Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: Where was Nahum Tate's adaptation of King Lear first performed?
Nahum Tate's The History of King Lear was successfully remounted in New York, at The Shakespeare Center on Mahattan's Upper West Side, staged by the Riverside Shakespeare Company in 1985.[30] For this production, conventions of the mid-17th century English theatre, when Tate's Lear was popular, were used in the staging, such as raked stage covered with green felt (as was the custom for tragedies),[31] footlights used for illumination on an apron stage (or curved proscenium stage), and period costumes drawn from the era of David Garrick. Musical interludes were sung by cast members during the act breaks, accompanied by a harpsichord in the orchestra pit before the stage. The production was directed by the company's Artistic Director, W. Stuart McDowell, and featured Eric Hoffmann in the role of Lear, and supported by an Equity company of fifteen, including Frank Muller in the role of the Bastard Edmund.[32] The play, with its "happy ending", became known as a "King Lear for optimists" by the press, and proved one of the most popular productions by the Riverside Shakespeare Company.[31]
Tate's "Lear" remains famous as an example of an ill-conceived adaptation arising from insensitivity to Shakespeare's tragic vision. Tate's genius was not in language - many of his interpolated lines don't even scan - but in structure; his Lear begins brilliantly with the Edmund the Bastard's first attention-grabbing speech, and ends with Lear's heroic saving of Cordelia in the prison and a restoration of justice to the throne. Tate's worldview, and that of the theatrical world that embraced (and demanded) his "happy ending" versions of the Bard's tragic works (such as "King Lear" and "Romeo and Juliet") for over a century, arose from a profoundly different sense of morality in society and of the role that theatre and art should play within that society. Tate's versions of Shakespeare see the responsibility of theatre as a transformative agent for positive change by holding a moral mirror up to our baser instincts. Tate's versions of what we now consider some of the Bard's greatest works dominated the stage throughout the 18th century precisely because the Ages of Enlightenment and Reason found Shakespeare's "tragic vision" immoral, and his tragic works unstageable. Tate is seldom performed today, though in 1985, the Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted a successful production of "The History of King Lear" at The Shakespeare Center, heralded by some as a "Lear for the Age of Ronald Reagan."
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.[53] 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.[54] 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).[55] 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."[56][57] 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,[58][59] and a scene in which Cordelia wears men's pants that would reveal the actress's ankles.[60] The play ends with a celebration of "the King's blest Restauration", an obvious reference to Charles II.[lower-alpha 2]
Transferring his services to Drury Lane, he gradually rose in public favour, his most conspicuous success being in the title role of Sheridan Knowles's "William Tell" (11 May 1825). In 1826 he completed a successful engagement in the United States, and in 1828 his performances met with a very flattering reception in Paris. In 1829 he appeared as Othello in Warwick. On 15 December 1830 he appeared at Drury Lane as Werner, one of his most powerful impersonations. In 1833 he played in "Antony and Cleopatra", in Byron's "Sardanapalus", and in "King Lear". He was responsible, in 1834, and more fully in 1838, for returning the text of "King Lear" to Shakespeare's text (although in a shortened version), after it had been replaced for more than a hundred and fifty years by Nahum Tate's happy-ending adaptation, "The History of King Lear".
In "Henry VI, Part I, with the Murder of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester", adapted by John Crowne from Shakespeare, and acted in 1681, the part of Queen Margaret was assigned to Lady Slingsby. In "Henry VI, Part II, or the Misery of Civil War", from the same source, the same character went to Mrs. Lee. As the second part was written first, and probably produced first, Mrs. Lee's marriage may have been in 1681. In Nahum Tate's adaptation of "King Lear" Lady Slingsby was Regan, in Nat Lee's "Lucius Junius Brutus, the Father of his Country", Sempronia, and Marguerite in Lee's "Princess of Cleve".
This happy-ending adaptation was, in fact, so well received by audiences, that, according to Stanley Wells, Tate's version "supplanted Shakespeare's play in every performance given from 1681 to 1838", and was "one of the longest-lasting successes of the English drama."[1] As Samuel Johnson wrote, more than eighty years after the appearance of Tate's version, "In the present case the public has decided. Cordelia from the time of Tate has always retired with victory and felicity."[8] Famous Shakespearean actors such as David Garrick, John Philip Kemble, and Edmund Kean who played Lear during that period were not portraying the tragic figure who dies, broken-hearted, gazing at his daughter's body, but the Lear who regains his crown and gleefully announces to Kent:
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.
