically evident. Edgar gains in prominence, ironically enough, by the loss of a speech, and the audience becomes more sharply aware of his character.

The last act reveals major alterations that surpass those briefly described in the discussion of Albany. In both texts Edgar describes the death of his father with rhetorical fullness and elaborate emotional dramatization (5.3.181-99). In Q, however, he is given an additional speech of seventeen lines (5.3.204-21) only briefly interrupted by Albany, in which he reports his meeting with Kent. The removal of this speech not only speeds the last act by the elimination of material of no immediate importance to the plot but also reduces the length of the delay between Edmund’s “This speech of yours hath mou’d me,/ And shall perchance do good” (5.3.199-200) and the sending of an officer to Lear. It also diminishes the sense of Edgar as the immature, indulgent man displaying his heroic tale of woe, for in F Albany’s command “If there be more, more wofull, hold it in” (5.3.202) is obeyed; in Q by contrast Edgar nevertheless continues:

and the speech reveals Edgar’s regard for his own dramatic role in the recent history:

F, then, maintains the fundamental nature of Edgar as philosophical agent through the play, but in the last act reduces somewhat his callowness, his easy indulgence of his sensibility in viewing the events through which he is living. In so doing F develops Edgar into a man worthy to stand with the dukes at the close of the play, capable of assuming power.

The elevation of Edgar at the close and relative reduction of Albany that distinguish F from Q can be documented from three other places. At 5.3.229¹³ in Q Edgar says to Albany “Here comes Kent sir,” but “Here comes Kent” in F. The transfer of the command “Hast thee for thy life” (5.3.251) from Albany in Q to Edgar in F gives Edgar a more active role in the urgent events; indeed, Q may indicate that it is Edgar who is to run. All Edgar’s lines after “Hast thee for thy life” are shared by Q and F apart from the last four, which Q assigns to Albany. Though they are partial lines at most, they are susceptible of quite different interpretations according to whether Edgar speaks the last lines or not. If one considers Edgar’s behavior in Q in the light of his lachrymose speech about Kent and his apparently subordinate role to Albany, he appears to be silenced by Lear’s death: initially in Q he cries out “He faints my Lord, my Lord” (5.3.311), then appeals to Lear “Look vp my Lord” (312), only to say after Kent has assured him of the death “O he is gone indeed” (315), and to fall silent for the rest of the play. By contrast, F omits the “O” in this last statement, and then gives Edgar the last lines. In Q, then, Edgar concludes the play stunned to silence by the reality of Lear’s death, a very young man who does not even answer Albany’s appeal “Friends of my soule, you twaine,/ Rule in this Realme” (5.3.319-20), so that Albany reluctantly but resolutely accepts the obligation to rule: “The waight of this sad time we must obey” (323). This characterization of Edgar is a far cry from the Edgar of F who comes forward as a future ruler when he enables Albany to achieve his objective of not ruling; F’s Edgar is a young man of limited perceptions concerning the truth of the world’s harsh realities, but one who has borne some of the burdens and appears capable of handling (better than anybody else) the responsibilities that face the survivors.¹⁴

In summary, Q and F embody two different artistic visions. In Q, Edgar remains an immature young man and ends the play devastated by his experience, while Albany stands as the modest, diffident, but strong and morally upright man. In F Edgar grows into a potential ruler, a well-intentioned, resolute man in a harsh world, while Albany, a weaker man, abdicates his responsibilities. In neither text is the prospect for the country a matter of great optimism, but the vision seems bleaker and darker in F, where the young Edgar, inexperienced in rule, faces the future with little support.

V

In discussing these two texts I have focused on what seem to me to be the two major issues of the revision; I have not attended to the absence of 4.3 from F, nor to the relatively minor but nevertheless significant differences in the speeches of Lear, the Fool, and Kent. However, I submit that this examination of the texts and the implications of their differences for interpretation and for performance make it clear that they must be treated as separate versions of King Lear, and that eclecticism cannot be a valid principle in deciding readings. Conflated texts such as are commonly printed are invalid, and should not be used either for production or for interpretation. Though they may give their readers all of “what Shakespeare wrote,” they do not give them Shakespeare’s play of King Lear, but a play created by the craft and imagination of learned scholars, a work that has no justification for its existence. The principle that more is better, that all is good, has no foundation. What we as scholars, editors, interpreters, and servants of the theatrical craft have to accept and learn to live by is the knowledge that we have two plays of King Lear sufficiently different to require that all further work on the play be based on either Q or F, but not the conflation of both.

Source

From Shakespeare: Pattern of Excelling Nature (1978), edited by David Bevington and Jay L. Halio. Copyright © 1978 by Associated University Presses. Reprinted with permission of Associated University Presses.

This paper is an enlarged version of that delivered at the International Shakespeare Association Congress in Washington, D.C., in April 1976. As a consequence of delivering the paper I have become aware that three scholars are currently writing dissertations arguing for the distinctness of the Quarto and Folio texts of King Lear: Steven Urkowitz of University of Chicago, Georgia Peters Burton of Bryn Mawr College, and Peter W. M. Blayney of Cambridge University; each of us has arrived at the same major conclusion independently of the others. I would like to thank my colleague Professor John M. Ellis for his helpful advice and criticism with respect to the argument of the first part of this paper.