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” indicatingone 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
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” indicatingone 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
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