Page 199 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

124 T H E COPY FOR
must have had 'ataxt', that the press-reader's 'attaskt' is
a conjectural alteration, and that F's 'at task' is a con-
jectural emendation of that. We must suppose that here
F depends on a copy of Q i with the outer forme of
sheet D corrected.
A not inconsiderable number of errors common to F
and Q I corroborates the bibliographical connection.
But F is not a reprint of Q I —that is obvious at a glance.
There are large numbers of textual variations between
them; and underlying F there clearly seems to be a
prompt-book. F lacks some 300 lines present in Q 1.
No one, so far as I know, doubts that these are genuine,
or at least reflect Shakespearian lines. Some of the F
omissions may be accidental, but most of the lengthier
ones have the appearance of theatrical cuts. Sir Edmund
Chambers suggests that some may be the result of censor-
ship, but, he says, 'in the main we probably have to do
with ordinary theatrical cutting'. 1 Again, in F there are
indications of adaptation to the needs of a cast smaller
than that required by Q 1 . In 4.7 Q1 requires a Doctor
and a Gentleman: F requires only the Gentleman, who
gives the speeches of both; but when in F Cordelia says
to the Gentleman 'Be gouern'd by your knowledge,'
she is clearly speaking to a person with medical training.
Some of the F omissions leave lacunae and awkward-
nesses in the text—showing that they are in fact omis-
sions from F and not additions to Q 1. There is no basis
for any theory of a Shakespearian revision separating Q 1
and F (apart from whatever share Shakespeare may have
had in the work of abridgement). If F gave a Shake-
spearian revision of the Q 1 text, or Q 1 of the F text,
the most obvious feature of the revision in either case
would be a tendency to very frequent synonym-substi-
tution; and here Chambers's words (in connection with
'
Richard III) are surely final. I cannot,' he says,* 're-
1
Op. cit. r, 467. * Ibid. p. 298.