ABSTRACT
Since the general acceptance of the hypothesis that the Folio version of King Lear represents Shakespeare’s own revising, in the main if not in the case of every last cut, addition, or substitution, there now are two versions of King Lear. Disagreement continues over the authorship of some if not all of the changes in the revised Folio text, and the Quarto-once a “bad” quarto but now viewed as just a very messy but authoritative quarto-has come to be recognized much as Stanley Wells describes it in the epigraph quoted above, “offering insight into the text of Shakespeare’s greatest play as he first conceived it.” For millions a conflated text continues to be the primary source of reading-as well as of theater and film experience-of King Lear, and perhaps that is not altogether a bad thing, as Harold Bloom implies in the passage quoted as epigraph. Another perspective is that of René Weis, editor of a parallel-text King Lear, who concludes his introduction, “It is the task of the editor to present them [‘every reader and audience’] with the best possible text. For the time being, that may have to be a Q/F parallel Lear” (40): et voilà!2 He adds, magnanimously and soundly, “While it seems unlikely that a conflated text of King Lear can in the future form a satisfactory basis for discussion, conflated Lears (as currently available in a number of excellent single editions by Muir 1989 and Hunter 1972, and in prestigious complete Shakespeares such as the Alexander, Riverside and Bevington texts) will undoubtedly continue to inspire readers and audiences” (5). This may appropriately be called the received edition.
