Where was Nahum Tate's adaptation of King Lear first performed?
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In 1985 the Riverside Shakespeare Company presented the New York premiere of "The History of King Lear", adapted with a happy ending by 18th-century English Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate, from William Shakespeare's "King Lear". The production was directed by W. Stuart McDowell, produced by Andrew B. Harris, who had joined Riverside as its executive director at the beginning of the season.
Riverside Shakespeare Company
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Nahum Tate ( ; 1652 – 30 July 1715) was an Irish poet, hymnist and lyricist, who became England's poet laureate in 1692. Tate is best known for "The History of King Lear", his 1681 adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear".
Nahum Tate
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Kean was the first to restore the tragic ending to Shakespeare's "King Lear", which had been replaced on stage since 1681 by Nahum Tate's happy ending adaptation "The History of King Lear". Kean had previously acted Tate's Lear, but told his wife that the London audience "have no notion of what I can do till they see me over the dead body of Cordelia." Kean played the tragic Lear for a few performances. They were not well received, though one critic described his dying scene as "deeply affecting", and with regret, he reverted to Tate.
Edmund Kean
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The History of King Lear is an adaptation by Nahum Tate of William Shakespeare's "King Lear". It first appeared in 1681, some seventy-five years after Shakespeare's version, and is believed to have replaced Shakespeare's version on the English stage in whole or in part until 1838.
The History of King Lear
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Tate then turned to making a series of adaptations of Elizabethan dramas. His version of William Shakespeare's "Richard II" altered the names of the characters, and changed the text so that every scene, to use his own words, was "full of respect to Majesty and the dignity of courts"; but in spite of these precautions "The Sicilian Usurper" (1681), as his rewrite was called, was suppressed on the third performance on account of a possible political interpretation. In 1681 Thomas Betterton played Tate's version of "King Lear", which entirely omitted the Fool, and ended happily in marriage between Cordelia and Edgar. (Though Joseph Addison protested at this mutilation of Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson defended the poetic justice of Tate's adaptation.)"Coriolanus" became "The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth", played at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1682. Tate's farce "Duke and no Duke" (first printed 1685, but acted earlier at the Theatre Royal) imitated Sir Aston Cockayne's "Trappolin suppos'd a Prince". His "Cuckold's Haven" (performed 1685 at the Theatre Royal) was derived from Chapman and Marston's "Eastward Ho". "The Island Princess, or the Generous Portugals" (1687) was adapted from John Fletcher. "Injur'd Love, or the Cruel Husband" (1707), altered from Webster's "The White Devil", seems never to have been acted.
Nahum Tate
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All theatres were closed down by the Puritan government on 6 September 1642. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, two patent companies (the King's Company and the Duke's Company) were established, and the existing theatrical repertoire divided between them. And from the restoration until the mid-19th century the performance history of "King Lear" is not the story of Shakespeare's version, but instead of "The History of King Lear", a popular adaptation by Nahum Tate. Its most significant deviations from Shakespeare were to omit the Fool entirely, to introduce a happy ending in which Lear and Cordelia survive, and to develop a love story between Cordelia and Edgar (two characters who never interact in Shakespeare) which ends with their marriage. Like most Restoration adapters of Shakespeare, Tate admired Shakespeare's natural genius but saw fit to augment his work with contemporary standards of art (which were largely guided by the neoclassical unities of time, place, and action). Tate's struggle to strike a balance between raw nature and refined art is apparent in his description of the tragedy: "a heap of jewels, unstrung and unpolish't; yet so dazzling in their disorder, that I soon perceiv'd I had seiz'd a treasure." Other changes included giving Cordelia a "confidante" named Arante, bringing the play closer to contemporary notions of poetic justice, and adding titilating material such as amorous encounters between Edmund and both Regan and Goneril, a scene in which Edgar rescues Cordelia from Edmund's attempted kidnap and rape, and a scene in which Cordelia wears men's pants that would reveal the actress's ankles. The play ends with a celebration of "the King's blest Restauration", an obvious reference to Charles II.
King Lear
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Later into Barry’s career, she was given more roles of a motherhood figure than a sexual object. Barry worked for the Duke's Company from 1675 to 1682, taking the role of Cordelia opposite Thomas Betterton's Lear in Nahum Tate's 1681 adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear". After the Duke's and the King's companies were amalgamated in 1682, she continued as one of the star performers of the new United Company, which remained for 12 years the only theatrical company in London. The absence of rival companies left the actors in a weak bargaining position in relation to management, and when the United Company fell under the mismanagement of Christopher Rich (theatre manager) in the 1690s, "as sly a Tyrant as ever was at the Head of a Theatre."
Elizabeth Barry
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On the stage of "The Shakespeare Center" the Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted numerous productions of works by Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and Commedia dell'Arte comedies, as well as The Shakespeare Project, and major New York premieres of Bertolt Brecht's "The Life of Edward II of England" and Nahum Tate's adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear", entitled "The History of King Lear", directed by Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Center, W. Stuart McDowell, and sponsored by Riverside Shakespeare Company benefactor, Samuel H. Scripps (left).
The Shakespeare Center
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"The Taming of the Shrew" was revived following the English Civil War in the second half of the seventeenth century, but not necessarily in Shakespeare's 'original' version. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw multiple adaptations of Shakespeare's "The Shrew." And, as in Nahum Tate's adaptation of "King Lear", which transforms the tragic ending into a happy marriage between Cordelia and Edgar, the idea that Shakespeare's works were sacrosanct and inalterable was not yet established.
Catharine and Petruchio
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The presence of a happy ending is one of the key points that distinguish melodrama from tragedy. In certain periods, the endings of traditional tragedies such as "Macbeth" or "Oedipus Rex", in which most of the major characters end up dead, disfigured, or discountenanced, have been actively disliked. In the Seventeenth Century, the Irish author Nahum Tate sought to improve William Shakespeare's "King Lear" in his own heavily modified version in which Lear survives and Cordelia marries Edgar. Tate's version dominated performances for a century and a half, Shakespeare's original nearly forgotten. Both David Garrick and John Philip Kemble, while taking up some of Shakespeare's original text, kept Tate's happy ending. Edmund Kean played "King Lear" with its tragic ending in 1823, but failed and reverted to Tate's crowd-pleaser after only three performances. Only in 1838 did William Macready at Covent Garden successfully restore Shakespeare's original tragic end – Helen Faucit's final appearance as Cordelia, dead in her father's arms, became one of the most iconic of Victorian images and the play's tragic end was finally accepted by the general public. Most subsequent critics have not found Tate's amendments an improvement, and welcomed the restoration of Shakespeare's original. Happy endings have also been fastened – equally, with no lasting success – to "Romeo and Juliet" and "Othello".
Happy ending