目录 List of Illustrations Introduction Textual Introduction and Editorial Procedures THE HISTORY OF KING LEAR The Ballad of King Lear Offshoots of‘King Lear’ Alterations to Lineation Index
精彩内容 【序言】Introduction Once upon a time, probably in 1605, a man called William Shakespeare, using a quill pen, wrote a play about the legendary British King Lear and his three daughters. How often he drafted and redrafted his script we do not know; the version that reached print in 1608, and which seems to have been his first completed manuscript of the play, contains some 25,000 words. Shakespeare’s penning of these words has had consequences that he cannot have foreseen. It has resulted in countless theatrical performances, many of them in languages that he cannot have known and in countries of which he can have had no inkling. It has enhanced—and occasionally diminished—the reputation of innumerable actors. It has stimulated other writers—playwrights, novelists, poets, essayists—to produce an enormous body of work. It has generated a multiplicity of works by artists in other media—visual art, music, opera, film and television. It has provoked, espely in the twentieth century, a vast body of scholarly and critical writing. And it produced a work which, at least since the Romantic period (with its admiration for the Sublime), has come to be regarded not only as its author’s finest literary achievement, but also as one of the most profound and challenging examinations ever undertaken of what it means to be human, an examination conducted not discursively but in a text that requires actors to represent men and women in action that is often violent, in extremes of suffering, and in repose. In imaginative scope and in its power to generate intellectual and emotional response, King Lear has been compared with the greatest masterpieces of art, literature, and music. Coleridge wrote of the storm scenes: ‘O, what a world’s convention of agonies is here!...surely such a scene was never conceived before or since. Take it but as a picture for the eye only, it is more terrific than any which a Michel Anglo, inspired by a Dante, could have conceived, and which none but a Michel Angelo could have executed.’【前言】Any Shakespeare editor must incur immense debts to generations of predecessors. In working on King Lear I have been fortunate to be able to draw on a long and distinguished editorial and scholarly tradition extending back beyond Nicholas Rowe to Heminges and Condell or their assignees who worked on the First Folio, and to the anonymous but intelligent workmen who tried to make sense of the first Quarto in preparing copy for the reprint of 1619. above all I have had the advantage and stimulus of being able to consult excellent recent, fully annotated editions by three good friends, the late Kenneth Muir, Jay Halio, and R. A. Foakes. I have done what I can to make my edition complement rather than rival theirs. My text is heavily indebted to that prepared, with my collaboration, by Gary Taylor for the Oxford Complete Works of 1986, but I have rethought a number of its readings. A General Editor contributing to his own series is rather in the position of an actor who directs himself in a leading role. For the kind of direction that I should normally hope to provide to a member of my company I am espely indebted to Roger Warren, Robert Smallwood, john Jowett, and M. J. Kidnie, each of whom has offered helpful criticism of substantial stretches of my performance. Among other scholars who have been generous in sharing their expertise I should mention Jeremy Barlow, J. M. Binns, Anthony Burton, Paul Edmondson, Melvin Earles, Richard Knowles, Joan Lane, the late Peggy Munoz Simons, Steve Sohmer, Marvin Spevack, and Martin Wiggins. I have benefited greatly from the willing assistance of library staff at the Shakespeare Centre and the Shakespeare Institute, and am espely grateful to Sylvia Morris at the former and James Shaw at the latter. Kate Welch has compiled the index. Jessica Wells helped with a tedious piece of keyboarding, and Clemency Wells advised on a point of horsemanship. In putting the edition through the press I have been fortunate once again to have Christine Buckley as a scrupulous copy editor. At oxford University Press Frances Whistler has been an unfailing and immensely generous source of wise advice and practical help. Stanley WellsThe Shakespeare Birthplace TrustStratford-upon-AvonJuly 2000
以下为对购买帮助不大的评价