LET'S RESTATE THE PROBLEM

Hamlet and King Lear raise in an acute form the question whether it is possible to think of either play in aesthetic terms, since both exist in two versions that appear to have ‘authority’. Criticism as usually practised at the present time is almost entirely concerned with meanings or interpretation, and a good deal of effort has been expended on differentiating between the meanings of the two texts of King Lear; Shakespeare's revision of this play, it is claimed, has given us in effect two different plays, in which the roles of Albany and the Fool, for example, change considerably between Quarto and Folio, and a French invasion of England in one text is said to turn into a civil war in the other, and the changes could drastically affect interpretation. Many other authors have, of course, revised their work, and the existence of more than one version of a poem like Wordsworth's The Prelude, or variant endings of a novel like Great Expectations, or a play like Rosencrantz andGuildenstern are Dead, raises questions about the integrity of these as works of art. On what grounds may one version be privileged over another? The author's latest reworkings may in each case seem to some critics inferior to an earlier version.