King Lear

by Shakespeare, William

  Jones, Emrys. Scenic Form in Shakespeare (1971).

  Lenz, Carolyn Ruth Swift, Gayle Greene, and Carol Thomas Neely, eds. The Woman’s Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare (1980).

  Novy, Marianne. Love’s Argument: Gender Relations in Shakespeare (1984).

  Rose, Mark. Shakespearean Design (1972).

  Scragg, Leah. Discovering Shakespeare’s Meaning (1994).

  —. Shakespeare’s “Mouldy Tales”: Recurrent Plot Motifs in Shakespearean Drama (1992).

  Traub, Valerie. Desire and Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean Drama (1992).

  Traversi, D. A. An Approach to Shakespeare, 2 vols. (3rd rev. ed, 1968-69).

  Vickers, Brian. The Artistry of Shakespeare’s Prose (1968).

  Wells, Stanley. Shakespeare: A Dramatic Life (1994).

  Wright, George T. Shakespeare’s Metrical Art (1988).

  7. The Comedies

  Barber, C. L. Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (1959; discusses Love’s Labor’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night).

  Barton, Anne. The Names of Comedy (1990).

  Berry, Ralph. Shakespeare’s Comedy: Explorations in Form (1972).

  Bradbury, Malcolm, and David Palmer, eds. Shakespearean Comedy (1972).

  Bryant, J. A., Jr. Shakespeare and the Uses of Comedy (1986).

  Carroll, William. The Metamorphoses of Shakespearean Comedy (1985).

  Champion, Larry S. The Evolution of Shakespeare’s Comedy (1970).

  Evans, Bertrand. Shakespeare’s Comedies (1960).

  Frye, Northrop. Shakespearean Comedy and Romance (1965).

  Leggatt, Alexander. Shakespeare’s Comedy of Love (1974).

  Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare and Classical Comedy: The Influence of Plautus and Terence (1994).

  Nevo, Ruth. Comic Transformations in Shakespeare (1980).

  Ornstein, Robert. Shakespeare’s Comedies: From Roman Farce to Romantic Mystery (1986).

  Richman, David. Laughter, Pain, and Wonder: Shakespeare’s Comedies and the Audience in the Theater (1990).

  Salingar, Leo. Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy (1974).

  Slights, Camille Wells. Shakespeare’s Comic Commonwealths (1993).

  Waller, Gary, ed. Shakespeare’s Comedies (1991).

  Westlund, Joseph. Shakespeare’s Reparative Comedies: A Psychoanalytic View of the Middle Plays (1984).

  Williamson, Marilyn. The Patriarchy of Shakespeare’s Comedies (1986).

  8. The Romances (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, The Two Noble Kinsmen)

  Adams, Robert M. Shakespeare: The Four Romances (1989).

  Felperin, Howard. Shakespearean Romance (1972).

  Frye, Northrop. A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance (1965).

  Mowat, Barbara. The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances (1976).

  Warren, Roger. Staging Shakespeare’s Late Plays (1990).

  Young, David. The Heart’s Forest: A Study of Shakespeare’s Pastoral Plays (1972).

  9. The Tragedies

  Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy (1904).

  Brooke, Nicholas. Shakespeare’s Early Tragedies (1968).

  Champion, Larry. Shakespeare’s Tragic Perspective (1976).

  Drakakis, John, ed. Shakespearean Tragedy (1992).

  Evans, Bertrand. Shakespeare’s Tragic Practice (1979).

  Everett, Barbara. Young Hamlet: Essays on Shakespeare’s Tragedies (1989).

  Foakes, R. A. Hamlet versus Lear: Cultural Politics and Shakespeare’s Art (1993).

  Frye, Northrop. Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy (1967).

  Harbage, Alfred, ed. Shakespeare: The Tragedies (1964).

  Mack, Maynard. Everybody’s Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies (1993).

  McAlindon, T. Shakespeare’s Tragic Cosmos (1991).

  Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare and Classical Tragedy: The Influence of Seneca (1992).

  —. Shakespeare’s Rome (1983).

  Nevo, Ruth. Tragic Form in Shakespeare (1972).

  Rackin, Phyllis. Shakespeare’s Tragedies (1978).

  Rose, Mark, ed. Shakespeare’s Early Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays (1995).

  Rosen, William. Shakespeare and the Craft of Tragedy (1960).

  Snyder, Susan. The Comic Matrix of Shakespeare’s Tragedies (1979).

  Wofford, Susanne. Shakespeare’s Late Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays (1996).

  Young, David. The Action to the Word: Structure and Style in Shakespearean Tragedy (1990).

  —. Shakespeare’s Middle Tragedies: A Collection of Critical Essays (1993).

  10. The Histories

  Blanpied, John W. Time and the Artist in Shakespeare’s English Histories (1983).

  Campbell, Lily B. Shakespeare’s “Histories”: Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy (1947).

  Champion, Larry S. Perspective in Shakespeare’s English Histories (1980).

  Hodgdon, Barbara. The End Crowns All: Closure and Contradiction in Shakespeare’s History (1991).

  Holderness, Graham. Shakespeare Recycled: The Making of Historical Drama (1992).

  , ed. Shakespeare’s History Plays: “Richard II” to “Henry V” (1992).

  Leggatt, Alexander. Shakespeare’s Political Drama: The History Plays and the Roman Plays (1988).

  Ornstein, Robert. A Kingdom for a Stage: The Achievement of Shakespeare’s History Plays (1972).

  Rackin, Phyllis. Stages of History: Shakespeare’s English Chronicles (1990).

