King Lear Author: William Shakespeare | Language: English | ISBN:
1556852347 | Format: EPUB
King Lear Description
King Lear divides his kingdom between his two duplicitous daughters, banishing the loving Cordelia and the steadfast Kent. The King's acts of folly launch a hugely moving search for dignity, self-knowledge and wisdom on the grandest of scales. Three 90-minute cassettes.
- Series: Classic Books on Casettes
- Audio Cassette
- Publisher: Audio Book Contractors, LLC (January 1, 1992)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1556852347
- ISBN-13: 978-1556852343
- Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 5 x 8.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I have reviewed several current editions of King Lear and other Shakespearean plays, and was somewhat disappointed in the Folger edition of King Richard III. Nevertheless, the Folger Shakespeare Library edition of King Lear appears to be both accessible and scholarly, with solid reasoning behind its balance of the First Quarto with the First Folio versions of this intense and telling tragedy which we do well to revisit now.
My first love will always be Prof. Tucker Brook's redaction in the The Tragedy Of King Lear (The Yale Shakespeare) which against the academic preferences of the time chose the First Quarto over the First Folio. The reasons given by the Late Prof. are compelling, and brought about a generation of conflated editions which combined the two versions. The Quarto came first in publication, of course, and is longer; the Folio is later and does not contain several lines present in the Quarto (I believe about three hundred) yet introduces several (perhaps one hundred) of its own.
And so we have a generation of productions which sought to combine the two. For instance we have an early recording of Paul Scofield as the King using a conflated edition and a later recording from his eighties in which only the Folio is used: King Lear (Naxos AudioBooks), following as it states the The Tragedy of King Lear (The New Cambridge Shakespeare), a strictly First Folio presentation.
Although RA Foakes' Arden3 edition appeared some years after those of Wells & Taylor (Complete Oxford) and Jay L Halio (Cambridge) it did not follow their precedent of issuing separate texts based on Quarto and Folio originals. These early texts (Q 1608 and F 1623 respectively) occasionally offer quite different versions of the play and reconciling them to form a single, coherent whole is a task that is, arguably, less elegant than the dual edition solution. By comparison, Arden's text looks cumbersome, with numerous Q and F superscripts surrounding passages found exclusively in one or other source.
Foakes is well aware that his single, 'conflated' text isn't as fashionable as those of the 'revisionists' mentioned above, who believe that the Folio text of Lear represents Shakespeare's revised and final draft, and that modern editors should not pick and mix between Q and F but respect the integrity of the two early sources. While seemingly reactionary, Foakes is in fact countering the new orthodoxy of Halio et al. In his view, their 'dogmatic and purist stance ... abandons the idea of King Lear as a single work of which we have two versions.' He is cautious and level-headed in his approach, aware of the limitations of scholarly speculation and in presenting both Q and F variants he allows the reader to make up her/his own mind.
Aside from this central controversy, Arden3 Lear has much to offer.
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