[In the following excerpt, McGugan comments on Tate's life and reputation, and discusses his adaptations and scholarly responses to his works.]

NAHUM TATE'S LIFE AND REPUTATION

Perhaps the most striking similarity between Tate and Shakespeare is the paucity of intimate biographical details that historians can provide for either man. Official documents contain some vital statistics, and their publications testify to how they spent their working time, but of their private lives, little is known. The popular conjecture is that anyone whose literary work is as vital as Shakespeare's must have been a lively personality, and the process of reconstructing it has been a fascinating and creatively fruitful project for such researchers as Spurgeon. The case is quite different with Tate. Few have ventured beyond, the DNB account, and only Samuel A. Golden has produced substantial amplification of it. However, after reviewing “the scant material available,” Golden concludes that “the conception of Tate need not be indistinct … [but is] rather, the clear impression of a man who led a dull, hard life with few moments of happiness as he laboured to exchange his literary work for money.”¹

The standard accounts begin with a summary of the lives of Tate's father and grandfather, both clergymen who went by the name of Faithful Teate. Since the first son in Nahum Tate's generation had already received the name of Faithful, the birth of a second son (in Dublin in 1652) forced the parents to turn to his maternal grandfather for “Nahum,” a name that never appeared in his published works;² apparently he preferred the simplicity of the solitary initial N. Citing the Entrance Register (1637-1725), Trinity College, Dublin, I, 58, Golden supplies the names of a Mr. Savage, who served as Tate's tutor in Belfast before he matriculated at Trinity College in June, 1668, and of George Walker, who was his tutor at the University in Dublin.³ For the period between Tate's graduation with a B. A. in 1672 and the appearance of his first published work, a single contribution to the second edition of Thomas Flatman's Poems and Songs (London, 1676), even Golden supplies no details.⁴ He does, however, fix the dates between which the change in the spelling of the surname must have occurred as April 10, 1674 (the licensing of Flatman's Poems and Songs) and November 27, 1676 (the licensing of the first edition of Tate's own Poems).⁵

There were the editions of Tate's Poems, the first (London, 1677) and the second, “enlarged” and extensively revised, (London, 1684). They are of particular relevance to this study because of what they reveal about Tate's technique as a poetic workman. The “reworking” of his own lines between the two editions is analogous to the “tampering” he did with other men's lines when he adapted old plays to new audiences.⁶

Announcements in the Term Catalogues and the title pages and dedications of his published works constitute the bulk of the evidence for how N. Tate spent the rest of his life.⁷ Between 1678 and 1687 he obviously concentrated on drama.⁸ By 1686 he had begun to publish a series of translations which constitute evidence of his ability to use Latin and Greek sources. The first of these was Girolamo Fracastoro's Syphilis, A Poetical History of the French Disease, Attempted in English by N. Tate (London, 1686). In the same year he dedicated a one-volume edition of The Aethiopian History of Heliodorus to the Duke of Beauford. In the dedication he described his discovery of the first five books translated “by a Person of Quality and Judgement,” who had not lived long enough to complete the task, and his own decision to translate the last five.⁹ Presumably Tate could also have used French sources,¹⁰ although evidence is not conclusive. He did edit The Four Epistles of A. G. Busbequius (London, 1694) because, as he explained in the dedication, he had found yet another valuable translation made by someone who had not lived to see his work through the press.¹¹

Translating, editing, and writing various kinds of verse apparently kept Tate busy, if not financially comfortable, both before and after his appointment in 1692 to succeed Shadwell as Poet Laureate.¹² Among his literary productions in this period are the psalms and hymns which were combined with similar pieces by Dr. Nicholas Brady and published first in London in 1695 as A New Version of the Psalms of David. As a result of the adoption of this as the standard text for the Church of England and numerous subsequent editions, Tate's psalms and hymns are probably his most widely used, if not his most notorious works. It was not until after the financial failure of The Monitor, a tri-weekly periodical that he published in association with an M. Smith, that Tate was forced to seek refuge in the Mint.¹³ He died there on July 30, 1715.¹⁴

In the two chapters that Golden devotes to Tate's personality and reputation, he cites evidence from the author's own work and that of his contemporaries to establish that Tate was excessively modest, industrious, morally upright, and deserving of the loyalty of such intimate friends as Dryden and Brady.¹⁵ The sneering contempt with which Pope, Swift, and Parnell referred to him apparently derived from their perception of his lack of artistry and talent, rather than any lack of integrity or personal merit.¹⁶ Golden takes elaborate pains to explain away any inference that Tate was “given to heavy drinking”¹⁷ as a gross misinterpretation of the word fuddling that had appeared in an early account.¹⁸

Golden devotes considerably more attention to Tate the man than most commentators do; the usual focus is on his works and/or how they fit into the context of English literature of the Restoration Period. The comments of his contemporary Gerard Langbaine appear in An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford, 1691), and are probably the earliest in print:

An Author now living; who tho' he be allow'd to be a Man of Wit and Parts, yet for Dramatic Poetry, he is not above the common Rank: What he has extant, for the most part is borrow'd; at least we may say, That generally he follows other Mens Models, and builds upon their Foundations: for of Eight Plays that are printed under his Name, Six of them owe their Original to other Pens; as we shall shew in the following Account.¹⁹

This paragraph (and the two-page discussion of plays and poetry which follows it) might seem to be merely an acknowledgement of Tate's existence; in contrast to Langbaine's evaluations of other writers past and present, however, it is almost complimentary. Th. Durfey

is accounted by some for an Admirable Poet, but it is by those who are not acquainted much with Authors, and therefore are deceiv'd by Appearances, taking that for his own Wit, which he only borrows from Others: for Mr. Durfey like the Cuckow, makes it his business to suck other Birds Eggs.²⁰

Selections from his treatment of Edward Ravenscroft provide further contrast: “One who with the Vulgar passes for a Writer … I rather stile him in the Number of Wit-Collectors … 'twill be manifest, that this Ricketty-Poet (tho' of so many Years) cannot go without others Assistance.”²¹ Tate was at least given credit for building, albeit on foundations laid by other men.

