page_title: Nahum Tate
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Nahum Tate / Works
caption_attribution_description: The History of King Lear (an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy by Nahum Tate) from 1681.
context_page_description: Nahum Tate was an Irish poet, hymnist and lyricist, who became Poet Laureate in 1692. Tate is best known for The History of King Lear, his 1681 adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear.
context_section_description: Tate published a volume of poems in London in 1677, and became a regular writer for the stage. Brutus of Alba, or The Enchanted Lovers (1678), a tragedy dealing with Dido and Aeneas, was dedicated to Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset; it was later adapted as the libretto for Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas (1688 or earlier). The Loyal General, with a prologue by Dryden, played at the Dorset Garden Theatre in 1680.
  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, he wrote, 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 (The History of King Lear), in which the Fool is omitted. Cordelia has a confidante named Arante, and has her own "abduction" scene on the heath. This version concludes with multiple Happy endings with a presumed marriage between Cordelia and Edgar, for Lear (who regains his throne) and Kent. Although 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, performed 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 John 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 John Webster's The White Devil, seems never to have been acted.
  In 1682, Tate collaborated with John Dryden to complete the second half of his epic poem Absalom and Achitophel.
  Tate wrote the libretto for Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas; its first known performance was in 1689. He also wrote the text for Purcell's Birthday Ode Come Ye Sons of Art in 1694. Tate also translated Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus, Girolamo Fracastoro's Latin pastoral poem on the subject of the disease of syphilis, into English heroic couplets.
  Tate's name is connected with New Version of the Psalms of David (1696), for which he collaborated with Nicholas Brady. Some items such as "As pants the hart" (Psalm 42) rise above the general level, and are said to be Tate's work. A supplement was licensed in 1703 which included the Christmas carol "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks", one of a number of hymns by Tate.
  Of his numerous poems the most original is Panacea, a poem on Tea (1700). In spite of his consistent Toryism, he succeeded Thomas Shadwell as poet laureate in 1692. He died within the precincts of the Mint, Southwark, where he had taken refuge from his creditors, in 1715.
  His poems were sharply criticised by Alexander Pope in The Dunciad.
caption: Cover of Tate's version of King Lear
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