King Lear

Which edition?
For each production of a Shakespeare play, directors have to make decisions about which edition(s) to use and which cuts (if any) to make. At 3,487 lines, King Lear is Shakespeare's 7th longest play. It contains 25,221 words. If the text remains uncut, performances could last almost 4 hours. Regarding the current production, the director Bill Alexander writes:

I am thinking about cutting about 100 lines from a conflated text -

there are 300 lines from the Quarto which are cut in the Folio

there are 100 lines in the Folio which are not in the Quarto

the total cut from Quarto to Folio is roughly 200 lines

200 lines means approximately 15 minutes playing time.

Working in rehearsals with all available lines is the nearest thing possible to having the author in the room and us (director and actors) part of the process. The choices add to our debate about Shakespeare's intentions. They can only enrich the work of planning our King Lear.

Definitions of Quarto and Folio formats

Early Printed Editions of Shakespeare's Plays
A Quarto refers to a type of book: a flimsy, small volume that was cheap to produce. It consists of single Folio sheets, folded twice and then cut, effectively turning one page into four pages, hence the term 'Quarto'. These were then bound together and typically cost about 6d. 14 'Good Quartos' of Shakespeare's plays exist (i.e. texts produced from Shakespeare's own manuscripts, or transcripts of them), which more or less conform to their Folio counterparts. 13 of these 'Good Quartos' were printed within Shakespeare's lifetime including two (Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet) which are more authoritative versions of plays that had already been printed (see below). The plays are:

Titus Andronicus (1594), Richard II (1597), Richard III (1597), 1 Henry IV (1598), Love's Labour's Lost (1598), Romeo and Juliet (1599), 2 Henry IV (1600), The Merchant of Venice (1600), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600), Much Ado About Nothing (1600), Hamlet (1604-5), King Lear (1608), Troilus and Cressida (1609) and Othello (1622), published 6 years after Shakespeare's death.

The following 7 'Bad Quartos' (i.e. corrupt texts written down later by actors who had performed in the plays, or possibly by members of the audience) were also published during Shakespeare's lifetime. In Quarto format we have 19 plays, 18 of which made up half of the 36 plays in the First Folio of 1623 (Pericles was not included, perhaps because Heminges and Condell knew it was not entirely by Shakespeare):

2 Henry VI or 'The First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster (1594), 3 Henry VI or 'The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York' (1595), Romeo and Juliet (1597), Henry V (1600), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602), Hamlet (1603) and Pericles (1609).

The remaining 18 plays made their first appearance in the First Folio, published in 1623. The Folio was a result of an apparent labour of love on the part of two of the principal actors in Shakespeare's theatre company (The King's Men, formerly The Chamberlain's Men) called John Heminges and Henry Condell. There was also obvious financial gain to be had: the Folio cost 15 shillings (unbound) or a pound if it was bound (depending on the binding), which was very expensive for the time. However, it was a risk. The Folio format was mainly reserved for Bibles, as the bookseller was certain of recovering costs on them. Printing plays from public theatres in this format was virtually unheard of. Paper was very expensive at the time; the Folio format is characterised by a single folding of the sheets of paper that are to be bound together, hence bigger books, using more paper and at much greater expense to the printer. The risk paid off though, and if it weren't for the efforts of these two men, the following plays would probably not have survived:

The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, All's Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, King John, 1 Henry VI, Henry VIII, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra and Cymbeline.

We certainly owe them a debt of gratitude. The Folio is justly regarded as one of the most important books in the English language.

The Quarto and Folio Texts of <I>King Lear</I>
Each Shakespeare Quarto has its own individual characteristics. Some (most famously the first Quarto of Hamlet), bear evidence of being 'reported' texts; that is, pirated either by an actor or someone in the audience trying to memorise and jot down the play. The result is a pale imitation of the Hamlet the Folio gives us, suffering in terms of length and, more significantly, poetry. Anyone who has tried to quote a once-heard Shakespeare line from memory will usually reproduce the general meaning but lose the unique linguistic magic.

