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INTRODUCTION
Though the exact date of the play’s inception is unknown, the Stationer’s
Register contains the following entry dated November 26, 1607: “Entred for
their copie vnder th’ hands of Sir George Buck, knight & th’ wardens A booke
called. Mr William Shakespeare his historye of Kinge Lear as it was played
before the Kings maietie at Whitehall vppon St Stephans night at Christmas
Last by his maiesties servants playing visually at the globe on Banksyde.”””
Although this record refers to an edition by Nathaniel Butter and John Busby
and not to the Pied Bull Quarto, the date given in the Stationer’s Register and the
allusion to the performance on the cover page of the Pied Bull Quarto suggest
that Shakespeare’s play debuted on stage at the royal court in 1606 during the
monarch’s winter solace. John Leeds Baroll explains that this event, established
during Queen Elizabeth’s reign, meant a special recreation in the middle of
winter, which was “necessary to a monarch who otherwise might become dull
and demoralized and, through his or her own ill health, in patriarchal theory,
bring sickness to the body politic.”! The performance at Whitehall could have
been momentous for three further reasons. First, as London had been plague¬
stricken for most of the year, the public playhouses had closed in spring, and
even in the royal court the last entertainment had taken place in August.”
Consequently, the play that was performed by the King’s Men in the Great
Chamber at Whitehall in December received special attention after such a long
break. This stage was smaller and more intimate than either the Banqueting
House or the Great Hall, and it could only accommodate about three hundred
people, so the courtiers invited to the performance were the most privileged
members of royal circles.’ Secondly, Saint Stephen’s Day, December 26, or
as it is currently known, Boxing Day, marks the liturgical importance of this
performance, since it was an official holiday for the Church of England, the
head of which was James I. More precisely, it was a day of charity, when the
rich showed generosity and hospitality to the poor and outcast. As Leah S.
Marcus points out,
on that day, poor boxes in which cash donations had been collected all year would
be broken open and the money distributed. Poor people would gather in groups
and proceed from house to house asking for a charity which could be denied only
Quoted in Cyndia Susan Clegg: King Lear and the Early Seventeenth-century Print Culture,
in Jeffrey Kahan (ed.): King Lear: New Critical Essays. Volume 33 of Shakespeare criticism, New
York, Routledge, 2008, 165.
John Leeds Baroll: Politics, Plague and Shakespeare’s Theater, Ithaca, Cornell University Press,
1991, 29.
2 Tbid., 154-155.
13 James Shapiro: The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2015, 299.
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