The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 28.190  Wednesday, 24 May 2017

 

From:        Steve Urkowitz <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         May 23, 2017 at 12:46:21 PM EDT

Subject:    Texts of King Lear

 

Exposed to steady repetitions of falsehood, the human brain biochemically responds by accepting error as if it were truth. And then stories built upon such error assume a life as convincing as “what actually happened.”   The only way to alleviate the consequences such iterated misperceptions requires that we approach the errors through other narrative directions.  Same facts, alternative narratives. We have to listen to other, different stories about the same material.  Then the mind may choose among alternative tales.  

 

So here are two different blind guys groping the same-same elephant.  Blind Guy One stands under the tail.  “Jeez!,” he exclaims.  “Elephants stink.  Elephants drop huge numbers of discrete, spherical, heavy, object that on really close inspection show that they used to be edible plant material.  Look!  This was a leaf!  This was a stem!  It must have been chewed up and digested!  Disgusting!  Let’s get out of here!”  Blind Guy Two stands near the front.  “Oooooh!” he exclaims. “I feel this delicate soft appendage stroking my body.  It just inhaled my bag o’ peanuts! The rolling, coiling peanut-stealing appendage goes all graceful, delicately artickleyated and even playful!  I love it!  Let’s play some more.”  If the only voice you hear is Blind Guy One’s, you won’t hang around those elephants, any elephants at all.  

 

Here's a conclusion to a recent Blind Guy One narrative:  note the diction of “superfluous” and “fatuous,” “corrupt” and “self-interested.”

 

The malady surely extended to passages in prose, where “space-metal” was conserved by using margins so wide that restoration in Q1 presented a difficult problem. I believe one solution was to remove superfluous text. Whether the cuts were recorded or discovered during F redaction, their frequent restoration indicates probable eyeskip omission of other text. That would explain the lack of normal evidence in Q and F and the fatuous nature of the F additions. Perhaps some examples will show why the inference is virtually forced: remember, Q is a corrupt report made over by a series of self-interested print house agents.

 

Steven Urkowitz

 

 

 

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