Full Description
This volume includes the text of the play as prepared by Craig Walker for The Broadview Anthology of British Literature—a text notable both for outstanding introductory material and annotations, and for the inclusion of parallel text versions of key scenes for which the texts in the Quarto and Folio versions are substantially different. Appendices in this edition include excerpts from key Shakespearean source material such as the anonymous True Chronicle History of King Leir, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae; excerpts from Samuel Harsnett's A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures; materials from the Annesley Case; and the happy ending from Nahum Tate's version of the play, which held the stage for 150 years after its first performance in 1681. This is one of several Broadview Anthology of British Literature Editions being released this year; those wishing to teach the text will have the option of including the convenient stand-alone book as part of a specially-priced shrink-wrapped package together with a volume of the anthology.
Contents
Introduction
William Shakespeare 1564-1616
King Lear
King Lear
In Context
The Shakespearean Theater
The Swan Theatre
Titus Andronicus in Performance
The Plot of an Elizabethan Play
Early Editions of King Lear
Source Material
from Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain (12th century)
Cap o' Rushes
from Anonymous, The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his Three Daughters (1605)
from Raphael Holinshed, The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577, 1587)
from Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590)
The Annesley Case
from Samuel Harsnett, A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603)
King Lear on Stage in the Seventeenth Century
from Richard Johnson, "The Ballad of King Lear and his Three Daughters" (1620)
from Nahum Tate, The History of King Lear (1681)
