Page 200 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

KTNG LEAR, 1 6 0 8 A N D 1 6 2 3 125
concile with any reasonable conception of Shakespeare's
methods of work a revision limited to the smoothing
out of metre and the substitution of equivalent words,
without any incorporation of any new structure or
any new ideas. Nor can I think that either Shakespeare
or any one else at the theatre would have thought it
either worth while or practicable to make actors
relearn their parts with an infinity of trivial modifica-
tions.'
When I was preparing the edition of Lear which I
published in 1949, Daniel's theory of the copy for F was
orthodox doctrine, and, like others (including Chambers
and Greg), I accepted it. But it must be modified.
Daniel himself was aware of passages in which F shows
bibliographical links not with Q 1 but with Q 2. He
did not, however, grapple seriously with the problem.
In 1931 Dr Madeleine Doran brought forward more
cases of significant agreement between F and Q 2
against Q 1 ? She found the relationship between F and
Q 2 'puzzling', but suggested that the F compositor
'occasionally referred to a copy of Q 2'. Fuller investi-
gation, however, suggests that F's debt to Q 2 is more
extensive than a matter of occasional consultation; and
3
in a recent article Dr A. S. Cairncross has convincingly
argued that F depends at some points on an edited copy
of Q 1, and at other points on an edited copy of Q 2. The
links with Q 2 are frequent and impressive; but Q 1 is
certainly involved as well. For one tiling, at 5. 3.47 Q2
reads
To send the olde and miserable King
To some retention, and appointed guard.
Cairncross thinks of the editing as having been done in
the printing-house, with 'the editor correcting in
s 1
In The Text of King Lear' (1931), pp. 109 ff.
3 'The Quartos and the Folio Text of "King Lear"',
R.E.S. new ser. vi, no. 23 (July 1955).