0k wbmmwmk f P L9 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from University of Alberta Libraries https://archive.org/details/works00shak_0 SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDY OF King Lear EDITED, WITH NOTES BY WILLIAM J. ROLFE, Litt.D. FORMERLY HEAD MASTER OF THE HIGH SCHOOL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS. ILL USTRA TED NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY Copyright, 1880 and 1898, by HARPER & BROTHERS. Copyright, 1903 and 1908, by WILLIAM J. ROLFE. KING LEAR. W. P. 18 UNIVERSITY TTBR£?.Y UNIVERSITY OE ALBERT*. “X *7 S' Rm \ l) () k : v/,r PREFACE i This edition of King Lear was first published in ji88o. As now revised, it is substantially a new edition !on the same general plan as the revised Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Hamlet, and other plays that have preceded it. i Many of the notes on textual variations have been [either omitted or abridged. Those that have been retained are mostly on the passages (particularly nu¬ merous in this play) in which different readings from the folio or the quarto have been adopted in the more limportant modern editions. For further information on this subject Dr. Furness’s edition may be consulted. |No teacher or critical student can afford to do without his encyclopedic volumes, in which all the readings and notes of the early and standard modern editions are [recorded or epitomized, together with large extracts j:rom the best commentators and much admirable criticism from Dr. Furness himself. ! I have also omitted most of the “ Critical Com¬ ments ” from the introduction, as the books from {which they were taken are now to be found in public 'or school libraries. For these extracts I have sub¬ stituted familiar comments of my own, and have added more of the same kind in the Appendix. A concise jaccount of Shakespeare’s metre has also been inserted as an introduction to the Notes. Minor changes have been made throughout the | Notes. Some have been abridged, some have been 108086 6 Preface expanded, and new ones have been added, including a considerable number in place of those referring to my editions of other plays. The book is now absolutely complete in itself. I believe that the new edition will be generally pre¬ ferred to the old one ; but both can be used, without serious inconvenience, in the same class or club. CONTENTS PAGE Introduction to King Lear.9 The History of the Play.9 The Sources of the Plot.11 General Comments on the Play.13 King Lear. 17 Act I. • •« • < * . 19 Act II .••••••«.. Act III ..••«•«•.. 84 Act IV .••••••... 110 Act V .••• •••• .. 140 Notes.163 Appendix.285 Lear’s Insanity.285 Cordelia: Her Character and her Fate .... 289 Tate’s Version of the Play ..293 The Time-Analysis of the Play.295 List of Characters in the Play.296 Ljdex of Words and Phrases explained . 299 7 Lear (Sir Joshua Reynolds) INTRODUCTION TO KING LEAR The History of the Play King Lear was first published in quarto form in 608, with the following title-page : — “ M. William Shak-speare : His True Chronicle His- )rie of the life and death of King Lear and his three daughters. With the vnfortunate life of Edgar, sonne nd heire to the Earle of Gloster, and his sullen and ssumed humor of Tom of Bedlam: As it was played 9 IO King Lear before the Kings Maiestie at Whitehall vpon S. Stephans night in Christmas Hollidayes. By his Maiesties ser- uants playing vsually at the Gloabe on the Bancke- side. London, Printed for Nathaniel Butter, and are to be sold at his shop in Pauls Church-yard at the signe of the Pide Bull neere St. Austins Gate. 1608.” A second quarto edition was issued by the same pub¬ lisher in the same year, the title-page of which is simi¬ lar, except that it omits “ and are to be sold ... St. Austins Gate.” The text of the folio of 1623 is generally regarded as better than that of the quartos, and appears to have been printed from an independent manuscript. Each text, however, is valuable as supplying the deficiencies of the other. The quartos, according to Furness, con¬ tain about two hundred and twenty lines that are not in the folios, and the folios fifty lines that are not in the quartos. One entire scene (iv. 3) is omitted in the folios. This discrepancy in the texts has been the sub¬ ject of much investigation and discussion ; and the' critics differ widely in their explanations of it. The date of the play cannot be earlier than 1603 nor later than 1606. The former limit is fixed by the pub¬ lication of Dr. Harsnet’s Declaration of Popish Impos¬ tures, from which Shakespeare got the names of some of the devils mentioned