King Lear exists in two different texts: the Quarto (1608) and the
Folio (1623). Because each supplies passages missing in the other,
for over 200 years editors combined the two to form a single text,
the basis for all modern productions. Then in the 1980s a group of
influential scholars argued that the two texts represent different
versions of King Lear, that Shakespeare revised his play in light
of theatrical performance. The two-text theory has since hardened
into orthodoxy. Now for the first time in a book-length argument,
one of the world's most eminent Shakespeare scholars challenges the
two-text theory. At stake is the way Shakespeare's greatest play is
read and performed. Sir Brian Vickers demonstrates that the cuts in
the Quarto were in fact carried out by the printer because he had
underestimated the amount of paper he would need. Paper was an
expensive commodity in the early modern period, and printers
counted the number of lines or words in a manuscript before
ordering their supply. As for the Folio, whereas the revisionists
claim that Shakespeare cut the text in order to alter the balance
between characters, Vickers sees no evidence of his agency. These
cuts were likely made by the theater company to speed up the
action. Vickers includes responses to the revisionist theory made
by leading literary scholars, who show that the Folio cuts damage
the play's moral and emotional structure and are impracticable on
the stage.
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