Customer Reviews

King Lear (Ignatius Critical Editions)

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Amazon.com first recommended this text to me, based on my purchasing history; I did look at it before reading Scanlon's review. I am a second-year graduate student in English (Renaissance/Early Modern British literature). I have loved engaging with King Lear and continue to return to that text. I chose one of the papers I'd written on it as a writing sample for my grad school applications and also selected Lear as one of the plays for my first qualifying exam. The Norton critical editions have been useful to me (especially by providing "The History of King Lear" and "The Tragedy of King Lear" on facing pages, as well as the conflated text). I also have other editions on my shelf for reference. The most useful have been the Riverside Shakespeare and the Arden editions. (Bevington's edition was required for one undergrad class, but I have not come back to that edition lately.) Stephen Orgel's introduction to the Penguin edition motivated me to rework part of my paper, to make my argument more clear.

That said, I also have a copy of "The Illustrated Stratford Shakespeare," which contains absolutely no critical information, no textual notes, or editorial comments. I do wonder who decided which edition to include for each poem or play (especially the wildly different Lears) and on what criteria. For the non-specialist, or for a student who will not be held responsible for the publication history or critical history of King Lear, I have recommended the Dover Thrift Edition ($1.50)--as well as Olivier's film. I have not yet recommended the Ignatius edition, though I might. It is not a critical edition of the same comprehensive scope or academic rigor of such editions as the Norton, Oxford, Riverside, but not all readers need that.

Scanlon supposes the readership for this Ignatius edition to be a "home schooling or private schooling market of little literary sophistication and preparation." He perceives that Shakespeare's King Lear is somehow inappropriate for home educated students, whom he labels as "ideologically restrained." Yes, please do "imagine" such students reading "the wrenching Lear": some home-educated students have achieved a depth and breadth of historical context, analytical reading skills--indeed, even a high degree of literary sophistication! Scanlon might be surprised to know that these students do read and write about "profound" and difficult texts, even delighting in "anything among the Greeks." Such students may--and do--go beyond the initial assignment and read the Folio, the Quarto, and Tate's revision of Lear. I know they do--I did. So did a colleague. So did another friend, who did not choose to pursue literature studies at the university level. In fact, I chose to focus my analysis precisely on "the Quarto's inexorable tragic ending with the death of the innocent Cordelia." (I even keep a print of a rendition of that tragic scene in a small frame on my bookshelf.)

Of course, many other students (whether home-, private- or public-schooled) remain largely uninterested in literature; many are underprepared for reading such texts as Lear. I have worked with home-educated students, as well as at a public high school, a community college and now a public university. It is always a delight to see students engage directly with a literary classic and to become interested in the action, sometimes in spite of themselves. Even lamentably underprepared students can read this play (reading aloud can help). As they find they can understand the basics, such as the meaning of the words and the action of the play, they become more interested in discussing further. As a tutor, I found that students were more likely to become bogged down or discouraged with the text (Shakespeare's play or otherwise), when confronted with a variety of critical approaches too soon, before engaging with the play themselves.

While I am not convinced that the Ignatius edition is a necessary addition to the market, I contend that Scanlon's concerns about the content are largely unfounded. Motivated students will seek out the other primary and secondary materials anyway; underprepared students will pick up this "slim volume" and be glad of the explanatory footnotes. It is those students, after all, for whom the explanations of what Scanlon or I might call "obvious" terms were intended.

Yes, this book does not discuss the difference between Folio and Quatro, as Scanlon complains, but why is that necessary if the other critical editions have already dealt with it? This book wants to deal with Shakespeare's message rather than the medium of the message.

Ever since the 1960's, post-modernistic nihilistic commentators have viewed King Lear as a post-modernistic nihilistic play. It is a tragedy where good people die with no hope and no meaning.

But Shakespeare did not write in the 1960's. He wrote in Elisabethean England, when Catholics and Puritans were routinely executed for their faith. This was right after the Reformation. Christendom was divided between Catholics and Protestants. The British government came up with a middle way - Anglicanism, which was definitely not Catholic and not quite Protestant. This was not acceptable to many Catholics and Protestants (Puritans). There is evidence that Shakespeare personally knew people who met their deaths because they would not compromise their religion for the government's middle way. So the issue back then was not whether there was meaning in the world. The issue was whether that the government had the right to impose on the people what that meaning should be.

King Lear wanted to retire from the throne. Normally, the heir to the throne would be the oldest child, Regan. But Lear had a special love toward his youngest child, Cordelia, and wanted to leave his throne to her. So Lear came up with a third way, just as the Elizabethean government chose a middle way. The middle way was to divide England equally for his three daughters. But he demanded from his daughters an expression of their total love and loyalty to him. The first two daughters complied. Cordelia would only love his father has much as a daughter should love his father - no more and no less. To a Christian audience at that time, this must have reminded them of Christ's admonishment that we should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is God's. The government at the time of Shakespeare was demanding from its people that they render unto the Caesar that which belonged to God - their faith. They were called the people to abandon their Catholic or Puritan faiths and submit to the Church of England with the Queen as the supreme head of the church. Those who refused were executed, just as Cordelia was banished for not giving all to King Lear.

