The *King Lear* Quarto in Rehearsal and Performance David Richman Associate Professor of Theatre University of New Hampshire For more than two and a half centuries, readers have been reasonably content with editorial conflations of *King Lear*'s two authoritative texts, that printed in the 1608 Quarto and that published in the 1623 Folio. From 1838, after Macready ended the reign in the theatre of Nahum Tate's redaction by restoring to the stage both the fool and the unhappy ending, producers and directors have founded theatrical productions on such conflations, though they have taken liberties with them. A century after Macready's production, Granville-Barker began to disentangle the Quarto from the Folio. He argued that the Folio offers many of Shakespeare's improving revisions and strongly advised directors to base their productions on that text.1 During the last decade Granville-Barker's arguments have been seized and amplified. The issue is far from settled, but a growing number of scholars and critics have been arguing that the Folio represents a systematic revision of the Quarto by the playwright.2 For editors, an implication of such arguments is that both Quarto and Folio texts should be made readily available to readers of the play. An implication for producers is that editorial conflations may not provide satisfactory foundations for productions of *King Lear*. Guiding producers to use the Folio rather than a conflation or the Quarto is Granville-Barker, the century's most authoritative writer on producing Shakespeare. Yet Granville-Barker does not insist on exclusive use of the Folio in production. The Folio cuts the mad mock trial and substantial portions of the fourth-act scene between Albany and Goneril, both of which he would restore.2. The Folio adds the fool's prophecy at the end of III,ii, which he would cut.3 Any stage director following Granville-Barker's advice would found a production on the Folio but would incorporate several passages from the Quarto. Recognizing that Granville-Barker is a dangerous person to disagree with, I was nonetheless intrigued when Professor Cyrus Hoy suggested that the Drama Center at the University of Rochester attempt a production based on the Quarto and offered to prepare a text with modern spelling and punctuation. We had engaged as guest artist John Franklyn-Robbins, a veteran performer with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the festival at Stratford Ontario, who had acted major Shakespearian roles under the direction of Tyrone Guthrie and Michael Langham. I knew Franklyn-Robbins would achieve a performance worthy of the title character, and I enlisted a good cadre of professional and student actors, designers and staff to complement him. Ours would not be a fully professional production, but that very fact would admit of the needed flexibility for our experiment. Much can be learned about *King Lear* from staging the Quarto. If Shakespeare did indeed revise the play, it is a reasonable assumption that the play printed in Quarto was produced by Shakespeare's company. The revision may well have been undertaken because the play as it then stood was found wanting in production.4 We realized the Quarto would present snags for production, and we expected to look to the Folio should we find a passage in Q unplayable. In other words, we would conflate for the production. But we would arrive at our conflation by testing the Quarto in rehearsal, by making every effort short of perverse stubbornness to make it work. The result would be a performance based on a text far closer to the Quarto than to the traditional conflations. More important, each of our divergences from the Quarto might suggest something about the playwright's own reasons for revision.3. In preparing the production we also had to be wary of our strong desire to perform every word in the Quarto simply because it is in the Quarto. Preserving and transmitting all the Quarto's words is the task of an editor, but not of a director. In the best of circumstances it is the director's obligation to be faithful to the author's text; the director must strive to make all the author's words work on the stage. However, the history of the theatre is rife with producers who modify the scripts they work with. Stanislavsky turned Chekhov's comedies into tragedies; Elia Kazan created a latter-day textual crisis by persuading Tennessee Williams to write an alternate last act for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. The existence of so many variant readings in Shakespeare's plays suggests that he and his company altered his plays in production. Since our aim in this production was honestly to explore the Quarto, to determine to the best of our ability what would work on our stage with our actors, we took it as our obligation to rehearse carefully all the Quarto's words. But if certain words or passages could not in our judgment be given a satisfactory stage life, we would conflate. Those who examine the play's early texts will