Wear and Tear as Factors in the Textual History of the Quarto Version of King Lear

Abstract

N an earlier study' I presented a theory designed to explain the omission of certain passages from the quarto texts of six of Shakespeare's plays, King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus A g b and Cressida, Richard Ill, and 2 Henry IV. Having observed that these passages appear in irregular pairs separated by some 40, 50, or 6o lines, I suggested that, as the dramatists of the time averaged 40, 50, or 6o lines on a manuscript page, using both sides of the paper and leaving no margins at top or bottom, these passages might originally have been written back to back at the foot of single leaves of the manuscript and then have disappeared as the lower edges of these leaves were worn away.2 The purpose of the present article is to test this theory by exploring its implications for the textual history of the quarto version of one of these six plays, King Lear. If accepted, this theory will, first of all, confirm present-day opinion that a number of passages not found in Q3 were accidentally omitted from the authentic text rather than subsequently added by Shakespeare.4 At the same time it could be assumed that isolated passages were worn away by attrition affecting one side of the leaf only. In the second place, the theory will offer a new explanation for many of that multitude of single-word variants between Q and F that characterizes this particular play. In a manuscript so badly worn as to lose the lower part of nine of its leaves, single words might have disappeared elsewhere-some partially, others completely-and then have been restored incorrectly by the compositor of the first quarto. If, for instance, the word disasters (I. i. i74), which is the F