The consequences of Lear demanding from his daughters all their love was tragic. The daughters who complied turned against Lear when Lear was no longer the king. The one who stayed loyal to Lear was the one who would not compromise. Was this a soft message to the Queen that her most loyal subjects were the ones who would not compromise their principles to her?

This was just one example of how this book opened my eyes to the message of Shakespeare in the play King Lear. There are many others. I appreciate this series' commitment to find the intention of the author, and how his contemporary audience would have understood that message. I am tired of authors being molded into the minds of their critics, instead of the authors speaking for themselves. Only by letting Shakespeare speak for himself can we understand why Shakespeare was the greatest English writer ever.

The sales material for this series alleges it to be firmly "traditional" without defining what possibly it might mean by this modifier. The sales pitch claims it eschews the modernist, post-modernist, feminist and deconstructivist, appealing to the literature professor intent upon a "traditional" reading, and yet in the reviews included in this slender volume we find a dialectical (i.e., Marxist) approach as well as one presenting the doubt in Faith. There is also a review employing Samuel Beckett's post-modern dramatic form of the tragicomic.

Under the three brief reviews labelled here "classic" we find one from the poet Keats upon reading Lear again (excerpted from his correspondence?), one from Johnson's well-known preface, and an excerpt from a longer old work certain to put any "traditionalist" classroom into deep, traditional and very restful slumber.

Each page includes about a third of a page of slender, well-marginated footnotes explaining uncertain and other terms, including the often obvious. There is none of the usual running comparison of Folios and Quatros found in the more traditional critical editions.

If this series were much cheaper, it might be worthwhile to purchase as a cheap alternative to the more authoritative and complete editions, which include such niceties as the history of the textual variants, etc. and the reasons for selecting one version over another, or for producing a synergy from several. The others often handle more extensively Keats and Johnson, etc.

Especially recommendable among the traditional are the ancient and honored Arden King Lear (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series) (of which I am now reading the second of a series of three, being renewed ever forty years or so), of course the old war horse King Lear (Norton Critical Editions) which is so oddly and erroneously and specifically dismissed in the sales pitch for this ideologically constrained slender Ignatius series, or King Lear (The Pelican Shakespeare), and the mighty, pre-eminent The Oxford Shakespeare: The History of King Lear (The Oxford Shakespeare).

In any case this is the play to consider in a time of tyrannical misrule by decrepit old men, coming as it here does from an editorial house of old men at Ignatius. Please see as well such excellent dramatic reproductions as Olivier's wonderful King Lear and the severely yet effectively abridged early Peter Brooks production with Orson Welles, if only for the odd cigarette comercials. It is an excellent production, an excellent Welles showing the power of his stage presence in its prime, and certain to keep that persecuted traditionalist classroom awakened, even most dangerously educated.

See as well the master cineaste Akira Kurosawa's reading in Ran - Criterion Collection. But avoid anything at all from Ignatius Press for its bizarre Opus Dei ideology, as evidenced by the sales pitch here. The brilliant, comprehensively learned, courageous and holy Saint Ignatious of Loyola certainly holds his head in shame, or in resigned laughter. Meanwhile for those seeking the latest in academic essays regarding this great and comic tragedy, this ballad from before the Romans brought writing to the western isles (mutilating torture by tyrants is as old as King Lier, as new as a baby Bush), seek out and snatch King Lear: New Critical Essays (Shakespeare Criticism); for those burdened with bringing the tragedy of the forgetful, trusting elderly, whose hand doth smell of mortality, to youthful scholars more suited to Romeo or Hamlet, try not only the Welles mentioned above, but especially the King Lear (Graphic Shakespeare) (Shakespeare Graphic Library). The excellent Peter Brooks Scofield version at King Lear [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Great Britain ] may be far too graphic and laden with Bergman. Thus for SCofield the voice-only may serve best, either in the CAedmon 1968 apparition William Shakespeare KING LEAR [Unabridged Audiocassettes] or the more recent version by the excellent if octogenarian Scofield at King Lear (Naxos AudioBooks). Recordings with Sir Gielgud or Sir Guiness are also available easily upon this amazon.

Yet, whatsoever you may do, do avoid Ignatius! The shameful presumptuousness casts doubt upon the credibility and academic rigor of this entire series of "Ignatius Critical Editions" and indeed upon the entire publishing house which seeks through this sales pitch to milk a home schooling or private schooling market of little literary sophistication and preparation. But why Lear for such an audience? Imagine subjecting students to the reading of the wrenching Lear! Do they follow the lesser Folio version? Do they supply the later, popular, dramatic "happy ending?" Or do they maintain the Quarto's inexorable tragic ending with the death of the innocent Cordelia, an ending as profound as anything among the Greeks, and difficult even for the elderly to bear? Having asked her button be loosened, Lear dies of joy to see her head move, even involuntarily, in the most painful scene in all English literature aside from the death of little Nell. Why subject your ideologically restrained home schooled to this? Because for all its nudity Lear holds little sex, and those who do like Edmund die? Does this fit their ideology?

Meanwhile please see at the least our finest, our greatest, our irreplaceable and eminently traditional American Shakespearean actor Mr. James Earle Jones in his prime, along with a remarkably thin and young and dashing Raul Julia in his prime (later of Romero fame) and Paul Sorvino and other excellent actors in the Joe Papp Shakespeare in the Park production King Lear / Jones, New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive), and put Ignatius most mercifully to rest.