encounter severe hardship. One is not simply comparing the Quarto and the Folio to each other. One is measuring both texts against what Stanley Wells has called the "wraith born of an unholy alliance" which has come to represent our greatest dramatic masterpiece.5 Given our consciousness of the traditional conflations, it is not surprising that our attention in rehearsal was most often called to those passages in which the Quarto differs from those conflations. We spent more rehearsal time in pondering such differences than in examining differences between the Quarto and the Folio. The first of these differences occurs in the play's second speech. The Quarto opens as follows:6 Kent. I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall. Glou. It did always seem so to us, but now in the division of the kingdoms, it appears not which of the dukes he values most. In both the Quarto and the Folio, Lear's division of the kingdom is a violent and wrenching action. That which had been one is fragmented. Fragmentation is integral to the play's dianoia, reiterated in action and language. The phrase "division of the kingdoms" seemed to us to weaken at the outset one of the play's strongest aspects. Indeed, we chose to lay particular stress on the idea of fragmentation in our staging of the opening dialogue. The lines make clear that what is taking place is the ritual enactment of something whose course has previously been set down. To demonstrate to the audience that the abdication has already been determined when the play opens, our set contained a large map of Britain with boundary lines demarcating the new divisions. This was the map to which Lear referred in his initial speech and throughout the scene. The production opened with Kent and Gloucester gesturing toward the map, calling attention to the boundary lines as they discussed the respective fortunes of Albany and Cornwall. The actors needed to express clear attitudes toward the coming abdication. Subsequent events suggest that both characters are deeply concerned, even outraged. The actor playing Gloucester was hampered in his expression of such feelings by having to refer to "the division of the kingdoms." If what was being divided was in a sense already divided, then what was all the fuss about? I judged his question to be well taken, so we adopted the Folio's "division of the kingdom." The next divergence is far more substantial. It affects Lear's first major speech, which in Quarto reads as follows:5. Meantime we will express our darker purposes. The map there; know we have divided In three our kingdom, and 'tis our first intent To shake all cares and business of our state, Confirming them on younger years. The two great Princes, France and Burgundy, Great rivals in our youngest daughter's love, Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn And here are to be answer'd. Tell me, my daughters, Which of you shall we say doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend, Where merit does most challenge it. Goneril, Our eldest born, speak first. Encountering this speech for the first time was quite daunting both for me and for Franklyn-Robbins. Compared to the speech as it appears both in Folio and in the conflations, this is metrically irregular and metaphorically impoverished.7 But when Franklyn-Robbins spoke the speech seated on his throne (a rehearsal chair), Goneril and Regan flanked by their husbands on his left, Cordelia and Kent on his right, the words began to make sense and accrue power. The phrases "darker purposes" and "first intent" suggested that this Lear has several clearly defined purposes in this, his last formal council. The rest of the speech unequivocally delineates three separate intentions. His first intent is to shake all cares and business of his state, his second is to give Cordelia in marriage, and his third is to draw from his daughters--particularly Cordelia--their declarations of love. Though this speech, shorter by seven lines than its Folio counterpart, lacks the king's sense of the political consequences of his actions, it communicates with startling clarity Lear's purposes and intentions. One may have doubts about the wisdom of his actions, but one can have none about their nature. Moreover, the repeated use of "confirm" rather than F's "confer" suggests that the king is enacting something which he has already determined. This reinforces the idea suggested in the play's opening lines.6. Most strikingly, the speech describes with greater accuracy than does its counterpart in F Lear's view of his abdication. In F, he says: And 'tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburden'd crawl toward death. There may be more political savvy here, a greater sense that he needs to justify his actions by calling attention to his age. But the Lear who comes in from hunting in his first appearance after the abdication is in no sense of the expression crawling toward death. Just as he has said he would do in Q, he has shaken all cares and business of his state, but he is vigorously trying to keep the state. The speech in Q works. It presents a clear, strong image of the king which is borne out and developed during the first two acts. Metrical irregularities and all, it is a taut, frank statement of the king's purposes. Q's Lear allows nothing to distract him from his division of the kingdom, his disposal of Cordelia in marriage, and the love-test of his daughters. He rarely diverts attention from his own relations to his daughters. When he initiates the love-test--"Tell me, my daughters, / Which of you shall we say doth love us most?"