Page:King Lear (1917) Yale.djvu/160

144 and in the Folios that followed in 1632, 1664, 1685. There was also a quarto edition of 1655, a reprint of the second Quarto mentioned above. Nearly three hundred lines appear in the Quartos that are not in the Folio, and about a hundred and ten lines in the Folio which are not in the Quartos. Delius thought that Shakespeare wrote only what is in the Folio, but there can be little doubt that the third scene in the fourth act, although wholly omitted in the Folio, is Shakespearian.

The first performance of the play, of which we have any record, was in the presence of the King at Whitehall, 26 December, 1606. In 1662 there is an allusion to King Lear, which seems to indicate that it was well known. In 1681 Nahum Tate made a revision which held the stage for a hundred and forty years, and was used by all the great eighteenth-century players. Edgar and Cordelia are united in marriage, and Kent and Lear live together. Tate's version seems insipid in comparison with Shakespeare's, but it was shaped to fit the fashion of the times. Tate paid a compliment to Shakespeare in his Prologue:

It was in 1823 that the great actor Edmund Kean, who had often appeared in Tate's version, finally decided to return to the original text, saying to his wife, 'The London audience have no notion of what I can do until they see me over the dead body of Cordelia.' The effect was even greater than he had hoped for. The most notable performance by an American actor in the nineteenth century was by Edwin Booth, who made an indelible impression on both critics and public. In the twentieth century, the