How much Langbaine's opinions were influenced by his personal reactions to the men of whom he wrote is, of course, impossible to determine now, and a comparison of his treatment of Shadwell (whom he obviously likes) and Dryden (whom he equally obviously does not like very much) makes one skeptical of the objectivity and soundness of his literary judgments. His comments on Tate, however, have been echoed and reinforced by the majority of later critics. On rare occasions they have applied other terms than those connoting mediocrity to him and particular works. Samuel Johnson's implied preference for his King Lear over Shakespeare's is probably the most commonly cited.²² Within the past decade, Christopher Spencer has worked out a defense of that piece as “a new play with its own purpose,” not merely an adaptation, and one which “is both coherent and entertaining.”²³ Another kind of non-mediocre distinction was conferred upon Tate when D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee chose one of his occasional poems for inclusion in The Stuffed Owl, An Anthology of Bad Verse.²⁴

Hazelton Spencer's statements about Tate are the most relevant to the current study, and although he uses a great variety of disparaging nouns and adjectives in his discussions of Tate and others, his critical appraisal is rather consistent. At the end of his discussion of Shadwell's Timon of Athens, he says that it “is preferable to the ineptitudes and inanities of Nahum Tate, and the vandalism of D'Avenant.”²⁵ At one time he refers to “Tate's murderous attempts to improve Shakespeare”²⁶ and at another comments that “Tate was a rather facile hack without a spark of artistic genius.” He continues to explain, however, that “It is in just such men that one finds clues to literary methods and motives which abler men, like Dryden, succeed in covering up.”²⁷

Tate is rarely discussed alone, more frequently coupled or contrasted with others who spread the “epidemic of [particularly Shakespeare] alteration”²⁸ in the 1670's and 1680's. Golden voices the summary dismissal of a twentieth-century biographer when he says that Tate's “dull personality removes him farther and farther from his more colourful contemporaries until he fades into the background.”²⁹ The reaction of those “contemporaries” was probably different, however. In particular, those other playwrights who were competing for space in London theatres between 1678 and 1687 would surely have regarded him as more than background material as they watched him offer eight plays for production in those nine years.

TATE AND THE ADAPTATION OF SHAKESPEARE FOR THE RESTORATION STAGE

Tate's career as a writer for the public stage began sometime before the summer of 1678 and had virtually ended by 1687; the bulk of the work he published as a struggling young writer (eight quartos!) can be discussed under this general heading. He did make one more attempt at drama (fifteen years after he had achieved the public recognition of the laureateship) when he adapted Webster's The White Devil as Injur'd Love: Or, The Cruel Husband (London, 1707).³⁰ As the title page announces, this tragedy was “Design'd to be Acted at the THEATRE ROYAL”; the fact that it was never actually played need not suggest that it is worse (or better) than any of Tate's other dramas. It is, in fact, merely typical of the kind of adapting, i.e., “improving,” of Elizabethan plays that was a popular and sometimes lucrative practice among Restoration dramatists. The prologue (presumably by Tate himself) reflects the overt reforming motive of the new century in the last three lines:

You Wits the Sov'reign Summons will obey,
And, First, to shew you're in a mending way,
You'll often visit our Reforming Play.(31)

However, in such features as refinement of characters and diction, simplification of plot and characterization, development and introduction of sentimental situations, and often, consequently, the changing of the central focus of the story (as in this play, from Vittoria to Isabella), Injur'd Love is not radically different from numerous Restoration adaptations of the comedies, tragedies, histories, farces, tragi-comedies, and pastorals of the earlier generation.

The adaptation “movement” rose to peaks of popularity twice during Tate's lifetime—around 1680 and again around 1700. Although he was only a nominal contributor to the second (with the un-played Injur'd Love), he was a major contributor to the first. Of course, Tate and his cohorts did not limit themselves to Shakespearean tragedy; the current study is, however, based on Tate's adaptation of one such play, i.e., his contribution to the Coriolanus tradition. Therefore, although it is impossible to avoid references to his other works and those of other authors (in the process of filling in essential background for the particular study), discussion of them is governed by a strict principle of limitation.³²

Sir William D'Avenant's The Law Against Lovers (London, 1673) was the first to appear in print, but Restoration adaptations of Shakespeare's tragedies had begun to appear on London stages less than a year after Charles II returned to England.³³ According to Spencer, Hamlet was the first (August 24, 1661?)³⁴ of these, and D'Avenant's was the hand responsible for the “mangled” version that was eventually printed in 1676.³⁵ While the plot structure and characterization are not essentially changed in this version, there are extensive cuts (lines from the original are reprinted, but their omission from the stage version is indicated by inverted quotation marks) and there are numerous changes of diction. Some of these are obviously predicated by the principles of modernization, clarification, and purification, while others seem to be made merely for the sake of changing words. Although D'Avenant's name does not appear on the 1674 edition of Macbeth, there seems to be little question that he was the inventor of the spectacular operatic apparatus in the 1663 or 1664 production³⁶ which represents a more startling kind of modification of the original. Amalgamation of the basic conflict in Measure for Measure and the Beatrice-Benedick situation from Much Ado about Nothing was the most substantial alteration that D'Avenant himself committed, and one which he exposed to the London audience at least as early as 1662.³⁷ John Downes provides information about the initiation of a still more drastic kind of change in one of Shakespeare's tragedies. In his account of plays produced by D'Avenant at the new theatre in Lincoln's-Inn Fields soon after its opening in the spring of 1662,³⁸ he includes “Romeo and Juliet, Wrote by Mr. Shakespear.” After listing some of the members of the cast and describing an amusing incident which occurred during the production, he adds the information that:

This Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, was made some time after into a Tragi-comedy, by Mr. James Howard, he preserving Romeo and Juliet alive; so that when the Tragedy was Reviv'd again, 'twas Play'd Alternately, Tragical one Day, and Tragicomical another; for several Days together.³⁹

Although this tragi-comical version of Howard's was never printed, the precedent for the happy-ending had been set long before Tate came to London in 1672.

In addition to these early adaptations by D'Avenant and Howard, other stage versions (tailored to the taste of the London audiences of the 1670's) may have been a part of Tate's background. During his early years in London he may have seen productions of Thomas Shadwell's The History of Timon of Athens, the Man-Hater⁴⁰ and Thomas D'Urfey's version of Cymbeline which he called The Injured Princess, or the Fatal Wager.⁴¹ In the two theatrical seasons immediately preceding his own debut as an adapter of Shakespearean tragedy, he certainly could have seen Edward Ravenscroft's Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia,⁴² John Dryden's Troilus and Cressida: or Truth Found Too Late,⁴³ and Thomas Otway's The History and Fall of Caius Marius,⁴⁴ a variation on the Romeo and Juliet theme which Spencer calls “the most absurdly incongruous of all the Restoration versions.”⁴⁵ At least the first of John Crowne's two plays based on the Henry VI saga also antedates (certainly in production and probably in composition) Tate's first attempt at adapting Shakespeare. The Misery of Civil-War, A Tragedy,⁴⁶ and Henry the Sixth, the First Part, with the Murder of Humphrey Duke of Glocester⁴⁷ were both played in 1680-1681 at Dorset Garden.⁴⁸ These plays are representative of another literary activity that became popular in London between 1678 and 1682—making theatrical profits out of allusions to and satire on the contemporary political turmoils.⁴⁹ Although Crowne's particular animus in Henry VI (and to a lesser extent in The Misery of Civil-War) was against “Popery and Popish Courts,”⁵⁰ either or both of these plays may have been the immediate inspiration for Tate's use of Richard II and Coriolanus for more generalized political purposes.

One more play (often discussed in connection with what the Restoration did to Shakespeare, but far outside the mainstream of adaptation proper) is Dryden's All for Love: or, The World well Lost.⁵¹ It is a considerably more independent, creative effort than any of Tate's adaptations of Shakespeare (and in its relationship to Shakespeare's text, occupies a position analogous to that of Thomson's Coriolanus⁵²), but it serves a purpose here as a reminder of a third movement in Restoration drama that contributed to Tate's formation as a writer for the stage. Dryden himself had been a major figure in the development of heroic tragedy and, as Spencer delights in pointing out, that genre was a “powerful” influence in All for Love.⁵³

According to Samuel A. Golden, Tate's first play was a part of the heroic tradition.⁵⁴ However, although there are “heroic” elements in Brutus of Alba: or, the Enchanted Lovers (London, 1678), it is scarcely a classic example of the genre. The play is an “original,” at least in the sense that it does not obviously derive from any previous dramatic version of the Dido and Aeneas story; in fact, if it were not for Langbaine's hint,⁵⁵ one might have difficulty identifying the “source.” The title suggests not only the extent of geographical displacement that the story has undergone, but also the distortion of plot, theme, and emphasis. The central characters have also been so diluted (often by tears) that they resemble Dryden's Antony and Cleopatra far more than they do the legendary founder of Rome and the lady who detained him for so long in Carthage. The central conflict produces only feeble echoes of the anguished cries that issue from breasts torn by the rival claims of love and honor. The drams is in blank verse (probably as a result of Dryden's example in All for Love), except for two stanzas sung by a quartet of priestesses in Act II⁵⁶ and another pair of stanzas “Written by Mr. Wright” and inserted just before the denouement.⁵⁷ Tate has invented two characters to fill in the background—Soziman, “a designing lord,” into whose clumsy plotting Summers has read an allusion to Shaftesbury,⁵⁸ and Ragusa, “a sorceress,” whose efficiency both in her own and her author's interests is probably the best feature of the play. The opening lines of Act III, scene i, “A Desart. At some distance a Fountain with the Statue of Diana,” are marvelously suggestive of the whole piece.

                                        Enter Soziman Solus.
SOZ.
This is the dreadfull Sorceresse's Cave,
Where sullen Fiends, Hell's Male-contents conspire,
Whilst at the ghastly Board the Hag presides,
Weighs their Debates and sways the dark Cabal.
Ho Ragusa! dread Prophetess appear:
Assist an Heart that labours with vast mischief,
And with thy Spells secure the fatal Birth.
                                        Enter Ragusa.
RAG.
Who interrupts when I'm at work for Hell?
Whos'e're thou art, I hate the Light and Thee.
Ha! Soziman? thou art a hopefull Son,
A working Head, industrious for Perdition.
SOZ.
Instruct this feeble Arm to shake a Throne,
And snatch a Crown.
RAG.
                                                                                Let it be steept in Bloud!

