Lear Without Tears

From 1681 to 1840--while Shakespeare spun in his grave--London theatergoers saw, and enjoyed, King Lear with a happy ending. In a version by Poet Laureate Nahum Tate, which used most of Shakespeare's plot and many of his lines, it was played by such theatrical greats as David Garrick and Edmund Kean, and applauded by Dr. Samuel Johnson. Even Charles Lamb, who disliked the happy-ending version, conceded that it had a certain stageworthiness when he wrote: "Tate has put his hook in ... this Leviathan, for Garrick and his followers ... to draw it about more easily."

Last week, in Drury Lane's Fortune

Theater, the old hook was sharpened for the first time in a century. With an apologetic epilogue to appease a generation of Bardolators, the Oxford University Players took a chance on Tate's happy Lear. Instead of a cruel death by hanging, Heroine Cordelia eventually got her man (Edgar) and a fatherly blessing from a mentally restored Lear. Risking all, the Oxford undergraduates even wore the ruffled costumes of Garrick's day, which gave their stage movements a look of mincing foppishness.

The opening-night reviews had a happy ending too. Said the News Chronicle: "The production is by no means a travesty. It is elegantly done . . ." The sober Times went even further with its approval: "Tate's version affords an interesting peep into the Age of Reason, and the long, leisurely, sensible century that followed . . . The additions are in authentic baroque, as curled and complacent and conventional as the peruke . . ."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.