Enter KENT, GLOUCESTER, and EDMOND

KENT I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.

GLOUCESTER It did always seem so to us: but now in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most, for qualities are so weighed that curiosity in neither can make 5 choice of either's moiety.

KENT Is not this your son, my lord?

GLOUCESTER His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge. I have so often blushed to acknowledge him, that now I am brazed to't.

KENT I cannot conceive you.

GLOUCESTER Sir, this young fellow's mother could; whereupon she grew round wombed, and had indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed. Do you smell a fault?

KENT I cannot wish the fault undone, the issue of it being so proper.

GLOUCESTER But I have a son, sir, by order of law, some year elder 15 than this, who yet is no dearer in my account; though this knave came something saucily to the world before he was sent for, yet was his mother fair, there was good sport at his making, and the whoreson must be acknowledged. Do you know this noble gentleman, Edmond?

EDMOND No, my lord.

GLOUCESTER My lord of Kent; remember him hereafter as my honourable friend.

EDMOND My services to your lordship.

KENT I must love you and sue to know you better.

EDMOND Sir, I shall study deserving.

GLOUCESTER He hath been out nine years, and away he shall again. The king is coming.

Sennet. Enter KING LEAR, CORNWALL, ALBANY, GONERILL, REGAN, CORDELIA, and Attendants

LEAR Attend the lords of France and Burgundy, Gloucester.

GLOUCESTER I shall, my lord.

LEAR Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.

For over two hundred years editors of King Lear have based their work on the theory that the two early texts of the play, the first quarto of 1608 and the Folio of 1623, represent incomplete and faulty approximations of the play as Shakespeare originally wrote it. This single-text theory, so-called, is in the judgement of many scholars today no longer viable. In their view, an alternative theory – that Q and F (as they are known) represent different versions of the play – must replace it. These scholars believe that the quarto, poorly printed by Nicholas Okes's compositors in the winter of 1607–8, derives from an early manuscript copy in Shakespeare's hand, and that the Folio derives from a considerably altered and revised version, one more closely approximating the play as the author visualised it in performance, or as the King's Men actually staged it in the period between its first performances and the third decade of the seventeenth century.

The implications of the alternative, or revision, hypothesis are significant for a modern editor, whomust nowdecide which version to followas his copy-text. The advocates of a quarto-based edition have strong arguments to support them; so do those who advocate a Folio-based edition. Final choice will depend upon one's preference for an early manuscript version, as reflected in the first printed edition, however corrupt or incomplete, or for a revised version of the play which, though in many respects offering a better text, involves problems of its own. Among those problems is the vexed question of revision and the issue of authenticity or legitimacy that revision, including authorial revision, raises.

Recently revision and the issue of intentionality it involves have also come under renewed scrutiny by theoretical and practical critics alike. If years have passed between the original composition and the revision (in the case of King Lear, perhaps more than five years), may it not be argued that the original creative impulse and sense of design have long since vanished, that the author can no longer be sure what he intended? My colleague, Hershel Parker, has asked just such questions and provided answers to them in his stimulating enquiry, Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons (1984).

Date and sources of Shakespeare's King Lear

KING LEAR: DATE OF COMPOSITION AND FIRST PERFORMANCE

Although King Lear was probably performed earlier at the Globe, the first recorded performance of the play was at the court of King James I on St Stephen's Day during the Christmas holidays in 1606, as indicated in the Stationers’ Register (26 November 1607) and proclaimed on the title page of the first quarto (1608). Both the king and the playwright must have brought to the performance a keen sense of occasion. Shakespeare was a leading member of the company of actors honoured by royal patronage, the King's Men, and he knew that his play touched on a number of sensitive issues. In his first parliament, James had declared his intention of uniting the kingdoms of Scotland and England as one realm, Great Britain, restoring the ancient title and unity to the land. While he received considerable support from the lords and judges, the commons were hesitant and did not jump to ratify the proposal. Against this background of political activity, Lear's speech, ‘Know, that we have divided / In three our kingdom’, must have been startling indeed. James was in a position to see, however, that similar material had attracted theatrical attention as early as Sackville and Norton's Gorboduc (1561) and Locrine (c. 1585) as well as King Leir (c. 1590); moreover, he would quickly have recognised that Shakespeare's play vividly dramatised the tragic consequences of dividing the kingdom, as opposed to unifying it.

Composition of King Lear had begun by spring or summer 1605, possibly sooner. Gloucester's references to ‘These late eclipses in the sun and moon’ (1.2.91)may allude to actual eclipses in September and October 1605. The anonymous play, ‘The moste famous Chronicle historye of Leire kinge of England and His Three Daughters’, first entered in the Stationers’ Register on 14 May 1594 but performed earlier, was again entered (as ‘the Tragecall historie’) on 8 May 1605 and published, presumably for the first time, later that year. If Shakespeare's play was responsible for the revival of interest in the old play, whose title page proclaims that it was ‘diuers and sundry times lately acted’, then King Lear must have been on the boards by early 1605.