"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.
Like Tate's other immensely popular "happy ending" version of "Romeo and Juliet" (which was a central part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of "Nicholas Nickleby") Tate's equally popular adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear" was the only performed version of "King Lear" for over 150 years, beginning in the late 17th century when Tate wrote his adaptation, through the early 19th century.
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.
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."
Although many critics – including Joseph Addison, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and Anna Jameson — condemned Tate's adaptation for what they saw as its cheap sentimentality, it was popular with theatregoers, and was approved by Samuel Johnson, who regarded Cordelia's death in Shakespeare's play as unbearable. Shakespeare's version continued to appear in printed editions of his works, but, according to numerous scholars, including A.C. Bradley and Stanley Wells, did not appear on the English stage for over a hundred and fifty years from the date of the first performance of Tate's play.[1][2][3] Actors such as Thomas Betterton, David Garrick, and John Philip Kemble, who were famous for the role of Lear, were portraying Tate's Lear, not Shakespeare's.
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.
The History of King Lear was first performed in 1681, in the Duke's Theatre in London, with the leading roles taken by Thomas Betterton (as Lear) and Elizabeth Barry (as Cordelia), both remembered now for their portrayal of Shakespeare's characters. Tate relates that he was "Rackt with no small Fears" because of the boldness of his undertaking, until he "found it well receiv'd by [his] Audience"[7]
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". 
David Garrick was the first actor-manager to begin to cut back on elements of Tate's adaptation in favour of Shakespeare's original: he retained Tate's major changes, including the happy ending, but removed many of Tate's lines, including Edgar's closing speech.[62] He also reduced the prominence of the Edgar-Cordelia love story, in order to focus more on the relationship between Lear and his daughters.[63] His version had a powerful emotional impact: Lear driven to madness by his daughters was (in the words of one spectator, Arthur Murphy) "the finest tragic distress ever seen on any stage" and, in contrast, the devotion shown to Lear by Cordelia (a mix of Shakespeare's, Tate's and Garrick's contributions to the part) moved the audience to tears.[lower-alpha 4]
In 1985, the Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City staged Tate's "History of King Lear" in its original form, "happy ending" and all, directed by W. Stuart McDowell at The Shakespeare Center. This included removing the Fool altogether, adding a confidante for Cordelia, named Arante, as well as an "abduction" scene of Cordelia on the heath. The play concluded with multiple happy endings: for Lear and Kent, and Cordelia and Edgar, who presumably wed after the play's conclusion. Musical interludes were sung by cast members during the act breaks, accompanied by a harpsichord in the orchestra pit.
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).
As literary critics grew increasingly scornful of Tate, his version still remained "the starting point for performances on the English-speaking stage."[1] John Philip Kemble, in 1809, even dropped some of Garrick's earlier restorations of Shakespeare, and returned several passages to Tate.[10] The play was suppressed for several years prior to the death of King George III in 1820, as its focus on a mad king suggested an unfortunate resemblance to the situation of the reigning monarch.[11] But in 1823, Kemble's rival, Edmund Kean (who had previously acted Tate's Lear), "stimulated by Hazlitt's remonstrances and Charles Lamb's essays,"[2] became the first to restore the tragic ending, though much of Tate remained in the earlier acts. "The London audience," Kean told his wife, "have no notion of what I can do till they see me over the dead body of Cordelia."[12] Kean played the tragic Lear for a few performances. They were not well received, though one critic described his dying scene as "deeply affecting",[13] and with regret, he reverted to Tate.[10]
In all the other great Shakespearean characters he was, according to the best critics, inferior to them, least so in Lear (though he never played Shakespeare's tragic Lear, preferring the happy ending "History of King Lear" as adapted by Nahum Tate), Hamlet and Wolsey, and most so in Shylock and Richard III. His production of "Cymbeline" was staged regularly from 1801 on. On account of the eccentricities of Sheridan, the proprietor of Drury Lane, Kemble withdrew from the management, and, although he resumed his duties at the beginning of the season 1800-1801, he at the close of 1802 finally resigned connection with it.
