ABSTRACT
Once one could speak of “establishing” the text of King Lear. Beginning with Alexander Pope in 1725, editors believed that, however imperfectly, they could reconstruct from the earliest printed editions a text that would represent Shakespeare’s intentions for the play’s presentation to the world and posterity. The Globe edition of 1864, culminating a century and a half of such attempts, effectively fixed the shape and texture of the play for more than another century. That form of the play is still found in most modern editions, such as the Riverside, Penguin, Bantam, Folger, and New Arden.
