The story starts with the text of King Lear, with their being two candidates: a Quarto with 300 extra lines and a Folio with 100 extra lines. For a long time the story was that the Folio was a later, improved version got up by the bard himself. But this left the problem of the missing 300 lines, deemed by many to be important.
Sir Brian has now published a rather bad tempered book in which he claims to have finally, once and for all established the intended text of the bard - bad tempered because he includes plenty of intemperate swipes at other bardologists. Holger Syme then went on a marathon, not to say memorable, twitter fest and in more than 500 tweets dismantled much of the Vickers edifice. Peter Blayney was the author of a ground breaking study of text of the Quarto version. While Stephen Greenblatt is the author of a three page, good tempered review in a recent edition of NYRB.
His view seems to be, and one that I happen to agree with, that there can be no such thing as a definitive text, an intended text of such a play. The theatrical culture in bardic times does not admit of such a thing. Any more than you can have a definitive text of some of Proust's work. It was and will remain work in progress.
Not impressed that Harvard should have aided and abetted the whole sorry business by not letting its editors loose on Sir Brian's book; they should not given way to an old man, however eminent. Ironic that the text in question should be the tragic foolishness of another old man!
With thanks to google, wikipedia and Julia Cameron for the image. An image which, to my mind, does a fine job of capturing Lear and his three daughters; two bad and one good, perhaps foolish.
Reference 1: The One King Lear - Sir Brian Vickers - 2016.
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