(p. 19)

A few lines later, Ragusa promises:

I will by Magick pour a Tempest down,
Hail, Rain and Fire, th'ingredients of the Storm;
Scatt'ring the Company to th' Caves for Shelter.
At the same Cell the Prince and Queen shall hide,
Where she forgetfull shall resign her Honour.

(p. 20)

Although there is no record that Brutus of Alba ran beyond the opening night,⁵⁹ Tate was apparently not discouraged. He had another play ready for production in December of 1679.⁶⁰The Loyal General (London, 1680) is, according to Golden, “heroic tragedy at its worst,”⁶¹ but it has many more typical “heroic” devices than Brutus and, probably because of the complications leading up to the denouement (which involves five deaths, two by slow poison), is much more exciting reading. Theocrin is the heroic general; he is loyal to a king who Golden thinks is “probably modelled” on Lear.⁶² Tate's old king in this play is “discontented,” as the author indicates in a stage direction and illustrates with such lines as

Why was my Life stretcht out to this black day?
Death might have come long since, and found me ripe
With all my Honours flourishing round my Head:
But now to Winter blasts I'm left expos'd,
Stript of my Leaves, and with'ring on the Bough.

(I.ii, pp. 5-6)

However, this king is never more than a shadow of Lear. The complications (which involve a faithless queen, her two villainous henchmen Escalus and Pisander, and the loyal general who is in love with the king's sole heir Arviola) are not analogous to those in Shakespeare's treatment of the legendary king of Britain. Golden's theory does, of course, gain support from the fact that King Lear was the first Shakespearean tragedy that Tate attacked.

The failure of his second “original” heroic tragedy and the perennial success of other men's adaptations of “old” plays may both have been factors influencing Tate's decision to begin working directly on Shakespearean texts. Although Lear was, according to his own account, the first adaptation he attempted,⁶³ it was his version of Richard II that was first played (at the Theatre Royal, under the title of The Sicilian Usurper, and with a Sicilian dramatis personae) on Saturday, December 11, 1680; this play was promptly suppressed by a government order dated December 14.⁶⁴King Lear was acted at Dorset Garden the following March⁶⁵ and advertised in the Easter Term Catalogue in 1681.⁶⁶The History of King Richard the Second was advertised in the Trinity issue of the same year and the printed text was prefaced by “a Prefatory Epistle in Vindication of the Author, occasion'd by the Prohibition of this Play on the Stage.”⁶⁷ Less than a year later, Tate had finished his third and last attempt at redoing an old play for a new audience. The Ingratitude of a Common-Wealth: or, the Fall of Caius Martius Coriolanus was acted at Drury Lane in December⁶⁸ and advertised in the Term Catalogue for Hilary in 1682.⁶⁹ Thus within thirteen months, Tate had managed to get three “improved” Shakespearean tragedies on London stages—a record unequalled even by D'Avenant or Dryden.

Although there is no clear pattern of maturation of adaptive technique in Tate's three Shakespeare adaptations, an over-all comparison and contrast of the plays is of value as background for the detailed analysis of Tate's version of the Coriolanus story. All three of the plays printed in the early 1680's reveal Tate's alteration of plot, character, theme, and diction, but it is not always possible to establish the hierarchy of these items in the mind of the adapter. While certain theoretical principles might seem obvious to one who tries to analyze the texts, it is not always possible to find lines, incidents, or scenes that will serve as concrete illustrations. For example, changes in plot development would logically presume that changes in character action or characterization had been made; changes in plot should, of course, result in changes in theme or emphasis; changes in diction should have been made to effect the changes in plot, character, or theme. And, ideally, one should be able to discern some contemporary canon of taste, usage or propriety to explain why each of the various changes was made. In the case of Tate's adaptations—or those of any other author, probably—no such completely logical analysis is possible. One must accept the “facts” of the printed texts and rigorously avoid distortion of them to illustrate historical or critical principles.

Tate seems to have reversed the direction of creative development which D'Avenant had established in his series of adaptations. D'Avenant began by cutting some non-essential scenes for an acting version of Hamlet, progressed through modification and development of several characters in Macbeth, and eventually wrought a substantial change in two plays and fused them into The Law Against Lovers. Tate, on the other hand, began by making radical changes in the plot of King Lear, made rather superficial changes in characters and chronology in Richard II, and eventually relied on an ill-prepared-for and rather shocking ending to effect the major part of his adaptation of Coriolanus. A simple mathematical comparison of the numbers of lines of Shakespeare's and Tate's that appear in the three adaptations reveals this phenomenon in a striking manner. Shakespeare's Lear has 3337 lines, Tate's 2424, and of these, only 1120 (or 46٪) have come either whole or in part from Shakespeare's text. Shakespeare's Richard II has 2760 lines, Tate's only 1955, and of these, 981 (or 50٪) have been taken over word for word or tampered with slightly before they were printed in the adaptation. Of Shakespeare's 3409 lines in Coriolanus, Tate has kept 1274; i.e., he is directly indebted to Shakespeare for 60٪ of the 2124 lines in his Ingratitude of a Common-Wealth. Another numerical comparison adds supporting evidence that Tate's creative energy was waning. For his version of Lear, he wrote 1304 new lines; for Richard II, only 974; and for Ingratitude, a paltry 850, almost half of which occur in two large patches in the last act.