Sigmund Freud asserted that Cordelia symbolises Death. Therefore, when the play begins with Lear rejecting his daughter, it can be interpreted as him rejecting death; Lear is unwilling to face the finitude of his being. The play's poignant ending scene, wherein Lear carries the body of his beloved Cordelia, was of great importance to Freud. In this scene, Cordelia forces the realization of his finitude, or as Freud put it, she causes him to "make friends with the necessity of dying".[30] Shakespeare had particular intentions with Cordelia's death, and was the only writer to have Cordelia killed (in the version by the Nahum Tate, she continues to live happily, and in Holinshed's, she restores her father and succeeds him).
It was not until the abolition of the Patent monopoly on theatrical production that Phelps was able to take over the management of the then-unfashionable Sadler's Wells Theatre and revolutionize the production of Shakespeare's plays by restoring Shakespearean performances to the original text of the first folio and away from the adaptations by Colley Cibber, Nahum Tate and David Garrick that had been favored by the theatre-going public since the Restoration. Phelps staged all but four of Shakespeare's plays at Sadler's Wells, some of which (like "The Winter's Tale" and "Measure for Measure") hadn't been performed since their premieres at the Globe Theatre.
Phelps' most frequently performed role was Hamlet, but he counted Macbeth, Wolsey, Leontes, and Bottom among his greatest achievements. He was generally considered the finest King Lear of his generation, returning to Shakespeare's version, which had been replaced on stage for over a hundred and fifty years by Tate's happy ending adaptation "The History of King Lear", and staging the first production of the original version since the Restoration in 1845. "Bell's Weekly Messenger" wrote "The majesty, as well as the paternal tenderness of Lear, is preserved throughout; the grief, despair, and madness are kingly; and the business which the action inspires is heightened by the consciousness of the greatness of the mind that is suffering."
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".
Although Shakespeare's entire text did not reappear on stage for over a century and a half, this does not mean that it was always completely replaced by Tate's version. Tate's version was itself subject to adaptation. It is known that Garrick used Tate's complete text in his performances in 1742, but playbills advertising performances at Lincoln's Inn Fields the following year (with an anonymous "Gentleman" playing Lear) mentioned "restorations from Shakespeare".[1] Garrick prepared a new adaptation of Tate's version for performances given from 1756, with considerable restoration from the earlier parts of the play, although Tate's happy ending was retained, and the Fool was still omitted.[1] Garrick's rival Spranger Barry also played Tate's Lear the same year, in a performance which, according to the poet and playwright Frances Brooke, moved the whole house to tears, though Brooke marvelled that Spranger and Garrick should both have given Tate's work "the preference to Shakespeare's excellent original", and that Garrick, in particular, should "prefer the adulterated cup of Tate to the pure genuine draught offered him by the master he avows to serve with such fervency of devotion."[9]
On the whole, though, innovation was the order of the day for Restoration companies. John Downes reports that the King's Men initially included some Caroline actors; however, the forced break of the Interregnum divided both companies from the past. Restoration actors performed on proscenium stages, often in the evening, between six and nine. Set-design and props became more elaborate and variable. Perhaps most noticeably, boy players were replaced by actresses. The audiences of comparatively expensive indoor theaters were richer, better educated, and more homogeneous than the diverse, often unruly crowds at the Globe. Davenant's company began at the Salisbury Court Theatre, then moved to the theater at Lincoln's Inn Fields, and finally settled in the Dorset Garden Theatre. Killigrew began at Gibbon's Tennis Court before settling into Christopher Wren's new theatre in Drury Lane. Patrons of both companies expected fare quite different from what had pleased Elizabethans. For tragedy, their tastes ran to heroic drama; for comedy, to the comedy of manners. Though they liked Shakespeare, they seem to have wished his plays to conform to these preferences.
Restoration writers obliged them by adapting Shakespeare's plays freely. Writers such as William Davenant and Nahum Tate rewrote some of Shakespeare's plays to suit the tastes of the day, which favoured the courtly comedy of Beaumont and Fletcher and the neo-classical rules of drama. In 1681, Tate provided "The History of King Lear", a modified version of Shakespeare's original tragedy with a happy ending. According to Stanley Wells, Tate's version "supplanted Shakespeare's play in every performance given from 1681 to 1838," when William Charles Macready played Lear from a shortened and rearranged version of Shakespeare's text. "Twas my good fortune", Tate said, "to light on one expedient to rectify what was wanting in the regularity and probability of the tale, which was to run through the whole a love betwixt Edgar and Cordelia that never changed words with each other in the original".