  Saccio, Peter. Shakespeare’s English Kings: History, Chronicle, and Drama (1977).

  Tillyard, E. M. W. Shakespeare’s History Plays (1944).

  Velz, John W., ed. Shakespeare’s English Histories: A Quest for Form and Genre (1996).

  11. King Lear

  In addition to the readings listed above in Section 9, The Tragedies, see the following: for material concerning the play on the stage and screen, see page 260; for material concerning the texts of the play, see (in addition to the items by Peter Blaney, Michael Warren, and Rene Weis) page 146.

  Armstrong, Philip. “Uncanny Spectacles: Psychoanalysis and the texts of King Lear.” Textual Practice 8 (1994): 414-34.

  Blaney, Peter. The Texts of “King Lear” and Their Origins (1982).

  Bonheim, Helmut, ed. The Lear Perplex (1960).

  Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy (1904).

  Campbell, Lily B. Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes (1930).

  Colie, Rosalie, and F. T. Flahiff, eds. Some Facets of “King Lear” (1974).

  Cunningham, J. V. Woe and Wonder (1951).

  Danby, John F. Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature (1949).

  Fraser, Russell A. Shakespeare’s Poetics in Relation to “King Lear” (1962).

  Granville-Barker, Harley. Prefaces to Shakespeare. 2 vols. (1946-47); part of the material is reprinted above.

  Halio, Jay, ed. The Tragedy of King Lear (1992).

  Heilman, Robert B. This Great Stage: Image and Structure in “King Lear” (1948).

  Holland, Norman N., and Sidney Homan and Bernard J. Paris, eds. Shakespeare’s Personality (1989).

  Kahn, Coppélia. “The Absent Mother in King Lear.” Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Margaret Fer- guson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers (1986); pp. 33-49.

  Lamb, Charles. “On Shakespeare’s Tragedies” (1808); rptd. in Lamb’s Criticism, ed. E. M. W. Tillyard (1923), pp. 43-48.

  Lothian, John Maule. “King Lear”: A Tragic Reading of Life (1950).

  Mack, Maynard. “King Lear” in Our Time (1965); part of the material is reprinted above.

  Moulton, Richard G. Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist (1897).

  Novy, Marianne. Love’s Argument: Gender Relations in Shakespeare (1984).

  .Women’s Re-Visions of Shakespeare: On the Responses of Dickinson, Woolf, Rich, H.D., George Eliot, and Oth
ers (1990):

  Perrett, Wilfred. The Story of King Lear from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Shakespeare (1904).

  Rosen, William. Shakespeare and the Craft of Tragedy (1960).

  Sewall, Richard B. The Vision of Tragedy (1959).

  Shakespeare Studies 13 (1960; devoted to King Lear).

  Stoll, E. E. Art and Artifice in Shakespeare (1933).

  Taylor, Gary, and Michael Warren, eds. The Division of the Kingdom: Shakespeare’s Two Versions of “King Lear” (1983).

  Thompson, Ann. “Are There Any Women in King Lear?” The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Ed. Valerie Wayne (1991), pp. 117-28.

  Warren, Michael. The Complete “King Lear” 1608-1623 (1989); unbound photographic facsimiles of Q1, Q2, and F, as well as a bound version of the next title listed.

  .The Parallel “King Lear” 1608-23 (1989); photographic facsimiles of Q1 and F, in parallel columns, and, in the outer margins, reproductions of corrected states of Q and F.

  Weis, René, ed. “King Lear”: A Parallel Text Edition (1993); prints Q on the left-hand page, F on the right, both in modernized spelling.

  Wilson, Richard. Will Power (1993).

  SIGNET CLASSICS

  The Signet Classics Shakespeare Series:

  The Tragedies

  extensively revised and updated expert commentary

  provides more enjoyment through a greater

  understanding of the texts

  ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, Barbara Everett, ed.

  CORIOLANUS, Ruben Brower, ed.

  HAMLET, Sylvan Barnet, ed.

  JULIUS CAESAR, William and Barbara Rosen, ed.

  KING LEAR, Russell Faser, ed.

  MACBETH, Sylvan Barnet, ed.

  OTHELLO, Alvin Kernan, ed.

  ROMEO AND JULIET, J.A. Bryant, Jr., ed.

  TROILUSAND CRESSIDA. Daniel Seltzer, ed.

  Available wherever books are sold or at

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  S363

  1 W. W. Greg, The Variants in the First Quarto of “King Lear, ” London, 1940 (for 1939).

  2 A Study of Shakespeare (1880), pp. 171, 172.

  3 “I stumbled when I saw,” says Gloster.

  4 Later, on p. 313 of his volume, Barker says: “We must not... [moreover], appraise either ... [Gloucester’s initial] simplicity or Edgar’s ... with detachment—for by that light, no human being, it would seem, between infancy and dotage, could be so gullible. Shakespeare asks us to allow him the fact of the deception, even as we have allowed him Lear’s partition of the kingdom. It is his starting point, the dramatist’s let’s pretend, which is as essential to the beginning of a play as a ”let it be granted“ to a proposition of Euclid. And, within bounds, the degree of pretence makes surprisingly little difference. It is what the assumption will commit him to that counts.”

  5 “The World of Hamlet.” The Yale Review XLI (1952): 502-23.

  6 King Lear (W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture), p. 48.

  7 See Hentzner’s Itinerary (1598); quoted, translated from the Latin, in Joseph Strutt, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (London, 1801), ed. J. C. Cox (1903), p. 206.