--he does not interrupt the question by reminding his daughters and the audience that he intends to divest himself of rule. Two lines of such reminder are inserted in F. When he calls on Cordelia to make her declaration, he describes her as "not least in our dear love." There is no mention of France and Burgundy, as there is at the corresponding point in F and in the traditional conflation. The scene in Q, simpler and sparer than its better known counterpart, proved a strong and playable dramatic sequence. Not all Q's divergences from the conflation required this much thought. There are many minute differences between Q and F. The bulk of these are negligible, scarcely affecting the meaning of a passage and having no bearing on its staging. We carefully rehearsed everything in the Quarto, and we followed Q whenever we found it playable. Thus, in response to Cordelia's "Nothing, my lord" we played Q's "How? Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again." In the Folio, the corresponding passage reads: Lear. Nothing. Cor. Nothing. Lear. Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again. The repetition heightens the scene, laying dramatic emphasis on the king's stunned incredulity and his daughter's unshakeable firmness. Still, the sequence in Q continues that sense of spare directness which characterizes Q's opening scene. In many places the writing in the Folio is poetically and dramatically superior to that in the Quarto. Recognizing this superiority, we still played the passages in the Quarto whenever we could make them work. But in several instances we judged a passage in F to represent so great an improvement over its corresponding passage in Q that it would be foolish not to adopt it. Here are a few examples: Folio Quarto Be Kent unmannerly when Lear is mad is man dull, stale, tired bed stale, dull-lyed bed bring oil to fire oil to stire You see me here, you gods, a poor old man old fellow In this last instance, as in several others, a case can be made for Q's reading. Q's Lear, it can be argued, has about him something of the senex, the comic elderly buffoon.8 "Fellow" in this context deflates, trivializes him. But there is so much terrible rage and anguish about the Lear of Q's speech and scene that both Franklyn-Robbins and I were jarred by the trivialization. We made a similar, but a more difficult and perhaps more controversial choice about a passage in I,iv. When Lear first encounters Goneril's anger and distaste at his knights' behavior, he responds with a speech that requires of the actor immense virtuosity and absolute veracity. In Q it reads as follows: Lear. Who is it that can tell me who I am? Lear's shadow? I would learn that, for by the marks of sovereignty, knowledge and reason I should be false persuaded I had daughters. Fool. Which they will make an obedient father. Lear. Your name, fair gentlewoman? In F, the passage reads: Lear. Who is it that can tell me who I am? Fool. Lear's shadow. Lear. Your name, fair gentlewoman? Conflationists, wanting to preserve both the fool's answer to Lear and Q's words omitted in F, tend to print a passage that Shakespeare may not have written. Lear. Who is it that can tell me who I am? Fool. Lear's shadow. Lear. I would learn that, for by the marks of sovereignty, knowledge and reason, I should be false persuaded I had daughters. Lear's answering his own question with another question and then switching to sarcasm, as he does in Q, requires of the actor a difficult emotional transition in a speech which is already forcing him to move through rage, irony and self-disgust. This wild see-sawing of moods resembles similar emotional shifts in the subsequent mad scenes. Yet it seemed to us neither appropriate nor credible that Lear approach so close to madness this early in the play. Had the Folio Lear never survived, we would have performed the passage and made the best of it. But having the fool answer Lear, simultaneously puncturing and supporting his master, created a sequence that seemed to us dramatically far stronger and that strained neither the actor's powers nor the audience's credulity. At the same time, we did not wish to lose the passage omitted in F. Though something can be said for the jump from "Lear's shadow" to "Your name, fair gentlewoman?" Franklyn-Robbins performed the passage included in Q but cut from F extraordinarily well. Wishing to preserve the fool's reply and the full Quarto text of Lear's