Q/F: The Texts of King Lear

摘要

THE TWO EARLY TEXTS of King Lear, the 1608 Quarto (hereafter Q) and the 1623 Folio (hereafter F) differ substantially from each other. Consequently, there has been much critical dispute over how those differences arose. Some have regarded Q as derived from an authorial manuscript, others as a reconstruction from memory by one or more of its actors. F has been thought to be based on Q, or possibly the 1619 quarto (hereafter Qz), or on a playhouse manuscript. The current orthodoxy is that Q (printed by Nicholas Okes) represents Shakespeare's first draft, and that F is a later revision made by Shakespeare sometime after 1608. Throughout most of the twentieth century, editors tended to choose the best readings as they saw them from both Q and F, and offered readers a conflated 'ideal' text, one that reflected the judgement of the scholar responsible for the edition. In the 1980s, this policy of making the best of all possible readings was strongly challenged by a group that came to be known as the 'revisionists'.1 These influential critics included Michael Warren, Steven Urkowitz, and Gary Taylor. Collectively, they maintained that conflation could only produce a patched-up text that Shakespeare never in fact wrote. Their view is that Q was essentially Shakespeare's first attempt, and that F constituted a much-revised version.2 So persuasive has this argument been that significant scholarly editions of the plays have since absorbed its line of thinking. Readers now find themselves offered as many as three King hears, separate editions of Q and F, plus a conflated text that merges the two. If the detail involved in these debates appears sometimes complex and technical, the revision theory at least had the virtue of making the solution seem simple.