Tate's Lear, however, gives evidence of careful and principled reworking throughout. The preface to the 1681 quarto contains an ominous and now oft-quoted line. In the text which follows, he fulfills his promise to make order out of the “Heap of Jewels, unstrung and unpolisht” which he has “seiz'd.”⁷⁰ He does indeed restring the exile of Cordelia, the flight of Edgar, the wanderings of Lear (and Cordelia!), and ultimate happiness for all the good people in the play on the slender but carefully woven strand of the love between Edgar and Cordelia. He begins to interweave this new strand of plot early, with a 45 line interpolation in Act I scene i, in which Edgar confesses his love for Cordelia and she suspiciously rejects him (pp. 6-7). Edgar's love for her is still hopeful enough, however, to motivate him to flee in disguise rather than “leave my Griefs on my Sword's reeking point” (II.i, p. 17). Midway in the play, Cordelia trustingly accepts his love with the lines,

Come to my Arms, thou dearest, best of Men,
And take the kindest Vows that e're were spoke
By a protesting Maid.

(III.iii, p. 36)

(Her gratitude is not unmotivated: he has just rescued her from two Ruffians employed by Edmund to abduct her during the storm scene on the heath.) Finally, their love adds both pathos and suspense to the scene in which he rescues her a second time. He enters the prison (where she and Lear are at the mercy of official stranglers) and says

Death! Hell! Ye Vultures hold your impious Hands,
Or take a speedier Death than you wou'd give.

(V.vi, p. 63)

Although he changes details, Tate leaves the Gloster-Edmund and Regan-Gonerill aspects of the plot essentially intact. He does rearrange some scenes; e.g., he opens the play with Edmund's

Thou Nature art my Goddess, to thy Law
My Services are bound, why am I then
Depriv'd of a Son's Right because I came not
In the dull Road that custom has prescrib'd?
Why Bastard, wherefore Base, when I can boast
A Mind as gen'rous and a Shape as true
As honest Madam's Issue? Why are we
Held Base, who in the lusty stealth of Nature
Take fiercer Qualities than what compound
The scanted Births of the stale Marriage-bed?

(I.i, p. 1)

Shakespeare had opened the second scene of his first act with what is clearly the source of the Tate lines quoted above.

Thou, Nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? Wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake?

(I.11.1-15)⁷¹

Comparison of the Tate and Shakespeare versions of this passage illustrates the kind and extent of “tampering” with diction which was far from uncommon among the Restoration adapters of Shakespeare and other earlier dramatists. Here in Edmund's speech, Tate not only condenses the fifteen lines of his source into ten, but in the process of smoothing them and “clarifying” their meaning, he also distills out much of their natural passion. The most significant alteration occurs when he ameliorates Shakespeare's “Why brand they us / With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?” (11.9-10) to “Why are we held / Base” (11. 7-8). When Tate also simplifies Shakespeare's 11. 3-6 into his own 11. 2-3, he sustains the softened tone he has introduced by substituting “why am I then” (1.2) for Shakespeare's “Wherefore should I” (1.2). Finally, by compressing Shakespeare's 11. 12-15 into his own 11. 9-10, Tate purges the Bastard's tirade of its fierce quality and leaves him to ruminate on “The scanted Births of the stale Marriage-bed” (1. 10).

As Tate condenses the action in the middle sections of Shakespeare's version of the play and relocates a few more lines, he indulges in one digression that explicates the illicit passion between Regan and Edmund. He begins Act IV (pp. 40-41) with a scene in a grotto where they are “amorously Seated, Listning to Musick.” In the main, however, he follows Shakespeare's sequence of events. Gloster's eyes are put out by Cornwall (III.iv, pp. 38-39), Edmund falls (V.v, p. 60) and Edgar penultimately reports that

Gonerill and haughty Regan, both are Dead,
Each by the other poison'd at a Banquet;
This, Dying, they confest.

(V.vi, p. 66)

This is Cordelia's cue to enunciate the rather un-Shakespearean

O fatal Period of ill-govern'd Life!

(V.vi, p. 66)

There are still 28 more lines (in which the good people exchange felicitations) but Edgar finally speaks the pure Tate tag:

Thy bright Example shall convince the World
(Whatever Storms of Fortune are decreed)
That Truth and Vertue shall at last succeed.

(p. 67)

In the course of reworking Lear, Tate has eliminated three characters, none of which is essential to the plot of either version, but one of which is essential to the tragedy of Shakespeare's Lear. With Edgar's involvement in the Lear-Cordelia plot, France is obviously redundant; Curan's few retained lines can easily be read by any anonymous servant; but by cutting out the Fool, Tate decreases the stature of the king by many inches and robs Lear of one whole tragic dimension. Without this foil to taunt him on the heath, Lear is merely a disheveled and deprived old man who fares somewhat better than he deserves when kingdom, life, and daughter are restored to him in the fifth act. The adapter does not explain his deletion of the Fool's lines. Whether it was to save time in the theatrical presentation, to avoid a mixture of comic and serious business, or to accomplish some as yet unsuspected purpose, it was a mistake that reveals to the modern reader Tate's failure to appreciate the complexity of the matter he was dealing with. Invention of Arante to act as Cordelia's companion and confidante while she is making her ill-timed and unmotivated trek across the heath is another example of Tate's short-sighted extemporizing. Of course, Cordelia needs someone to talk to in Act III, scenes ii and iii, but by providing her with an opportunity to confide her concern for her own and her father's safety, Tate robs both Lear and Cordelia of another tragic dimension that Shakespeare had given them. His resolute and almost mute Cordelia is her father's daughter and she shares responsibility with Lear for their mutual tragedy. Tate's Cordelia is really a very good girl whose father joyfully announces in the fifth act:

Cordelia shall be Queen; Winds catch the Sound
And bear it on your rosie Wings to Heav'n.
Cordelia is a Queen.

