Editing Lear

                                                      …while we
Unburthen’d crawl toward death. Our son of Cornwall,
And you our no less loving son of Albany,
We have this hour a constant will to publish
Our daughters’ several dowers, that future strife
May be prevented now. (Lear, 1.1.45-50)

         These lines are additions of Shakespeare, presumably, to the text of King Lear as found in the first folio edition of 1623.  The passage, an addition to the extant good folio of Lear is inserted seamlessly in Lear’s speech to Gloucester in the first scene.  Omission of the passage from any conflation would fail to recognize the passage’s significance to determining motive behind Lear’s division of the kingdom and highlighting motifs with dramatic irony..

         Lear’s proposition to Gloucester, presumably also old, although not Lear’s octogenarian, suggests that at least for the first part of the folio insertion Lear seeks some kind of solidarity to help support his decision.  Why that decision to divide the kingdom is more apparent with this addition to the existing quarto text.  Lear’s desire to be “unburthen’d,” which he associates with governance of the kingdom—not, however, being the king—, becomes his motivation for relinquishing control over his lands.  The illegitimacy of this viewpoint is immediately demonstrated, as Lear undergoes his greatest suffering when he is without power.  Yet his expectation of care in his return to infancy, a theme highlighted by “crawl” and in other parts of Lear, is nonetheless the basis on which he decides to abdicate.  Lear seems as naïve as a child—or a fool—to think he will have no burdens after he relinquishes his kingdom but not his privilege.

        The inclusion of this passage in the folio edition also lends a large degree of dramatic irony; that is, expectations of the characters are known by the audience to be false.  Specifically, Lear’s insistence that settling the marriages of his daughters will bring peace to the kingdom in the future (Was he envisioning some succession crisis, without any apparent sons?) is the occurrence of greatest irony in this manner.  Lear does not suspect, as an audience reading just the title of the play would, that his history is tragical.  This addition also highlights the motific unity behind the irony: Lear is a play about division (two kingdoms, two plot lines, sons, three daughters, two fools?) but included in the play are also marriages.  Dissolution begins where a comedy might end.  Without these folio lines this would still be apparent, but what would not is Lear’s vocalized dependence on marital union to stem the tide of division.  What Lear does not expect, again, is that he will represent an opposition to the daughters he marries, or that Edmund would intercede to divide Goneril and Regan.  In short, the addition of these lines emphasizes Lear’s at first displaced trust that must evolve into use of the Fool’s counsel—that is, reason in madness.