3 - Editions and Textual Studies

Summary

Well then; the promised hour is come at last; The present Age of Wit obscures the past:

It may seem a little extravagant to use Dryden’s lines on Congreve to introduce a fully annotated text of King Lear based on the Folio alone, but after so much talk and work, it is a moment of some interest. One question worth asking about recent textual work on Shakespeare is whether the past ten or so years have witnessed an editorial revolution or, less dramatically, a publishing one. Of course, some important matters have been valuably addressed, from the difficulties posed by modernization to the relationship between literary and theatrical texts. But the steady flow of impressive volumes from Cambridge and Oxford may make the reader occasionally pause to wonder how different in practice these editions are from those of a decade or more ago.

Jay L. Halio's edition of what has been called 'the bibliographer's Everest', King Lear? is large and generous, with a lengthy critical and historical introduction and over eighty pages devoted to textual matters, including detailed comparisons of Q/F parallel passages and fully edited versions of Q-only passages. Halio takes a modest view of the editor's role; he is clear sighted and level headed, accurate and in control of his material. The result is an edition of the play which consolidates much recent Lear scholarship and brings aspects of its textual and theatrical history into sharp focus. It allows the reader to reconstruct most of the story - or at least one version of it - and gain access to the materials behind the play's two texts.