The Shakespeare Code

 KING LEAR….

…..was first published as a single play…….

….. in a small, Quarto sized, edition in 1608……

…..eight years BEFORE William Shakespeare’s death.

It was later published as part of a collection in a larger, Folio sized edition in 1623..

 

……seven years AFTER Shakespeare’s death…..

This FIRST FOLIO edition, as it has come to be known…….

….(there were to be later Folio editions)….

……..was edited by two of Shakespeare’s friends…..

……the actors, businessmen and petty crooks….

 

…..who claimed this was the AUTHORISED version of the plays….

…..designed to replace the…..

…..diverse stolen and surreptitious copies maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious impostors….

……of which the 1608 Quarto edition of King Lear, by implication, was one!!!

As a result of Heminge and Condell’s self-declared painstaking editorship…….

…..the plays now emerged…..

cur’d, and perfect of their limbs and….absolute in their numbers as [Shakespeare] conceived them…..

Thomas Heywood had made the same claims for himself eighteen years earlier in 1605……

…when he published his own version of his play……

….designed to replace a…...

……most corrupted copy…….

…..which had been…..

…..published without his consent….

In a new Prologue, Heywood describes, in similar language to Heminge and Condell, how he…..

…..took the pains…..

…..to put his play….

….upright upon its feet

To teach it walk….

He also recounts the method by which plays were stolen…..

STENOGRAPHY!!!

(Heywood’s own word!!!)

‘Pirates’ would lurk in the audience……

…..which…..

….thronged the seats, the boxes and the stage…..

….and take down the entire play……

BY HAND!!!

As a consequence, Heywood claims, their edition of the play had…..

….Scarce one word true….

But it must be remembered that Heminge, Condell and Heywood had a product to sell…..

…..their own new versions of existing plays….

…..so they exaggerated…..

…..and, in the case of Heminge and Condell, actually lied!

They claimed to have…..

….scarce received from [Shakespeare] a blot in his papers…..

…..but one glance at the manuscript of Shakespeare’s contribution to The Play of Sir Thomas More……

…..shows that Shakespeare certainly did blot his papers!!!

(Heminge and Condell were propagating the myth that Shakespeare wrote his plays ALONE…..

…..but as Brothers and Sisters of The Code well know…..

 ……..Shakespeare COLLABORATED throughout his career…..

…….and was constantly updating and re-writing his work.)

The stenographer of the 1608 Quarto version of Lear, it is true, DID sometimes mishear the words the actors were saying….

He wrote down…..

The mistress of Hecat, and the might….

…..wheras the Folio edition of 1623 has….

The miseries of Hecate and the night……

[The SECOND Folio of 1632 is DIFFERENT AGAIN ! It has ‘The mysteries of Hecate and the night’.]

The 1608 stenographer also heard as  PROSE…..

…….some passages that were later to be revealed as VERSE in the Folio edition…..

 

HOWEVER…..

The pirated Quarto edition has supplied us with lines from King Lear…..

….INDEED A WHOLE SCENE…

……WHICH WE OTHERWISE WOULD NOT POSSESS!!!

In the Quarto Version, King Lear, losing his wits, conducts a mock trial of his daughters……

…..in which he mistakes a joint-stool for Goneril….

 

THIS SCENE DOES NOT EXIST IN THE FIRST FOLIO EDITION!!!

(It was clearly cut from performances after 1608)

So, for all its faults….. 

THE 1608 QUARTO SHOWS US WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED ON THE STAGE….

MOSTLY this is the same as the Folio Version..

…except when it comes to the LAST SCENE of the play….

WHERE IT IS RADICALLY DIFFERENT!!!

•

In the First Folio version of the last scene…….

…….Lear comes across a soldier who is hanging his youngest daughter, Cordelia, in her cell…..

Old as the King is, he manages to kill him…..

…….then enters, carrying the body of Cordelia, in his arms…..

He COMMANDS everyone to howl in grief…..

….. if he still had a voice and eyes as strong as theirs are, he would…

……use them so that Heaven’s vault should crack….

Lear is a warrior king who has experienced death in battle…..

He KNOWS….

……when one is dead and when one lives…..

Cordelia is…..

…..dead as earth…..

But, in desperation, he clings onto the idea that she might be alive….

He asks for a looking glass to see if her breath will….

….mist or stain the stone….

He holds a feather to her mouth which….

…..stirs….

….probably because his hand is shaking….

….but Lear WANTS to believe that Cordelia is alive….

It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows

That ever I have felt….

The faithful Earl of Kent presents himself to Lear…..

…..but Lear doesn’t recognise him.

