The Division of the Two Kingdoms: Shakespeare’s Two Versions of King Lear, a magisterial collection of essays, edited by Gary Taylor and Michael Warren in 1983, brought to a head what had caused unease in Shakespeare Studies for decades regarding the two-text controversy concerning King Lear. In short, two versions of King Lear exist in the Quarto and Folio editions. Warren in another essay beautifully sums up the textual troubles with King Lear: “The two texts of King Lear present editorial and critical problems. The Quarto of 1608 prints 283 lines that are not printed in the 1623 Folio; the Folio prints about 100 lines that are not printed in the Quarto. A variation of nearly 400 lines in a text of around 3,300 lines is significant; in addition, there are also a very large number of variant substantive readings”(King Lear: Norton Critical Edition 181-182). How then can textual scholars reconcile such blatant incongruities in a single text and/or multiple texts? Traditionally, textual editors attempted to choose the more appropriate line, phrase, or word between the two print versions of the play through the process of conflation. In some instances scholars presented both texts in the same volume by placing the quarto version of the play, The History of King Lear on the left hand of the text and the folio version, The Tragedy of King Lear, on the right and then followed them with a conflated version as the editors of The Norton Shakespeare saw fit while the editors of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7^th-editon conflate them “in order to make available as much of both texts as possible within the space constraints”(1109) of their anthology. King Lear, no stranger to political contestation through the centuries, was banned from the stage from 1810 for more than a decade because British authorities feared that audiences would perceive similarities between King Lear and King George III’s own mental issues (Croall 6). Therefore, this special session seeks to address the interpretative influences of these essays and at the same time draw an end to the contestation occasioned by this play as Ian De Jong suggests, “Since the publication of Taylor and Warren’s Division of the Kingdoms, viewpoints about every thing from the plays historical authority to its critical valence have been radically, and sometimes harshly, polarized.” He argues that the polarity in textual studies of the play may ultimately be resolved through digital technology. O’Connor, on the other hand, is inspired by the methodology of Warren Taylor in his use of props in King Lear, and he explores his methodology through the use of letters in the play. These exciting essays demonstrate how textual resolution is possible as well as how the useful application of Taylor’s approach to other aspects of this play can yield fruitful results.

In “Critical Divisions, Digital Reunions: Hyperlinking Lear,” De Jong pursues the concept of duality with a passion. From the binary nature of Gloucester’s heirs opposition to Goneril and Regan’s amalgamate against Cordelia, every thing seems to come in pairs. Oscillation is the ruling movement of King Lear. In fact, the history of King Lear is similarly dualistic. The main source-streams exist for the play’s two entwined plots about two families. Leir preceded Lear and returned like a revenant in Tate’s adaptation. Even the scholars become polarized entities: consolidationists and disintegrationists, apologists for Q or F, those in favor of a theatrical origin and those in favor of a foul-papers argument. Sir Brian Vickers’ recent The One King Lear ostensibly arguing in favor of (textual) unity, rekindled the not-quite-dead coals of critical warfare. Finally, De Jong seeks resolution of the binary oppositions that plague almost every aspect of this play. There have been two King Lears for nearly four decades. The polarity of the scholarly discourse comes directly from a critical culture of binarity. De Jong’s essay establishes the polarized culture around King Lear and then argues for the synthetic potential of digital textuality. He contends that digital texts offer one significant way for Lear criticism to become post-Division, using as a case study Michael Best’s edition of King Lear for the Internet Shakespeare Editions. This version relies on its digitality to resist binaries between Q and F, definitive reading and variant reading, conflated and separated, and between there and not-there. It may not be The One, but Best’s edition offers an amicable King Lear.

William O’Connor, on the other hand, in “Ungracious Paper”: The Methodology of Gary Taylor and the Letters in King Lear,” treats of the influence of Taylor in the interpretation of missives in King Lear. In attempting to determine when and by whom the revisions which resulted in Folio Lear were made, Taylor concludes that Lear “was revised, by Shakespeare himself, probably in 1609-10”(Taylor 429) using stylistic evidence from plays like Coriolanus, Cymbeline, and Winter’s Tale (428), along with that of other playwrights’ work (395-401) and theatre practice (412). O’Connor uses Taylor’s methods to attempt to answer Richard Strier’s question, why are there so many letters in King Lear? Why does Shakespeare use letters as a device to drive the action of the play forward? O’Connor wants to explore the way Shakespeare went on to employ letters in his next plays, those leading up to Lear. Having made letters central to the plot of a serious comedy in Measure for Measure, Shakespeare experimented in Lear (cf. Taylor 413 on Lear’s relation to the romances.) Building upon the work of Taylor, O’Connor looks at how letters function, as Taylor does with other props; Shakespeare’s use of letters solves a number of dramaturgical problems in Lear, from advancing a political plot while scenes of personal and familial confrontation dominate the main stage-action to possibly covering actors doubling in roles. Finally, Dr. Michael Best, as respondent, will critique the 15 minute papers presented in the order they appear in the program for 15 minutes, and the last 15 minutes of the panel will be open to questions from the audience.