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SHAKESPEARE’S ART OF POESY IN KING LEAR
DECENCY OF COURTLY BEHAVIOR: THE MOCK TRIAL SCENE
In the so-called mock trial scene, Gloster and Kent escort Lear and his
companions, the Fool and Edgar in the guise of poor Tom, to a hovel in order
to protect them from the storm and console Lear after his highly intense fit
of madness. As the second of Lear’s three mad scenes, this part bears special
significance, since it also stages the last appearance of the Fool, who, to borrow
Ioppolo’s wording, is the king’s “court jester, and surrogate son, but more
importantly his uninhibited alter ego and conscience.”???
As for the reception history of King Lear, the mock trial has long been in
the focus of scholarly attention, mainly for two reasons. First, it proved an
excellent passage with which to demonstrate the textual ambiguities of the
play, as the 1608 Pied Bull Quarto edition contains thirty lines and Edgar’s
soliloquy, which are missing from the 1623 Folio; whereas in the Folio, there
are two utterances made by the Fool which are unique additions to the Quarto
text. In order to visualize the textual ambiguities, in the appendix I conflated
the Quarto and Folio texts and marked their special qualities with different
colors. The portion of the text that both the Quarto and the Folio share appears
in black; the passages that only the Pied Bull Quarto contains are highlighted
in green; and the lines in red indicate passages that appear only in the Folio
version. Many questions have been raised and many hypotheses have been
formulated about whether the earlier version of the text was changed to
conform to the constraints of censorship, as for instance Annabel Patterson or
Paul Hammond claim,” or the playwright himself introduced these changes in
the text for dramaturgical reasons.”** Regardless of the reasons for the textual
revision, even at first sight it is obvious that the Folio version is shorter, it shifts
attention to Lear’s madness and his accusation of Regan, and it completely
lacks the extraordinary trial of Gonorill’s case.
22 Toppolo (ed).: A Routledge, 123.
293 Patterson: “Betweene,” 58—73. Ina recent article, Paul Hammond also proposes that the Fools
lines might contain covert references to King James’ sexual preferences, and that may explain
why they were omitted. Cf.: Paul Hammond: James I’s Homosexuality and the Revision of
the Folio Text of King Lear, Notes and Queries 44:1 (1997), 62-64. Even if one does not find
Hammond’s arguments convincing, the publication of his article shows that scholars still
regard this question as worthy of discussion.
294 As Roger Warren argues, the parts which were omitted from the Quarto shift attention to the
meeting of the mad Lear with the blind Gloster in act 4, scene 6, and thus help speed up the
action. These omissions contain details that are later treated in a more detailed manner. Roger
Warren: The Folio Omission of the Mock Trial. Motives and Consequences, in Roger Warren:
The Division of the Kingdoms. Shakespeare's Two Versions of King Lear, Oxford, Calderon Press,
1983, 49.
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