The textual history of King Lear is very interesting and modern interpretations of this history are, in Shakespeare scholarship, revolutionary.  King Lear was first published in 1608 and Shakespeare's name is prominently featured on the title page.  In fact, it is the first words on the title page and in the largest print.  Apart from this the book, Q1, is not very satisfactory.  It is poorly printed, some passages that should have been poetry are set as prose and other prose passages are set as verse.  It may have been that it was set from a manuscript that was hard to read, or it may be that the compositor was a  new apprentice.  Q2 was printed in 1619 from Q1 but does make some changes and corrections.

The next printed copy is F in 1623, and although scholars contend that Q2 was used in the folio, the differences between F and Q1 or Q2 are manifold.  The title page calls King Lear a tragedy, whereas before it was called a history.  F lacks three hundred lines found in Q1, and has an additional one hundred not found in Q1.  Over the last three hundred years textual scholars have been asking, "Will the real King Lear please stand up?"  Our text prints three versions!  Q1, F, and a conflated version.  I suggest that students read the conflated version, but I recommend that you might examine both to see the kinds of differences that trouble scholars.  They are not just picky spelling and punctuation differences.

For years textual editors attempted to bring the three authoritative texts together into one readable, satisfactory text reproducing the play as nearly as possible to what Shakespeare intended.  However in 1978 Michael Warren, a Shakespearean scholar, argued that this was not the right direction.  He suggested that King Lear existed in two different versions and were not meant to be combined.  He suggested that Q1 and F represented those two different versions of the play and should not be combined but should be edited, read, and studied separately.  In this undergraduate class I believe that reading and studying two versions of Lear would be too much to endure for most students, so I am content for you to read but one version of the play....