(V.vi, p. 65)

And as a queen she reigned in the theatre for many years. The popularity of this version is, however, less a testimonial to Tate's gifts as a dramatic artist than testimony of the state of theatrical taste between 1681 and the eventual revival of Shakespeare's fifth act in 1823.⁷²

Richard II reigned no longer in Tate's play than he did in Shakespeare's, and his reign on the stage was considerably shorter and less glorious. Probably Tate did rush this adaptation into production (before the more thoroughly revised Lear) in order to take advantage of the current interest in political tensions, and shortness of time may therefore account for the fact that he depended so heavily on his source. For example, in his abridged version (only 70٪ as long as the 2760-line original) he made use of 400 of Shakespeare's lines—word-for-word; thus, more than 20٪ of his text was actually ready for the compositor before he ever penned or emended a line. However, Tate did rearrange and rewrite plot incidents, develop character relationships, delete some characters, and change the personalities of others to such an extent that The Sicilian Usurper (as he masked it for its first night at Drury Lane⁷³) would soon have died “a natural death”⁷⁴ even if government censors had not executed it after two performances.

It was in protest against the “Prohibition from Court” that Tate wrote the six-page vindication as a preface for the text which was printed a few months later. Here he explains his most fundamental change in the play: instead of painting Richard “in the worst Colours of History” as Shakespeare had done, Tate has “every where given him the Language of an Active, Prudent Prince. Preferring the Good of his Subjects to his own private Pleasure … [because Tate's] Design was to engage the pitty of the Audience for him in his Distresses.”⁷⁵ On this principle Tate deletes such lines as those of York (not Gaunt, to whom Tate erroneously attributes them) which criticize Richard for his absorption with foreign frivolities and refusal to listen to sage advice (II.i.17-30). This is also the principle on which Tate develops the character of the queen into a sentimentalist who bids her husband pause on his way to prison and

Lean on my Brest whilst I dissolve to Dew,
And wash thee fair agen with Tears of Love.

(V.ii, p. 48)

Nine of these words are Shakespeare's, but the context and sentiment are Tate's. In the original, the Queen does meet her husband on his way to the tower, but she is speaking of him to her attendant ladies when she says:

But soft, but see, or rather do not see,
My fair rose wither; yet look up, behold,
That you in pity may dissolve to dew
And wash him fresh again with true-love tears.

(V.i.7-10)

A few lines later, when she speaks to Richard himself, her words are not the sort that Tate would want to borrow—and he does not.

What, is my Richard both in shape and mind
Transform'd and weak'ned? Hath Bolingbroke depos'd
Thine intellect? Hath he been in thy heart?
The lion dying thrusteth forth his paw,
And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage
To be o'erpower'd; and wilt thou, pupil-like,
Take the correction, mildly kiss the rod,
And fawn on rage with base humility,
Which art a lion and the king of beasts?

(V.i.26-33)

In contrast to such substantial character changes, the omission of Bushy, Bagot, and Green (their execution is only discussed by the Gardiner and his servant in III.ii, p. 26) is obviously an accidental result of abbreviation of the original text. When Tate allows York to degenerate at times into an anemic Falstaff, however, he creates an inconsistency not only in the tone of the tragedy, but also within the character of York himself. It is difficult to take seriously the York who admonishes his liege

Think not that falsly I gave up your Pow'r,
If any Villain of 'em dares to say it,
I'le call that Villain Lyar to his teeth,
He is a Rogue, tho' it be Bullingbrook!

(III.iv, pp. 32-33)

after his response to the Queen's request for aid in II.ii has been

I shall dissolve to a Gelly.

(p. 17)

Unfortunately, one cannot even fall in with the author's design and “pitty … [Richard] in his Distresses.” Poor Richard has been shorn of too much of his majesty and too many of his most poetic lines. If Tate had had the opportunity to realize that this play was a failure (in terms of audience reaction or absence) instead of being able to attribute its short run to the intervention of sensitive politicians, he might not have tried his hand at Coriolanus. But he did have encouragement in the success of Lear, and so the ink was apparently not yet dry on the order prohibiting Richard II before he had begun work on his second failure at adapting Shakespearean tragedy for the Restoration stage. There is no evidence that The Ingratitude of a Common-Wealth ran beyond the opening night in December of 1681.⁷⁶ Tate waited three years, however, before offering another adaptation to the London audience. This one, based on a farce by Aston Cokain and called A Duke and No Duke was considerably more successful.⁷⁷ He tried farce again the next year, but this hodge-podge of Marston, Chapman, and Jonson's Eastward Hoe and Jonson's The Devil Is an Ass which Tate called Cuckolds-Haven: or, An Alderman no Conjurer, failed miserably.⁷⁸ His last attempt at drama in the seventeenth century was in yet another genre—tragi-comedy. Again he adapted—Fletcher's The Island Princess⁷⁹—and again he failed.