The 1623 First Folio's authority is largely unquestionable. Its two editors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, were actors in Shakespeare's company and therefore in a very good position to know the plays as they were performed on stage. There is a crucial distinction between knowing this and knowing the plays as Shakespeare first wrote them in the case of King Lear, for no other Shakespeare play that exists in multiple formats bears such strong evidence of revision from Quarto to Folio, apparently informed by attempts to perform it on stage. Shakespeare's plays survive only in print, edited and prepared by someone else, so what we are looking for behind each one is the 'perfect' manuscript. This thinking is wrong-headed though; Shakespeare was a playwright, not an author in the modern sense, and dramatic texts were often shaped by rehearsals and performances, determining not only what was feasible on stage, but also what was unpopular and best to cut. The 1608 Quarto, called The True Chronicle History of King Lear lacks about 100 lines that are in the Folio text (which calls itself The Tragedy of King Lear), but notably contains about 300 that aren't, including the 'mock trial' scene in the hovel on the heath during the storm. 'Reported' texts typically struggle to reproduce a play as performed, but never add significantly to it, suggesting strongly that the Quarto of Lear is not one of these. There is evidence that it was performed in 1606, so it seems safe to infer that the Quarto reflects what Shakespeare's company wanted those earlier audiences to see and hear. Somewhere around 1610, Shakespeare adapted the text for a revival, making additions and cuts (as previously discussed), and altering many words and phrases within speeches. Thus, there are many 'substantive' differences (i.e. differences in individual words) between Quarto and Folio. This can be illustrated by comparing Lear's opening line from each:

Q - 'Meanwhile we will express our darker purposes.'
F - 'Meanwhile we shall express our darker purpose.'

Painstaking studies show that the Quarto text bears strong linguistic parallels with the plays that chronologically precede it (All's Well, Timon, Othello), while the language of the Folio text is more akin to Shakespeare's late 'Romance' plays like The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline and The Tempest, thus strengthening the claim for the date of revision being around 1610. There is no evidence for performances of this revival, but we can say with near certainty that they must have taken place. Heminges and Condell would have been in the company, so would recognise it as being the 'final' theatrical state of the play, after Shakespeare had fine-tuned it, hence their inclusion of this version in the Folio.

This line of thinking about the texts of King Lear is quite recent. Editors have long assumed that the two represent imperfect versions of a perfect Shakespearean original, which can be recovered by conflating (i.e. combining) them. The tradition of conflation was begun in 1709 by the editor Nicholas Rowe, and was basically followed until 1986 when the editors of the Oxford Shakespeare rightly insisted upon our acknowledgement of Quarto and Folio Lear as two distinct texts. This is fine for the study, but on the stage we can, and should, have more freedom to mine both texts for their respective merits. The substantive readings of the Folio text are, as a rule, superior to those of the Quarto, so opting for them is to opt for comparatively finer poetry, while the Quarto's 'mock trial' scene has repeatedly proved an immensely powerful moment in performances of the play, speaking directly to twentieth century audiences informed philosophically by the 'theatre of the absurd', pioneered by writers like Samuel Beckett as a way of illustrating the desperate futility of man's existence (a huge thematic concern in King Lear). That the scene was cut from Shakespeare's later adaptation may suggest that it didn't have the same poignant resonance with Jacobean audiences.

Oliver Ford Davies, in Playing Lear, writes:

The Fool loses many of his rhymes in F, and becomes more of a choric commentator. Michael Williams, who played the Fool twice for the RSC (with Eric Porter and Donald Sinden), found that when he came to play a pure folio text in the Gielgud radio version he lost a good deal of his comedy, and had to compensate by making his Fool less harsh . The part that is most enhanced is Edgar, usually at the expense of Albany. Goneril becomes less intransigent in F, while Cordelia is made more of a war leader. Lear's part is only really affected at the beginning and end, but there are small but significant changes elsewhere. For example, at 1.4.203 when Lear asks 'Who is it that can tell me who I am', Q gives the reply 'Lear's shadow' to Lear, F to the Fool. In scene one, Q has 'The map there', F 'Give me the map there.' Conversely at 1.5.17 Q has 'Why, what canst thou tell, my boy?', F 'What canst tell, boy?' The variations may seem slight, but taken collectively they are important indications of character. Do I play a blunt, staccato Lear, or a more polite, measured king? Generally, Q seems to me a tough, harsh first version, F a mellower, more polished reworking. Why? Did Shakespeare think he'd gone too far with Lear, the Fool, Goneril and Poor Tom? Was he reacting to court of public disapproval? Did actors' 'improvements' somehow get into the F draft? Did someone else think the verse needed tidying into neat iambic pentameters? [p.36]


