King Lear the realm of which the king is head, not to Lear himself, and he tells Lear to behave better for the good of the realm. By contrast, Lear makes an argument similar to James that as king, he holds absolute power and could disregard the views of his subjects if they displease him whenever he liked. In the play, the characters like the Fool, Kent and Cordelia, whose loyalties are institutional, seeing their first loyalty to the realm, are portrayed more favorably than those like Regan and Goneril, who insist they are only loyal to the king, seeing their loyalties
The Oxford Shakespeare was first printed. This resulted in many controversial choices: for example, presenting "Hamlet" with several famous speeches relegated to appendices on the grounds that Shakespeare added them after the original performances; presenting two separate texts of "King Lear" due to the drastic differences between the two extant texts; and changing the name of Falstaff in "Henry IV Part One" to 'Oldcastle' due to historical evidence that this name was used in the first performances even though it never survived to print. The Oxford "Complete Works" was the first to emphasize Shakespeare's collaborative work, describing "Macbeth", "Measure for Measure" and "Timon