With such a box-office record before him, it is not surprising that Spencer felt an obligation to justify the separate chapter on Tate (in his 1927 book on Restoration adaptations) by repeatedly calling attention to the “extraordinary success” of Lear.⁸⁰ And it is comforting to know that Spencer could justify further study of Tate (published seven years later) because his work reveals “clues to literary methods and motives which abler men, like Dryden, succeed in covering up.”⁸¹

Notes

1. Samuel A. Golden, “Nahum Tate,” unpublished doctoral dissertation (Trinity College, Dublin, 1954), p. 65. In this (the most recent of the three unpublished doctoral dissertations on Tate) Golden not only refers to the other dissertations, standard reference works, and the few critical studies on Tate, but also cites local official documents and contemporary records as his sources for “new” information. Therefore, it is logical to cite Golden (whose study was available in microfilm) in this biographical section. Arthur Hawley Scouten's “Aston Cokain and his Adapter Nahum Tate” (Louisiana State University, 1942), was also available on microfilm; it has been a valuable source for Tate's method as an adapter of comedy, but did not contain biographical information not obtainable from other sources. Herbert Francis Scott-Thomas's “The Life and Works of Nahum Tate,” (Johns Hopkins, 1932) was not consulted, but an article (which is probably taken from the original study) “Nahum Tate and the Seventeenth Century,” ELH, I (1934), 250-275, did provide interesting general background on Tate's intellectual milieu.

2. Golden, pp. 17, 10, and 25.

3. Golden, p. 21.

4. Golden, p. 24.

5. Golden, p. 24.

6. See pp. lxii-lxiii, notes 7 and 8.

7. Golden, pp. 314-328, provides a more complete list of Tate's works than either CBEL or BMCPB.

8. See pp. xvii-xxxvii.

9. Heliodorus, sig. A2^v. This work was originally written in Greek and Tate gives no indication that his translation was not from the original language. If further evidence of his ability to use Greek be required, however, he contributed a 50 page section, “Dialogues of the Gods: To ridicule the Fables about them,” to the fourth volume of The Works of Lucian, translated by several eminent hands, 4 vols. (London, 1711).

10. This point is of some significance because it establishes that Tate could have used Alexandre Hardy's Coriolan (Paris, 1625) as a source for his own version of the Coriolanus story (see pp. xlv-xlvii.

11. Busbequius, sig. A2.

12. Golden, pp. 71-76, provides a thoroughly documented account of Tate's financial negotiations with the government and prospective patrons during this period.

13. Golden, pp. 58-76, discusses the history (from March 2, 1712/13 to April 20/24, 1713) and content of the 21 numbers of this periodical which was “Intended for the promoting of religion and virtue, and suppressing of vice and immorality,” as the title page states.

14. Golden, p. 65, cites H. F. Scott-Thomas, “The Date of Nahum Tate's Death,” Modern Language Notes, XLIX (March, 1934), 169-171, as his source of this fact.

15. Golden, pp. 77-85.

16. Golden, pp. 86-90.

17. British Authors Before 1800. ed. Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft (New York, 1952), p. 509.

18. Golden, pp. 84-85, cites R. Southey, ed., Specimens of the Later English Poets (London, 1807), I, 173. Quotation of Southey's comment in its entirety will not only clarify this point but also constitute an interesting example of what Tate's reputation was in the early nineteenth century. It reads:

    The worthy successor of Shadwell as Court Poet, the worthy accomplice of Nicholas Brady in berhyming the Psalms, and the unworthy assistant of Dryden in Absalom and Achithophel. He was indeed a pitiful poet; but, says Oldys, he was a free, good-natured, fuddling companion. His latter days were spent in the Mint, as a place of refuge from his creditors.

19. Langbaine, p. 500. Although this statement appears under the heading “Nathaniel Tate,” the list of works that follows leaves no doubt that Langbaine is talking about the same N. Tate.

20. Langbaine, p. 179.

21. Langbaine, pp. 417-418.

22. Samuel Johnson, The Plays of William Shakespeare (London, 1765), VI, 159.

23. Christopher Spencer, “A Word for Tate's King Lear,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, III (Spring, 1963), 251.

24. (New York, 1962). “Ode upon the New Year (1693),” which appears on pp. 38-39, is bad indeed, but Tate's name appears in the chronological “Table of Contents” with such names as Dryden, Goldsmith, Byron, Wordsworth, Poe, and Tennyson.

25. Shakespeare Improved (Cambridge, Mass., 1927), p. 287.

26. H. Spencer, p. 101.

27. H. Spencer, “Tate and The White Devil,” ELH, I (1934), 240.

28. H. Spencer, Shakespeare Improved, p. 97.

29. Golden, p. 85.

30. H. Spencer has done a thorough study of plot and character changes in this adaptation and provided numerous examples of changes in diction in his article “Tate and The White Devil.”

31. Sig. A2.

32. H. Spencer, Shakespeare Improved, treats all of the Shakespeare adaptations in considerable detail, from both historical and literary standpoints. George C. D. Odell, Shakespeare—from Betterton to Irving (New York, 1963), 2 vols., covers a much longer period of time and is dealing primarily with theatrical history. Both Spencer and Odell regularly cite John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus and John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830 as their sources. Although Downes, Genest, and at least first editions of the plays have been consulted in the course of the current study, sources cited in this chapter will frequently be Spencer or Odell since the point in question is often a conclusion drawn from the evidence in the primary source, rather than the evidence itself. Allardyce Nicoll's treatment of the adaptations of Shakespeare in A History of English Drama 1660-1900, Vol. I, Restoration Drama 1660-1700 (Cambridge, 1961) is brief (pp. 171-180) and therefore much less specific. Since the fourth edition (1952) is the most recent study, however, Nicoll is occasionally cited when there is a disagreement or lack in the other sources.

