This is the first fully annotated, critical edition of King Lear to appear for forty years. It includes a comprehensive account of Shakespeare's sources and the literary, political, and folkloric influences at work in the play, a detailed reading of the action, and a substantial stage history of major productions. Jay Halio is concerned to clarify, for those approaching the play for the first time, the vexed question of its textual history. Unlike previous editions, his does not present a conflation of the Quarto and the Folio. Accepting that we have two versions of equal authority, the one derived from Shakespeare's rough drafts, the other from a manuscript used in the playhouses during the seventeenth century, Professor Halio chooses the Folio as the text for this edition. He explains the differences between the two versions and alerts the reader to the rival claims of the Quarto by means of a sampling of parallel passages in the introduction and by an appendix which contains annotated passages unique to the Quarto.

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Offers source documents and analysis to provide a historical context for understanding the major themes of Shakespeare's most controversial play. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: Comparative Literary Dimensions, like its companion volume American Literary Dimensions, honors the memory of Melvin J. Friedman. The authors studied include James Joyce, Robert Graves, and Virginia Woolf. A wide range of classical and modern writers and literary themes and concepts are discussed by international scholar-critics such as Haskell Block, Zack Bowen, and Owen Aldrich...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Book by Halio, Jay (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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