speech, we found ourselves in the same camp as many editors. So we adopted their reading of this passage.9. Similar considerations governed other decisions to conflate later in the play. Near the beginning of III,iv Lear refuses to seek shelter from the storm. In Q he quite suddenly changes his mind. This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more, but I'll go in, Poor naked wretches . . . The passage is expanded in F. This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more, but I'll go in, In boy, go first. You houseless poverty-- Nay, get thee in! I'll pray, and then I'll sleep. Poor naked wretches . . . In F's version, Lear makes a tentative start on his famous prayer. He also forces the fool offstage so that the motley presence will not distract from the serious meditation. Moreover, his emotional and psychological transition is expanded. The inchoate prayer provides Lear with a credible reason to seek the shelter which he has been shunning. His pity for the wretchedness of others causes the tempest in his own mind temporarily to abate. Now Lear, especially in madness, moves with astonishing rapidity between extremes which the actor must reach. But in this case Franklyn-Robbins and I found the transition that hinged on that half-line "But I'll go in" so sudden and sweeping as to be unplayable. We could not make the jump work to our satisfaction, so we adopted F's expanded reading. If the passage in the Folio is indeed one of Shakespeare's own revisions, it may suggest that he and Burbage encountered a similar problem. We conflated again in the mock trial scene. The scene is substantially cut in the Folio, but in a passage appearing in both Q and F, Lear says in Q, "Then let them anatomize Regan; see what breeds about her heart. Is there any cause in nature that makes this hardness?" In F the passage reads, "Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?" This latter is a stronger phrase, but it appears only in F, which does not include the mock trial. A case can be made for Q's "hardness"; Lear may be touching a joint-stool such as he has previously used to represent Goneril.10 But this staging appealed to us no more than did the line. Lear has just been raging at Regan's escape from the place of trial. In his consciousness she is no longer present. Since her arraignment cannot go forward, he turns punitive, crying for her anatomization. I tried to emphasize this notion by asking Lear strongly to stress "anatomize." We also feared that Lear's certainty about Regan's escape would be unclear to the audience if he continued to associate her with a joint-stool. Moreover, Franklyn-Robbins and I both felt that the question beginning "Is there any cause in nature . . ." should be taken directly to Edgar. Edgar, after all, is for Lear the man who knows nature's secrets. There are many valid ways of playing this scene, but we developed an emotional progression and a staging which worked strongly for us and which Franklyn-Robbins could execute with absolute conviction. The king's last loud burst of rage and anguish came on the cry "Then let them anatomize Regan, see what breeds about her heart." Physically and emotionally exhausted, he collapsed beside Edgar and whispered, "Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?" Still quiet and nearly spent, he offered to entertain Edgar for one of his hundred, wistfully objecting to the fashion of the nearly naked man's garments in a line that invariably got a wincing laugh. Kent, taking advantage of his master's exhaustion, succeeded in doing what he had been trying to do throughout the scene: getting Lear to lie down and rest. There was no place for the joint-stool in this staging, and without the stool we disliked "this hardness." One's consciousness of the Quarto's differences both from the Folio and from the conflations is perhaps strongest at the play's ending. Surely anyone who works with the Quarto must combat a sense of dismay when encountering for the first time Q's version of Lear's final lines. The pertinent passage in Q reads: Lear. Thou'lt come no more. Never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button. Thank you sir. O, O, O, O. Edg. He faints! My lord, my lord! Lear. Break heart, I prithee break. (Dies.) The dramatic progression is clear: the old man dies of a broken heart, succumbing at last to his grief for his daughter. The corresponding passage in F gives Lear five nevers rather than three, and it cuts the four groans. It also contains two additional lines which suggest that the king may believe that his daughter is still alive. Thus he is dying like Gloucester "'twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief." As we discovered in rehearsal, Q's version of Lear's last speech seemed when staged at best drab and at worst ridiculous. Groans such as Lear utters in Q are used elsewhere in Shakespearian tragedy--notably in Othello and Antony and Cleopatra--to suggest an overcharged and breaking heart being deprived of blood and life. But