by Edgar in iii. 4 ; and the latter by the entry of the play in the Stationers’ Regis-j ters, dated November 26, 1607, which states that it was performed “ before the kinges maiestie at White- Introduction i hall vppon Sainct Stephens night at Christmas Last,” that is, upon the 26th of December, 1606. The Sources of the Plot The story of King Lear and his three daughters is one of the oldest in English literature. It is told by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Britonum, by Layamon in his Brut, by Robert of Gloucester, by Fab- yan in his Chronicle, by Spenser in the Faerie Queene, by Holinshed in his Chronicle, by Camden in his Re- maines, in the Mirrour for Magistrates, in Warner’s Albion’s England, and elsewhere in prose and verse. It had also been dramatized in the Chronicle History of King Leir, which is probably the same play that was entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1594, and that was reprinted in 1605 — possibly on account of the success of Shakespeare’s Lear, then just brought out. The author of this old play probably took the story from Holinshed, and Shakespeare drew either from the same source or from the old play. The portion of the plot in which Gloster figures was derived from Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. But the poet’s real debt to his predecessors is so insignificant that it is scarce worth tracing or recording. As Furness well says, “the dis¬ tance is always immeasurable between the hint and the fulfilment; what to our purblind eyes is a bare, naked rock, becomes, when gilded by Shakespeare’s heavenly alchemy, encrusted thick all over with jewels. When, 12 King Lear after reading one of his tragedies, we turn to what we are pleased to call the ‘ original of his plot,’ I am reminded of those glittering gems, of which Heine speaks, that we see at night in lovely gardens, and think must have been left there by kings’ children at play ; but when we look for these jewels by day we see only wretched little worms which crawl painfully away, and which the foot forbears to crush only out of strange pity.” The old play of King Leir is not so poor a thing as some of the critics have represented. Though almost infinitely below Shakespeare’s tragedy, it has some features that place itVbove the average of contempo¬ rary dramatic productions. Campbell the poet, who was an excellent critic, calls it “ simple and touching.” He adds : “ There is one scene in it, the meeting of Corde¬ lia with her father in a lonely forest, which, with Shake¬ speare’s Lear in my heart, I could scarcely read with dry eyes.” Nevertheless, as Campbell says, Shake¬ speare “ has sublimated the old tragedy into a new one by an entire originality in the spiritual portraiture of its personages, Wherever Shakespeare works on Pold materials, you will find him, not wiping dusted, gold, but extracting gold from dust, where none but himself could have made the golden extraction.” __^One scene in the old play reminds me of Longfellow’s Miles Standish, and Priscilla’s “ Why don’t you speak for yourself, John ? ” The King of France and one of his nobles, disguised as' pilgrims, fall in with Cordelia v J Introduction 3 after her father has cast her off. They tell her that the King, whom she has not seen, is a suitor for her hand. But Cordelia says that she will not have him, adding with characteristic frankness : — “Then be advised, palmer, what to do: Cease for thy king, seek for thyself to woo. King. Your birth’s too high for any but a king. Cordelia. My mind is low enough to love a palmer/’ The King soon reveals himself,-and Cordelia gets a royal husband after all. $ General Comments on the Play If Lear was an historical character, he is supposed to have lived in the eighth^century., and that may well be the time of the dramatic action. Shakespeare ap¬ pears to have purposely taken us back into heathen and barbarous times. The whole atmosphere is pagan. There is not a single deliberjjte--T^e-renc^- to- Chris- tianity^r~'fts^risf:itutions. Occasionally, as in the Ro¬ man plays, we meet with a careless or accidental allusion to something associated with Christian times — like the mention of a “godson” — but this is simply an illus¬ tration of the poet’s unscholarly habits, which lead him /into anachronisms. They do not make the play Chris¬ tian any more than the allusion to “ holy churchyards ” in Coriolanus or to nunneries in the Midsummer-Night's Dream. Lear himself is a barbarianjroonarch ; Goneril, H King Lear Regan, and Edmund are savages. The plucking out of Gloster’s eyes is a piece of savagery in keeping with the times.