			For each production of a Shakespeare play, directors have to make decisions about which edition(s) to use and which cuts (if any) to make. At 3,487 lines, King Lear is Shakespeare's 7th longest play. It contains 25,221 words. If the text remains uncut, performances could last almost 4 hours. Regarding the current production, the director Bill Alexander writes: I am thinking about cutting about 100 lines from a conflated text - there are 300 lines from the Quarto which are cut in the Folio there are 100 lines in the Folio which are not in the Quarto the total cut from Quarto to Folio is roughly 200 lines 200 lines means approximately 15 minutes playing time. Working in rehearsals with all available lines is the nearest thing possible to having the author in the room and us (director and actors) part of the process. The choices add to our debate about Shakespeare's intentions. They can only enrich the work of planning our King Lear. A Quarto refers to a type of book: a flimsy, small volume that was cheap to produce. It consists of single Folio sheets, folded twice and then cut, effectively turning one page into four pages, hence the term 'Quarto'. These were then bound together and typically cost about 6d. 14 'Good Quartos' of Shakespeare's plays exist (i.e. texts produced from Shakespeare's own manuscripts, or transcripts of them), which more or less conform to their Folio counterparts. 13 of these 'Good Quartos' were printed within Shakespeare's lifetime including two (Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet) which are more authoritative versions of plays that had already been printed (see below). The plays are: Titus Andronicus (1594), Richard II (1597), Richard III (1597), 1 Henry IV (1598), Love's Labour's Lost (1598), Romeo and Juliet (1599), 2 Henry IV (1600), The Merchant of Venice (1600), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600), Much Ado About Nothing (1600), Hamlet (1604-5), King Lear (1608), Troilus and Cressida (1609) and Othello (1622), published 6 years after Shakespeare's death. The following 7 'Bad Quartos' (i.e. corrupt texts written down later by actors who had performed in the plays, or possibly by members of the audience) were also published during Shakespeare's lifetime. In Quarto format we have 19 plays, 18 of which made up half of the 36 plays in the First Folio of 1623 (Pericles was not included, perhaps because Heminges and Condell knew it was not entirely by Shakespeare): 2 Henry VI or 'The First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster (1594), 3 Henry VI or 'The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York' (1595), Romeo and Juliet (1597), Henry V (1600), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602), Hamlet (1603) and Pericles (1609). The remaining 18 plays made their first appearance in the First Folio, published in 1623. The Folio was a result of an apparent labour of love on the part of two of the principal actors in Shakespeare's theatre company (The King's Men, formerly The Chamberlain's Men) called John Heminges and Henry Condell. There was also obvious financial gain to be had: the Folio cost 15 shillings (unbound) or a pound if it was bound (depending on the binding), which was very expensive for the time. However, it was a risk. The Folio format was mainly reserved for Bibles, as the bookseller was certain of recovering costs on them. Printing plays from public theatres in this format was virtually unheard of. Paper was very expensive at the time; the Folio format is characterised by a single folding of the sheets of paper that are to be bound together, hence bigger books, using more paper and at much greater expense to the printer. The risk paid off though, and if it weren't for the efforts of these two men, the following plays would probably not have survived: The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, All's Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale, King John, 1 Henry VI, Henry VIII, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra and Cymbeline. We certainly owe them a debt of gratitude. The Folio is justly regarded as one of the most important books in the English language. Each Shakespeare Quarto has its own individual characteristics. Some (most famously the first Quarto of Hamlet), bear evidence of being 'reported' texts; that is, pirated either by an actor or someone in the audience trying to memorise and jot down the play. The result is a pale imitation of the Hamlet the Folio gives us, suffering in terms of length and, more significantly, poetry. Anyone who has tried to quote a once-heard Shakespeare line from memory will usually reproduce the general meaning but lose the unique linguistic magic. The 1623 First Folio's authority is largely unquestionable. Its two editors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, were actors in Shakespeare's company and therefore in a very good position to know the plays as they were performed on stage. There is a crucial distinction between knowing this and knowing the plays as Shakespeare first wrote them in the case of King Lear, for no other Shakespeare play that