33. H. Spencer, p. 68.

34. H. Spencer, p. 68; Odell, I, 25.

35. H. Spencer, pp. 178-187. D'Avenant's name does not appear on the title page, and he had died four years before this edition of Hamlet was printed, but the numerous similarities between the kinds of changes made in the texts of Macbeth and Measure for Measure and those made in the text of Hamlet constitute impressive evidence for his “authorship.” Although Nicoll (p. 401) parenthetically refers to this edition as “or Betterton's,” he lists it among D'Avenant's contributions.

36. H. Spencer, pp. 78-80 and 93. The intrusion of operatic elements occurred in tragedy before it did in comedy. The Dryden-D'Avenant adaptation of The Tempest (with the addition of complementary characters for Miranda, Ferdinand, Caliban and Ariel) had appeared as early as November 7, 1667 (Spencer, pp. 85-86), but the Shadwell operatic treatment of this adaptation did not premier at the Theatre Royal until April 30, 1674 (Spencer, p. 94).

37. H. Spencer, pp. 72-73; Nicoll (p. 401) gives Feb. 1661/2.

38. John Downes, Roscius Anglicanus, ed. Montague Summers (London, [1928]), p. (20).

39. Downes, p. (22). Nicoll (p. 414) dates the first performance as “before 1665,” but adds that Downes is the only source of information on this play.

40. (London, 1678). H. Spencer (p. 282) implies that it may have been played at Dorset Garden as early as 1671.

41. (London, 1682). Although Odell (I, 67) says this play was not produced until November, 1682, H. Spencer (pp. 103-104) summarizes an impressive array of facts to support the theory that it could have been on the stage as early as 1673. The most crucial fact is the statement in the epilogue that “this Play was writ nine years ago” (p. [56]).

42. (London, 1687). H. Spencer (pp. 97 and 109, n. 86) affirms that it was played at least as early as 1678. His most significant piece of evidence for this is Ravenscroft's own statement in the address “To the Reader” that his Titus “first appear'd upon the Stage, at the beginning of the pretended Popish Plot” (sig. A2).

43. (London, 1679). H. Spencer (p. 98) says it was staged at Dorset Garden in the same year it was printed.

44. (London, 1680). H. Spencer (p. 100) says this “grotesque” was acted at Dorset Garden (probably in the fall) of the 1679-1680 season. Nicoll (p. 422) dates the first performance “c. Sept. 1679.”

45. H. Spencer, p. 292.

46. (London, 1680). Nicoll, p. 399, gives “c. March 1679/80” as the first performance date.

47. (London, 1681). Nicoll, p. 399, gives “c. Sept. 1681” as the first performance date.

48. H. Spencer, p. 102.

49. For a discussion of political satire on the stage in this period, see pp. lxviii-lxxiv.

50. Crowne, The English Frier: or, The Town Sparks (London, 1690), sig. A3^v.

51. (London, 1678).

52. See pp. lxxxi-lxxxix.

53. H. Spencer, p. 221.

54. Golden, p. 186.

55. Langbaine, p. 500: “This Play is founded on Virgil's AEneids, Book the 4th; and was finished under the Names of Dido and AEneas, but by the Advice of some Friends, was tranformed [sic] to the Dress it now wears.”

56. Brutus, p. 15.

57. Brutus, p. 55.

58. Shakespeare Adaptations, ed. Montague Summers (London, 1922), p. lxxv.

59. [John Genest], Some Account of the English Stage from the Restoration in 1660 to 1830 (Bath, 1832), I, 245-246.

60. Nicoll, p. 434.

61. Golden, p. 200.

62. Golden, p. 198.

63. The History of King Richard the Second (London, 1681), sig. A1.

64. Nicoll, p. 434.

65. Nicoll, p. 434.

66. Term Catalogues, ed. Arber, I, 440.

67. Term Catalogues, I, 451. The advertisement also quotes from the title page.

68. Nicoll, p. 434.

69. Term Catalogues, I, 473.

70. Tate, The History of King Lear (London, 1681), sig. A2^v.

71. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of King Lear, in The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, ed. William Allan Neilson and Charles Jarvis Hill (Cambridge, Mass., 1942). All references to lines from Lear and other plays will be to this edition.

72. Genest, IX, 186, remarks on the difficulty that Kean (as Lear) encountered when he had to carry the apparently lifeless body of Cordelia (a Mrs. W. West) across the stage. Despite such physical difficulties, however, Shakespeare's fifth act prevailed, and (according to Odell, I, 54) even the Fool had reappeared by 1838.

73. December, 1680. Nicoll, p. 434.

74. H. Spencer, p. 264.

75. Tate, Richard II, sigs. Al^v-A2.

76. Genest, I, 326.

77. (London, 1685). Nicoll, p. 434, gives Mon., Nov. 3, 1684 as the date of the first production at Drury Lane. Arthur Hawley Scouten's unpublished doctoral dissertation “Aston Cokain and his Adapter Nahum Tate” (Louisiana State University, 1942) provides the texts of both the original and the adaptation as well as a critical study of the adaptation.

78. Genest, I, 440-441. Sometime during this period, Tate also wrote the libretto for an opera based on the Dido and Aeneas story, for which Henry Purcell had written music. Golden (pp. 263-273) discusses the opera and, after reviewing conflicting pieces of evidence, dates the first performance “after the revolution in 1688” (p. 265). Critical opinion on the work (which was not printed until 1841) is varied; Golden thinks that without Purcell's “excellent music” it “could never have survived” (p. 267).

79. Genest, I, 456-457.

80. H. Spencer, p. 274.

81. H. Spencer, “Tate and The White Devil,” p. 240.