2021/03/16 by Duncan Salkeld · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Medicine · #Renaissance Literature and Culture #Authorship Attribution and Profiling #Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism #Folio #Dictation #Argument (complex analysis) #Literature #Philosophy #Art #Linguistics #Medicine
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/library/22.1.3
openalex publication_date 2021/03/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Abstract This article argues that dictation in the printing house may account for many of the variants between the 1608 Quarto and the 1623 Folio texts of King Lear . It further argues that the ground-work for this view was established by a series of prior critical studies—including those by Chambers, Greg, Duthie, Walker, and Stone—which shared a belief that the quarto was a reported text. It also proposes that a manuscript very much like F, but without its theatrical cuts, lies behind the Quarto. A long-standing assumption that the Folio version is somehow derived from the Quarto is shown to be unsafe. The implications of this argument are that Shakespeare did not revise King Lear , and that relatively few of the variants in the Quarto can be authorial.