four groans, whatever their dramatic significance, become ludicrous in comparison to F's version of Lear's last speech. The very existence of the Folio ending renders it forever impossible to perform the Quarto ending with any degree of conviction. The final scene in F differs in many respects from that in Q. Since we chose to perform Lear's last speech as it appears in F, we adopted three other readings from F which we judged to be integrally bound to the king's last lines. Just as Lear has five nevers in F and only three in Q, so at the scene's opening, when Cordelia asks him if he will see his other daughters, he responds in Q with two nos and in F with four. F's five nevers echo these four nos; to preserve the echo we adopted the Folio reading for this speech. Since Lear in our production did not say "Break heart, I prithee break" we gave that line to Kent, who speaks it in F. This line was deeply moving, coming from the usually stoic Kent. We gave the play's closing speech not to Albany, who speaks it in Q, but to Edgar, who speaks it in F. The question who should speak the last lines remains one of the most heated in the discussion of the play's early texts.11 Our actor playing Edgar gave them a stronger rendering than did the actor playing Albany. It also seemed to us, as it has to many observers, that Edgar in his climb upward from mad beggar to champion enacts the tragic moral ascent depicted in the last two acts. His speaking the final lines seemed most in keeping with the mood of tragic exaltation in F's version of Lear's last speech. Much of this account has been taken up with our divergences from the Quarto, since these so strongly exercised us in rehearsal. Yet in most instances we played the Quarto and found that it worked well. For example, both Q and F precede Lear's first entrance into the storm with a brief scene between Kent and a nameless gentleman. In both versions the gentleman describes Lear's behavior in the storm, though F shortens the description. In Q, Kent tells the gentleman of the impending war with France and requests him to take a message to Cordelia, who will be returning to her native country with the French army. F substitutes for this speech an elaborate and incomplete sentence about the incipient civil wars between Cornwall and Albany. Most editors combine the two speeches, creating an obscure passage that Shakespeare probably did not write. Q's version is dramatically stronger than F's, and we played it to good effect. One of the most interesting of Q's sequences occurs on Goneril's entrance in II,iv. Lear is now beginning to realize that Regan will treat him no better than Goneril. When Goneril's steward enters, Lear says, "This is a slave whose easy-borrowed pride / Dwells in the fickle grace of her he follows. / Out varlet, from my sight!" In both F and Q the next line is Cornwall's "What means your Grace?" Then, in both F and in most modern versions, Lear replies, "Who stock'd my servant? Regan I have good hope / Thou didst not know on't. But who comes here?" This last half-line refers to Goneril, who has presumably entered while Lear has been speaking. But in Q the speech is given to Goneril, and it reads "Who struck my servant? Regan, I have good hope / Thou didst not know on't."12 This speech makes good dramatic sense if Lear strikes Oswald on "out, varlet, from my sight!"--a perfectly credible action. We adopted this reading with the following staging. On "out varlet" Lear struck Oswald, who ran offstage. Immediately after, Goneril entered in high dudgeon. She demanded who had struck her servant, ignoring her father and accusing her sister. Regan crossed in front of the old man to take her sister's hand. Lear was able to respond to this entrance and its aftermath with an appropriate horror which led him easily to his prayer that the heavens would send down and take his part. The scene worked well. I argue neither for its inferiority nor its superiority to the scene in F. It is different both from the Folio and from the usual conflation, and it works. At worst, such a claim can be made for the text on which we based our production. In that production, as in the Quarto itself, Edgar and Albany shared moral authority. Emphasis was laid on the war with France rather than on the inchoate civil strife between Albany and Cornwall. And the action--especially in the second half of the play--moved relatively slowly, pausing at times for sequences of commentary. Observing how the passages included in Q but cut from F worked in performance gave us further insights into possible reasons for their exclusion from the Folio. F's most substantial cuts from Q are a segment of the fool's first scene with Lear (I,iv,137-152), much of the nameless gentleman's description of Lear's behavior in the storm (III,i,6-15), the mock trial (III,vi,20-55), Edgar's couplets after Lear is borne off to Dover (III,vi,100-113), the dialogue of the compassionate servants after Gloucester's blinding (III,vii,97-105), much of Albany's denunciation