William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition by William Shakespeare

shift in the presentation and interpretation of the underlying action. The differences are particularly apparent in the military action of the last two acts. We believe, in short, that there are two distinct plays of King Lear, not merely two different texts of the same play; so we print edited versions of both the Quarto ( ‘The History of ...’) and the Folio (‘ The Tragedy of ...’).
    Though the editor’s selection, when choice is available, of the edition that should form the basis of the edited text is fundamentally important, many other tasks remain. Elizabethan printers could do meticulously scholarly work, but they rarely expended their best efforts on plays, which—at least in quarto format—they treated as ephemeral publications. Moreover, dramatic manuscripts and heavily annotated quartos must have set them difficult problems. Scribal transcripts would have been easier for the printer, but scribes were themselves liable to introduce error in copying difficult manuscripts, and also had a habit of sophisticating what they copied—for example, by expanding colloquial contractions—in ways that would distort the dramatist’s intentions. On the whole, the Folio is a rather well-printed volume; there are not a great many obvious misprints; but for all that, corruption is often discernible. A few quartos—notably A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600)—are exceptionally well printed, but others, such as the 1604 Hamlet, abound in obvious error, which is a sure sign that they also commit hidden corruptions. Generations of editors have tried to correct the texts; but possible corruptions are still being identified, and new attempts at correction are often made. The preparation of this edition has required a minutely detailed examination of the early texts. At many points we have adopted emendations suggested by previous editors; at other points we offer original readings; and occasionally we revert to the original text at points where it has often been emended.
     

    12. The last lines of King Lear in the 1608 quarto

     
     

    13. The last lines of King Lear in the 1623 First Folio

     
    Stage directions are a special problem, especially in a one-volume edition where some degree of uniformity may be thought desirable. The early editions are often deficient in directions for essential action, even in such basic matters as when characters enter and when they depart. Again, generations of editors have tried to supply such deficiencies, not always systematically. We try to remedy the deficiencies, always bearing in mind the conditions of Shakespeare’s stage. At many points the requisite action is apparent from the dialogue; at other points precisely what should happen, or the precise point at which it should happen, is in doubt—and, perhaps, was never clearly determined even by the author. In our edition we use broken brackets—e.g. [ He kneels ]—to identify dubious action or placing. Inevitably, this is to some extent a matter of individual interpretation; and, of course, modern directors may, and do, often depart freely from the original directions, both explicit and implicit. Our original-spelling edition, while including the added directions, stays somewhat closer to the wording of the original editions than our modern-spelling edition. Readers interested in the precise directions of the original texts on which ours are based will find them reprinted in William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion.
    Ever since Shakespeare’s plays began to be reprinted, their spelling and punctuation have been modernized. Often, however, this task has been left to the printer; many editors who have undertaken it themselves have merely marked up earlier edited texts, producing a palimpsest; there has been little discussion of the principles involved; and editors have been even less systematic in this area than in that of stage directions. Modernizing the spelling of earlier periods is not the simple business it may appear. Some