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The Complete Text of
Shakespeare's King Lear
with Quarto and
Folio Variations, Annotations, and Commentary
by Dr. Larry A. Brown, professor of theater, Nashville, TN
Table of contents
Various scholarly editions were consulted for notes, including those by David Bevington, Russell Fraser, Alfred Harbage, and John Dover Wilson. Stage histories come from Alexander Leggatt's King Lear: Shakespeare in Performance (1991).
The text and annotations are complete, but the comments for each scene are a work in progress, and not all links are active yet. Currently there are comments for I.i, I.ii, I.iv, II.iv, III.ii, IV.i, IV.ii, IV.vi, V.iii.
A note on the text:
There are two major textual traditions for King Lear : the First Quarto (Q1) published in 1608, and the version of the play in the First Folio (F1), the first collected works of Shakespeare, published in 1623, seven years after his death.
Q1 contains about 300 lines not in F1, while F1 has about 100 lines not in Q1. For centuries editors have debated over the merits of both texts. Is Q1 based on Shakespeare's own handwritten copy, and thus more authentic? Is F1 Shakespeare's own and final revision, or the work of editors? As long as scholars must publish, there will be disagreement over the status of the texts of Lear.
I make no claims to being a textual scholar, but I wanted to indicate some of the major differences between these texts. I have followed the Folio edition for the most part, while indicating additional lines from the Quarto in brackets and lines not found in the Quarto in italics. Different words in Q1 are also in brackets, when other than differences in spelling. Spelling has been modernized throughout, and name references made consistent.
Introductory notes on Tragedy:
Also see "Enjoying King Lear" by Ed Friedlander, an excellent resource of commentary on the play
King Lear study site by Greg Smith
Please email comments to: larry.brown@lipscomb.edu
See my home
page for other academic studies of:
John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi
Ovid's Metamorphoses
the Hindu epic Mahabharata
The Ring of the Nibelung
Stephen Sondheim
since October 2001
Latest revision: July 2003
How to cite this page for use in a paper or electronic report:
Brown, Larry A. King Lear. http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/files/Lear/lear_home.htm (today’s date)