of Goneril (IV,ii,31-59 and 62-67), the dialogue between Kent and the gentleman about Cordelia's reaction to her father's night in the storm (IV,iii,1-55), the exchange between these same characters after Cordelia's reunion with her father (IV,vii,85-97), and Edgar's speech describing Kent's final meeting with the dying Gloucester (V,iii,203-220). All but one of these passages occur during the play's second half, and most of them can be found between the middle of Act III and the end of Act IV. The single exception is the fool's first-act sequence beginning "That lord that counsell'd thee / To give away thy land . . . " and ending "They will not let me have all fool to myself; they'll be snatching."13 In our performance this was one of the fool's most successful sequences. "All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with" elicited a strong reaction from the audience throughout the run. Every night the spectators laughed and gasped, fully understanding the comedy and growing pain of Lear's situation. The Folio gives the fool two speeches that do not appear in Quarto: the "Fathers that wear rags" speech in reaction to meeting Kent in the stocks (II,iv,45-53) and the topsy-turvy prophecy at the conclusion of the first storm scene (III,ii,79-96). For all that can be said in favor of these speeches,14 they stop the action. I do not think their presence compensates for the loss of the first-act sequence. Granville-Barker argues that the prophecy is either spurious or false to the scene's dramatic movement. Having newly taken pity on the drenched and shivering fool, Lear would never leave him alone on stage to chatter about malt and tailors.15 Even the fool's haunting last line in Folio, "And I'll go to bed at noon," does not compensate for this loss. We did not reinstate that line into our performance. Instead we played the Quarto's "We'll go to supper in the morning. So, so, so." As Lear repeated "so" first Edgar, then the fool and finally Kent knelt to him. To this tableau of the king resting on his pallet on the floor with his three last retainers kneeling to him, Gloucester entered with his news of danger. All the other passages cut from F occur during the play's second half. The weakest stretch of our production was the section between Lear's final exit from the storm and his mad reappearance on the heath. F's cuts result in considerable streamlining for this section. The problems we had suggest that F's cuts collectively constitute an improvement. Yet a consideration of the audience's reactions suggests that each individual cut may not necessarily constitute an improvement. The worst scene in our production was IV,iii, the emblematic dialogue about Cordelia. Had I not been doing the experiment with Q, I would have cut this scene, "a carpentered scene if ever there was one," pronounces Granville-Barker.16 I would have also cut without a qualm Edgar's sententious couplets after the storm, the conversation between Kent and the gentleman after Lear's reunion with Cordelia, and Edgar's description of Kent's meeting with the dying Gloucester. At all of these points we began to lose our audience's attention. But I question F's other cuts. Albany's denunciation of his wife contains some powerful dramatic writing. Our audience's attention was always engaged by this scene, and their understanding of the devolution of the wicked daughters was enhanced and clarified by Albany's speeches. Neither was the action slowed by the dialogue of the compassionate servants. After Gloucester's blinding, the chair to which he had been bound and the swords used by Cornwall, Regan and the slain servant had to be cleared away.17 Words of pity for Gloucester and horror at his abusers provided an appropriate accompaniment to the servants' cleaning the mess. The scene whose loss would have taken most from our production was the mock trial. Many arguments have been advanced for F's cutting of this scene.18 But we did not find the scene problematic in rehearsal, and it proved to be one of the outstanding scenes in our production. A description of our staging of III,vi and of the audience's reaction to it will make an appropriate conclusion for this account. Kent and Gloucester entered first, carrying stools and cushions. As Gloucester exited, Lear, Edgar and the fool entered with great energy. Though they all entered from the same side, their entrances were split, with each character leaping on to a different level of our multilevel set. Our aim was to depict the fragmentation that the scene dramatizes. Edgar entered first, jabbering about Fratteretto, and Lear and the Fool ran on behind him, shouting their lines about madness.19 On "To have a thousand with red burning spits come hizzing in upon 'em" Lear attacked Edgar, eliciting the madman's line "The foul fiend bites my back." Then Lear leapt off Edgar, fixed his gaze on his daughters--who, of course, were not on stage--and called in magisterial tones for their arraignment. He commanded the judges to take their places, but