Excerpt from The British Academy, Tercentenary of the First Folio, the Annual Shakespeare Lecture: The Foundations of Shakespeare's TextQuarto omits, and some 190 lines in the Quarto which the Folio omits. How many lines there may have been in the original manu script which both the Quarto and Folio omit no one can now tell. In the case of Lear, I think very few, but what about other plays, for instance, Antony and Cleopatra with its scenes of ten lines, of nine lines, of five lines, its two scenes of four lines? Were these scenes always as short as this i' If you look at the scenes in Lear where the admirable Kent explains successive situations to a Gentleman and see how the Quarto has cut out some lines which the Folio retains and the Folio has cut out some which the Quarto retains, I think that you will surmise that in Antony and Cleopatra also there have been cuts. Please remember also that the Folio editor has been proved by Mr. Daniel to have had a copy of the First Quarto of Lear before him, and could have printed the lines cut out from the theatre's manuscript if he had pleased. But he did not please. We have to face the fact that the producers of the Folio preferred the acting-version used in the playhouse, and if lines written by Shakespeare were omitted from that were content that they should perish. If that was a crime, they committed it.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.