Did Shakespeare or some other person revise the text of King Lear? Did that person or persons have second thoughts about the work published in Quarto (Q) in 1607–8, dropping or adding scenes, changing characterizations, and reshaping the play to transform the text posthumously published in the Folio (F) of 1623? Or was Shakespeare more concerned with the plays he was writing subsequently, no longer concerned about making revisions to earlier work, leaving that to other playwrights or to changes that evolved in performances? Anxious to preserve as Shakespeare's great work what has come down to us, editors of his plays through the centuries have fabricated yet a third text, conflating all the lines in both Q and F to avoid losing anything he may have written. But others have argued that such a union of texts is a bastard version of the play that does not represent authorial intention or accomplishment at any point of time. Questions about the text of Lear that remain, then, which computational stylistics can address, are these: (1) did one person (or more, as in performances over time) revise the play, and (2) was Shakespeare involved?

In 1930, E. K. Chambers listed the relevant texts beginning with the entry for the play in the Stationers' Register.