exists in multiple formats bears such strong evidence of revision from Quarto to Folio, apparently informed by attempts to perform it on stage. Shakespeare's plays survive only in print, edited and prepared by someone else, so what we are looking for behind each one is the 'perfect' manuscript. This thinking is wrong-headed though; Shakespeare was a playwright, not an author in the modern sense, and dramatic texts were often shaped by rehearsals and performances, determining not only what was feasible on stage, but also what was unpopular and best to cut. The 1608 Quarto, called The True Chronicle History of King Lear lacks about 100 lines that are in the Folio text (which calls itself The Tragedy of King Lear), but notably contains about 300 that aren't, including the 'mock trial' scene in the hovel on the heath during the storm. 'Reported' texts typically struggle to reproduce a play as performed, but never add significantly to it, suggesting strongly that the Quarto of Lear is not one of these. There is evidence that it was performed in 1606, so it seems safe to infer that the Quarto reflects what Shakespeare's company wanted those earlier audiences to see and hear. Somewhere around 1610, Shakespeare adapted the text for a revival, making additions and cuts (as previously discussed), and altering many words and phrases within speeches. Thus, there are many 'substantive' differences (i.e. differences in individual words) between Quarto and Folio. This can be illustrated by comparing Lear's opening line from each: Q - 'Meanwhile we will express our darker purposes.' F - 'Meanwhile we shall express our darker purpose.' Painstaking studies show that the Quarto text bears strong linguistic parallels with the plays that chronologically precede it (All's Well, Timon, Othello), while the language of the Folio text is more akin to Shakespeare's late 'Romance' plays like The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline and The Tempest, thus strengthening the claim for the date of revision being around 1610. There is no evidence for performances of this revival, but we can say with near certainty that they must have taken place. Heminges and Condell would have been in the company, so would recognise it as being the 'final' theatrical state of the play, after Shakespeare had fine-tuned it, hence their inclusion of this version in the Folio. This line of thinking about the texts of King Lear is quite recent. Editors have long assumed that the two represent imperfect versions of a perfect Shakespearean original, which can be recovered by conflating (i.e. combining) them. The tradition of conflation was begun in 1709 by the editor Nicholas Rowe, and was basically followed until 1986 when the editors of the Oxford Shakespeare rightly insisted upon our acknowledgement of Quarto and Folio Lear as two distinct texts. This is fine for the study, but on the stage we can, and should, have more freedom to mine both texts for their respective merits. The substantive readings of the Folio text are, as a rule, superior to those of the Quarto, so opting for them is to opt for comparatively finer poetry, while the Quarto's 'mock trial' scene has repeatedly proved an immensely powerful moment in performances of the play, speaking directly to twentieth century audiences informed philosophically by the 'theatre of the absurd', pioneered by writers like Samuel Beckett as a way of illustrating the desperate futility of man's existence (a huge thematic concern in King Lear). That the scene was cut from Shakespeare's later adaptation may suggest that it didn't have the same poignant resonance with Jacobean audiences. Oliver Ford Davies, in Playing Lear, writes: The Fool loses many of his rhymes in F, and becomes more of a choric commentator. Michael Williams, who played the Fool twice for the RSC (with Eric Porter and Donald Sinden), found that when he came to play a pure folio text in the Gielgud radio version he lost a good deal of his comedy, and had to compensate by making his Fool less harsh . The part that is most enhanced is Edgar, usually at the expense of Albany. Goneril becomes less intransigent in F, while Cordelia is made more of a war leader. Lear's part is only really affected at the beginning and end, but there are small but significant changes elsewhere. For example, at 1.4.203 when Lear asks 'Who is it that can tell me who I am', Q gives the reply 'Lear's shadow' to Lear, F to the Fool. In scene one, Q has 'The map there', F 'Give me the map there.' Conversely at 1.5.17 Q has 'Why, what canst thou tell, my boy?', F 'What canst tell, boy?' The variations may seem slight, but taken collectively they are important indications of character. Do I play a blunt, staccato Lear, or a more polite, measured king? Generally, Q seems to me a tough, harsh first version, F a mellower, more polished reworking. Why? Did Shakespeare think he'd gone too far with Lear, the Fool, Goneril and Poor Tom? Was he reacting to court of public disapproval? Did actors' 'improvements' somehow get into the F draft? Did someone else think the verse needed tidying into neat iambic pentameters? [p.36]