Volume 31, Number 1 · February 2, 1984
The New Lear
By E.A.J. Honigmann
The Division of the Kingdoms: Shakespeare's Two Versions of 'King Lear'
edited by Gary Taylor, edited by Michael Warren
Oxford University Press (Clarendon Press), 489 pp., $67.00
Is it really possible that, after so many centuries of tinkering and bickering, the editors still have not produced a text of King Lear as Shakespeare would have wanted it? That the world has persuaded itself that this play is the master's masterpiece—without noticing that the editors have jumbled together words, lines, and episodes (from Q and F, the quarto text of 1608 and the folio text of 1623) that were actually meant to replace each other, and that sometimes make little sense as now printed? If so, we must salute the text of King Lear as the most successful hoax in the long history of Shakespeare fabrications.
Review, 2899 words
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