Staging King Lear: William Shakespeare and Nahum Tate

1/ For a long time, I knew about “King Lear with a happy ending” but didn’t know, until reading Maynard Mack’s King Lear in Our Time, that Nahum Tate not only changed the ending but wholly rewrote the play, and that his version dominated the stage from 1681 to 1838!

So how did Tate change the play?

“... invent a love affair between Cordelia and Edgar, to omit France and Lear’s Fool, to give Cordelia a waiting woman named Arante, to supply a happy ending, and to omit, conflate, and rearrange Shakespeare’s scenes while rewriting (and reassigning) a good deal of his blank verse.” (Ch.1)

And:

“In his version Cordelia is abducted by ruffians at the command of Edmund, who intends to rape her. The ruffians are driven off by Edgar in his Poor Tom disguise—upon which, he reveals himself and receives avowal of his beloved’s affection.” (ibid.) 

What? 

The other goal of Tate’s changes was to clarify motivations. 

“… Tate’s Cordelia consciously tempts her father to leave her dowerless in order that Burgundy may refuse her (Tate’s play, as noted, omits the King of France altogether), and that Tate’s Edgar, whom after her own rejection Cordelia unexpectedly rejects that she may test his devotion, determines to disguise himself (rather than make away with himself in his lover’s despair) on the chance that he may yet be of service to her. […] Edmund’s deception of his brother takes place while Edgar is in a brown study induced by Cordelia’s rejection of his love and hardly follows what his brother says.”(ibid.)

I should read the text myself to judge, but it sounds so… wrong. Tate’s King Lear may be good—after all, it was favoured by the stage for over 150 years—but I doubt it can have the overwhelming and devastating power of Shakespeare’s play.

Think of the scene in the storm. Think of Gloucester’s line “As flies to wanton boys, are we to th’ gods/ They kill us for their sport.” Think of the reconciliation between Lear and Cordelia, “If you have poison for me, I will drink it.” Think of the unbearable ending:

“KENT Is this the promised end?

EDGAR Or image of that horror?”

(Act 5 scene 3) 

I cannot explain Shakespeare’s power: we all know what happens in the end, and yet, when Lear and Cordelia reunite, there’s still some illusion, something like a glimpse of hope, as though this could this time turn out all right, then the ending comes as a shock, a terrible shock. It breaks your heart. 

The strange thing is that only Shakespeare killed Cordelia—she didn’t die (right then) in the legend of King Leir of Britain; she didn’t die in the anonymous Elizabethan play King Leir; she didn’t die in Nahum Tate’s version—but somehow when I think of King Lear with a happy ending, where Cordelia survives and Lear is reinstated and justice is restored, I cannot help thinking, so what? There should be a sense of satisfaction, of poetic justice, when evil loses and good triumphs, and yet to me, there’s a sense of “so what? that’s not life”. Shakespeare’s play is about a king who has to lose everything, all of his “lendings”, to learn what it is to be human—and as he does, so do we. Derived of titles and power, Lear is like everyone else, and he is powerless, unable to save Cordelia. Edgar says “The gods are just” and all characters refer to the gods throughout the play, but where are they?

Shakespeare borrows the story of Leir and his daughters to do something else, to tell a different story, so when Nahum Tate changes a few characters and creates a happy ending, it becomes a completely different story that has nothing to do with Shakespeare. Kurosawa’s Ran is closer to King Lear in vision.

Maynard Mack mentions another of Tate’s changes: 

“Gloucester’s incriminating letter “guessingly set down” and sent by “one that’s of a neutral heart/ And not from one oppos’d” becomes in Tate some despatches Gloucester has himself addressed to the Duke of Cambrai, urging help against the sisters, and thus gives Cornwall a more acceptable motive for his cruelty to the old man…” (Ch.1, King Lear in Our Time) 

Again, this sounds wrong. 

But it is not only Nahum Tate or the 17th century. In the book, Maynard Mack also writes about staging King Lear in the 20th century, and the problem with subtext: subtext can be a useful concept for directing and acting, but sometimes it can be a problem. For example, he writes about a production in which Lear’s people cause uproar and chaos at Goneril’s house, which gives her a motive for arguing with Lear and wanting to reduce his train. But why must there be a motive for Goneril? Goneril and Regan are cruel because they are. Some people (such as Tolstoy) complain about the lack of motivations in Shakespeare, but that’s precisely why his plays and characters continue to appeal and fascinate today: we can ask if there’s “any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts” the same way we ask about Hamlet’s delay or Iago’s evil or Leontes’s jealousy, but Shakespeare knows motivations are complex and often unknowable, and that there need to be no motivations for evil. 

Goneril and Regan are evil because they are. Letting Goneril be right in her argument with Lear is against the spirit of the play. 

2/ After rereading King Lear, I’ve watched twice the 2016 production of King Lear with Don Warrington in the title role. 

It is excellent.

Before watching it, I checked out the RSC production with Antony Sher, but stopped after a few minutes because I didn’t really like the cast. 

The 2016 one, directed by Michael Buffong, is excellent. Many of the actors are black but they play it straight, not making a point about being black, and the best of the cast are Don Warrington as Lear, Rakie Ayola as Goneril, and Debbie Korley as Regan. I also like Miltos Yerolemou as the Fool, and Thomas Coombes as Oswald—the way the actors play Goneril and Oswald in Act 1 scene 3 is interesting, I didn’t quite read the scene that way but it made sense that Goneril’s involved with Oswald. 

The only actor I don’t like is Fraser Ayres as Edmund—I don’t really like his acting, and whilst Edmund doesn’t have to be attractive to the point of being likable to the audience, it’s very hard to see what Goneril and Regan see in this Edmund. But that’s it.

As Lear, Don Warrington is magnificent. In him, I see both a king—or one who was once a king and had authority—and a tottering parent; I see both a man who has lost his wits, and one who has gained a vision and understanding that once eluded him; I see both a raging, bitter, misogynistic man and a foolish old man, abandoned by his own children. And in the end, the pain! The anguish! It’s hard to imagine a better Lear.

If you haven’t watched it, you must.