Shakespeare's Revision of "King Lear"; The Textual History of "King Lear

The two books under review also illustrate this point.For P. W.K. Stone, Glouces- ter's reply to Edgar's "Ripeness is all" -"And that's true too" (5.2. 1 1) -displays a "vacuousness" that "descends ... to fatuity" (p.69).Steven Urkowitz describes the same four words as "a speech of extraordinary simplicity and depth" (p.44).Stone asserts that the Fool's prophecy at the end of 3.2 has "little poetic merit and absolutely no dramatic relevance" (p.Ill), while Urkowitz finds it a "typically Shakespearean adaptation of folk-poetry patterns and folk-drama themes" (p.44).Both these speeches appear only in the Folio text of King Lear.The reader need not have the sagacity of Lear's fool to guess which critic believes that the Folio's unique readings constitute Shakespeare's revision of the play, and which judges them the product of another hand.It is not my intention to make light of these enterprises, both of which make important contributions to our understanding of King Lear\ rather, I want to emphasize at the outset how easily the desire to find a comprehensive theory can colour the facts which are adduced to lend objective support to the theory.This seems particular- ly true of textual criticism, where the mass and the complexity of details requiring

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