As we explain in “An Introduction to This Text,” part of what distinguishes the quarto and Folio versions of King Lear is that occasional passages in one version do not appear in the other. Since 1725, most editors have chosen to use either the Folio or the quarto version, incorporating into their choice of version the passages found only in the other. Such a process has, in most scenes, yielded a seamless join, but it has created a significant problem in Act 3, scene 1. In that scene, in the long speech given by Kent (lines 21–46 in our edition), the traditional combination of the two versions makes less sense than one would like.
Because the traditional way of combining the Folio and quarto passages is less than successful, our edition presents this speech in the novel form proposed by Richard Knowles in his article “Revision Awry in Folio Lear 3.1,” Shakespeare Quarterly 46 (1995): 32–46. Drawing on a suggestion made by Peter Blayney, Knowles proposes that the Folio and quarto passages can be combined in a way that provides a much more coherent speech.
A major difficulty in combining the quarto and Folio versions is that the speech has different purposes in the two texts. Here is the quarto version, with spelling modernized:
Sir I do know you,
And dare upon the warrant of my art,
Commend a dear thing to you, there is division,
Although as yet the face of it be covered,
With mutual cunning, twixt Albany and Cornwall
But true it is, from France there comes a power
Into this scattered kingdom, who already wise in our negligence,
Have secret feet in some of our best ports,
And are at point to show their open banner,
Now to you, if on my credit you dare build so far,
To make your speed to Dover, you shall find
Some that will thank you, making just report
Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow
The King hath cause to plain,
I am a gentleman of blood and breeding,
And from some knowledge and assurance,
Offer this office to you.
As Knowles points out, in this quarto version Kent conveys to the Gentleman “news of impending civil strife, informs him of French forces landed at Dover . . . , exhorts him to carry news of the king’s plight to those forces, and gives assurances of his own credibility and authority in urging such a course” (p. 34).
In the 1623 Folio version, the speech begins with almost exactly the same four and a half lines with which it begins in the quarto. Then the Folio departs entirely from the quarto version. While the quarto addresses the French invasion and the need for the gentleman to go to Dover to report the king’s “bemadding sorrow,” the Folio speaks instead of French spies among the servants of Albany and Cornwall and of the “snuffs” (rages) and “packings” (plots) of the dukes, along with their abuse of Lear, concluding with vague reference to a mysterious “something deeper” of which the “snuffs,” “packings,” and abuse are perhaps only the external trappings. The speech appears in the Folio as follows (with spelling modernized):
Sir, I do know you,
And dare upon the warrant of my note
Commend a dear thing to you. There is division
(Although as yet the face of it is covered
With mutual cunning) ’twixt Albany and Cornwall:
Who have, as who have not, that their great stars
Throned and set high; servants, who seem no less,
Which are to France the spies and speculations
Intelligent of our state. What hath been seen,
Either in snuffs, and packings of the dukes,
Or the hard rein which both of them hath borne
Against the old kind king; or something deeper,
Whereof (perchance) these are but furnishings.
The Shakespeare editorial tradition since Lewis Theobald in 1733 has generally combined these speeches by inserting the quarto-only lines at the end of the Folio-only lines, to produce the speech as it appears below. (Here the quarto-only lines appear in pointed brackets, the Folio-only lines in square brackets.)
Sir, I do know you
And dare upon the warrant of my note
Commend a dear thing to you. There is division,
Although as yet the face of it is covered
With mutual cunning, ’twixt Albany and Cornwall,
[Who have—as who have not, that their great stars
Throned and set high?—servants, who seem no less,
Which are to France the spies and speculations
Intelligent of our state. What hath been seen,
Either in snuffs and packings of the dukes,
Or the hard rein which both of them hath borne
Against the old kind king, or something deeper,
Whereof perchance these are but furnishings—]
⟨But true it is, from France there comes a power
Into this scattered kingdom, who already,
Wise in our negligence, have secret feet
In some of our best ports and are at point
To show their open banner. Now to you:
If on my credit you dare build so far
To make your speed to Dover, you shall find
Some that will thank you, making just report
Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow
The King hath cause to plain.
I am a gentleman of blood and breeding,
And from some knowledge and assurance offer
This office to you.⟩
Although the majority of editions of King Lear are based on the Folio, most editors, beginning with Alexander Pope in 1725, have believed that the quarto-only lines are essential to the continuity of the play’s action. Knowles observes that, in particular, only in the quarto is the Gentleman whom Kent addresses directed toward Dover to find Cordelia, and it is near Dover, to which both Lear and later Gloucester will also be bound, where we find the Gentleman and Cordelia later in the play. And Knowles is not alone in contending that in an edition based, like ours, on the Folio version, editors must include the quarto lines if the scene and the play are to make sense. Knowles, however, notes the abrupt discontinuity produced in the traditional combination of the quarto and Folio versions by the quarto’s words “But true it is” (which appear in the sixth line of the quarto version of the speech and the fourteenth line of Theobald’s version). In the quarto text, these words constitute a confirmation of the occasion (namely, the French invasion) for which the dukes have covered their division by mutual cunning. However, when the quarto and Folio versions are combined in the way constructed by Theobald, the words “But true it is” are separated by eight lines of Folio verse from their position in the quarto text and make no sense. Depending upon Peter Blayney’s unpublished analysis of what may have happened between the quarto’s version of Kent’s speech and the Folio’s, Knowles proposes an arrangement of the versions that omits the quarto’s problematic “But true it is” and adds the remaining quarto lines in two segments, the first at a point several lines earlier than in the traditional combination. The resulting speech, although still difficult, has a coherence lacking in that used by Theobald in 1733 and found in most editions of the play, including our 1993 edition.
While Knowles brings into the service of his argument a good deal of speculation about how the Folio version came to be so different from that in the quarto, it is possible to accept his solution to the problem of discontinuity presented above without embracing any of this speculation. His solution is attractive because it resolves a long-standing editorial problem, no matter how quarto and Folio came to differ.