rather than making sure his command was obeyed, he continued to stare at his daughters, prompting Edgar to say, "Look where he stands and glares." Of course the fool and Edgar did not sit as he had directed them to do. It has been advanced as a sign of the scene's dramatic weakness that Lear commands the judges twice to take their places while the fool and Edgar, bent on their own banter, do not single-mindedly contribute to his fantasy.20 Yet we found that this sequence staged itself quite naturally. Lear stared, Edgar and the Fool exchanged obscene ditties, and a moment later Lear, seeing that he had not been obeyed, shoved them violently to their places. The sequence was a grotesque recapitulation of that melting of Lear's authority which had been occurring throughout the play's first two acts. Once the judges were seated, Lear fixed his gaze on each daughter in turn as he cross-examined her. The audience invariably laughed when the fool remarked of Goneril, "I took you for a joint-stool." But in the best tradition of tragic farce, it was a pained laugh. At the "escape" of Regan, Lear flew into a terrible rage, directed mostly against Kent, whom he blamed for letting her get away. Finally Lear collapsed in exhaustion beside Edgar. In our production, the mock trial achieved stunning effects. It was indeed an epicenter. The numerous passages in the Quarto which we could not bring satisfactorily to the stage suggest how problematic the Quarto is as a basis for performance. But our reactions and those of our audiences to so many of the passages included in Q but cut from F suggest that the Folio text is also problematic as the sole basis for production. I have no doubt that it provides a better basis than the Quarto. But as Granville-Barker suggested half a century ago, for productions of *King Lear* a good deal of conflation will always be necessary. Notes 1 Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare, Volume II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), pp. 69-74. 2 Pioneering articles and books include Michael Warren, "Albany and Edgar," in Shakespeare: Pattern of Excelling Nature, ed. David Bevington and Jay Halio (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1978) and Steven Urkowitz, Shakespeare's Revision of *King Lear* (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1980). A comprehensive collection of essays on the subject is Gary Taylor and Michael Warren, eds., The Division of the Kingdoms; Shakespeare's Two Versions of *King Lear* (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). 3 Granville-Barker, p. 52. 4 Gary Taylor, "*King Lear*: The Date and Authorship of the Folio Version," in Taylor and Warren, p. 351. 5 Stanley Wells, "The Once and Future *King Lear*," in Taylor and Warren, pp. 11-12, 19-20. 6 Citations to the Quarto refer to the text prepared for our production by Cyrus Hoy. I have modernized punctuation and spelling in quotations from the Folio. Citations to conflated editions refer to *King Lear*, ed. Kenneth Muir (London: Methuen & Co., 1978). 7 MacD. P. Jackson, "Fluctuating Variation: Author, Annotator, or Actor?" in Taylor and Warren, p. 338 and Gary Taylor, "Date and Authorship," in Taylor and Warren, pp. 381-382. 8 Gary Taylor, "Monopolies, Show-Trials, Disaster and Invasion: *King Lear* and Censorship," in Taylor and Warren, pp. 96-97. 9 John Kerrigan, "Revision, Adaptation and the Fool in *King Lear*," in Taylor and Warren, p. 225-226. See also Taylor, "Monopolies," in Taylor and Warren, p. 108-109. 10 Taylor, "Monopolies," p. 96. 11 Michael Warren's study is devoted to Albany and Edgar in Q and F respectively. Steven Urkowitz devotes two chapters of his book to these characters. The relations between the two characters in Q and in our production was close to the relation as it emerges in the traditional conflation. 12 Urkowitz, pp. 36-37. 13 Taylor argues that this cut may have been due to censorship. See "Monopolies," in Taylor and Warren, pp. 108-109. 14 Kerrigan, "Revision, Adaptation and the Fool," in Taylor and Warren, pp. 226-230. 15 Granville-Barker, p. 52. 16 Granville-Barker, p. 71. 17 Shakespeare may have revised the play for a stage equipped with a curtain that could be drawn across an inner area. Such a curtain could be drawn whenever debris was left on stage, and the objects could then be cleared out of view of the audience. Since we had no such curtain, we had to clear, and we used the compassionate servants' dialogue, as Q almost certainly does, to cover the clearing. See Granville-Barker, p. 70. 18 Taylor, "Monopolies," pp. 92-93. See also Roger Warren, "The Folio Omission of the Mock Trial: Motives and Consequences," in Taylor and Warren, pp.46-49. 19 The fool's speech about madness is rewritten for the Folio. We used the grotesque, disjunctive reply in Q, rather than the topical joke in F. Most editors give both speeches, creating a redundancy. 20 Roger Warren, "The Folio Omission of the Mock Trial," p. 46.
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