Lear then tries to convince himself that Cordelia is speaking to him…..

……and explains that the reason that no-one can hear her is because…

……..her voice was ever soft

Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman….

The Duke of Albany……..

…..who has finally taken a stand against his evil and disloyal wife, Goneril….

……promises that….

What comfort to this great decay [King Lear] may come

Shall be applied….

He gives up his right to the throne to the old king…..

……..and promises to reward those who have behaved honourably.

Lear has returned to Cordelia’s body…..

…..and finally forces himself to accept the truth…..

And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life!

Why should a rat, a dog, a horse have life,

And thou no breath at all. Thou’lt come no more,

Never, never, never, never, never!

Lear feels he is choking and asks for help….

Pray you, undo this button. Thank you sir…

He then turns back to Cordelia, looks at her and cries:

Do you see this? Look on her, look her lips,

Look there, look there….

He believes Cordelia’s lips are moving!

He thinks she is alive!

So all the sorrows that Lear has ever felt ARE redeemed….

And at this moment of supreme happiness, he dies.

The great Shakespearean, A.C. Bradley……

…….writes……

To us, perhaps, the knowledge that [Lear] is deceived may bring a culmination of pain: but if it brings only that, I believe we are false to Shakespeare, and it seems almost beyond question that any actor is false to the text who does not attempt to express, in Lear’s last accents and gestures and look, an unbearable joy.

So, like the Earl of Gloucester in the play……

……reunited with his loving, loyal son, Edgar….

……Lear’s heart has….

…..burst smilingly……

Edgar hopes that the King is still alive….

But Kent wills him to die…..

Break heart, I prithee break….

……explaining….

……he hates him

that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer.

Edgar concedes that the King is dead….

…..and Albany now offers his throne to the….

….friends of my soul…..

…….the Earl of Kent and Edgar, the new Earl of Gloucester…..

But Kent whose….

…..strings of life….

…have……

…. begun to crack….

…..knows he must soon join his master in heaven.

Edgar, however, takes up the responsibilities of kingship with a new resolve to…..

….speak what we feel, not what we ought to say…..

But he acknowledges that the times are so bad, the world must be coming to an end….

The oldest hath borne most. We that are young

Shall never see so much nor live so long…..

•

The last scene in the 1608 Quarto is almost exactly the same as the 1623 First Folio……

……up to Lear’s last speech….

……FROM WHICH POINT IT IS RADICALLY DIFFERENT!!!

This is a reprint of the FIRST FOLIO ending….

This is a reprint of the 1608 QUARTO version:

 

LEAR IN THE QUARTO VERSION DOES NOT BELIEVE HE SEES THE LIPS OF HIS DAUGHTER MOVE.

In fact, with his repeated ‘Never’ he drives home to himself…….

….THAT HE WILL NEVER SEE CORDELIA AGAIN!!!

As in the Folio version, this terrible truth stifles his breathing…..

…….and again he asks someone to undo his button.

He looks back to the body of his daughter…..

…..but this time he utters a terrible cry……..

…o,o,o,o….

…and faints.

Edgar goes to his aid…..

……but with an heroic effort of will, the King commands his own heart to stop beating…..

Break heart, I prithee break…..

And his heart obeys.

As in the Folio edition, the Duke of Albany offers his throne to Kent and Edgar……

But in the Quarto version, not only does Kent refuse it…..

…..EDGAR REFUSES IT AS WELL!!!

So the last speech in the play is spoken by Albany.

Left ruling a Kingdom he does not want to rule…..

….. employs for the first time the royal ‘We’…

….and rebukes himself for not speaking out against evil earlier…..

…Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say….

(What is a glimmer of hope on Edgar’s lips becomes an admission of complicity on Albany’s)

Albany, finally, comes to the same conclusion that Edgar comes to…..

……THAT THE WORLD IS SO CORRUPT IT MUST BE HURTLING TO ITS END….

The Quarto conclusion to King Lear…..

……Shakespeare’s first revision of the play since he collaborated with Thomas Kyd on the old King Leir….

See: The Background to ‘King Lear’.

…….is one of unremitting despair.

•

Kenneth Muir……

….whose Arden edition of King Lear my generation grew up with……

 ……claims that all these differences in the Quarto were down to compositors’ errors.

But in the next Posts, The Code will demonstrate………..

(1) How this bleak ending to the play was thoroughly prepared for by Shakespeare…..

(2) How it ties in with Shakespeare’s other work….

….and….

(3) HOW IT TIES IN WITH SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE ITSELF!!!

TO READ PART TWO, ‘THE KING’S DISEASE’, CLICK: HERE.