The Inconvenient Woman Chapter 1: Strangers

 I have recently decided to take this blog in a different direction and start using it to write stories. This is the first chapter of my first one.

It was just another day at work for Clara Hewson. Moving quickly and lightly from table to table in the County Line in Washington, DC, smiling her friendliest smile as she spoke to her customers ("Here is your Scotch, sir, I hope you enjoy it". "What would you like me get for you, ma'am"?), there had been nothing at all out of the ordinary happening, but then, there never was. Small in stature and slight in build, with curly red hair and blue eyes, Clara enjoyed her job and was popular with her patrons, all of whom came in so frequently that she knew them well. Except . . .

Suddenly, Clara noticed two men sitting in a small dark corner of the bar, far away from the other tables. She was curious: customers never chose to sit there, in that cramped space underneath the staircase and next to the cleaning cupboard. Only once or twice could Clara remember that table ever being used, when someone had been having a birthday party and there was not enough space elsewhere in the County Line for all their guests, and on those occasions the table had been brought out into the middle of the bar. Perhaps, Clara wondered, these men were new and didn't know how things were done here, but at any rate, she ought to go over to them and ask them what they would like to drink. As she approached the table, she also realised that though she had never seen these men in the County Line before, she had a vague sense that she had seen them somewhere. One of the men was tall, bald and broad-shouldered; the other was also tall, but thin, with spiky brown hair. The broad-shouldered man was leaning over the table towards his thin companion, looking very much in charge of the situation, while the latter was sitting a little back from the table, looking nervous. As Clara got close to them, she was able to hear what they were saying:

" . . . not sure we can manage this", said the thin man warily

"What do you mean?", demanded the broad-shouldered man. "Of course we fucking will".

"I mean", said the thin man, who seemed to be as nervous of his companion as he was about whatever they were discussing, "she keeps on our trail, doesn't she? She'll find out in the end, won't she?"

Clara's heart started beating a little faster. What were they trying to hide? Who was the woman they were talking about? Was one of them cheating on his wife? She was just three feet away from the table now, and she leaned in closer to follow the conversation.

"Stop being so fucking down about it", said the broad-shouldered man scornfully. "I'll deal with that fucking bitch, don't you worry about that. If she keeps on, and if I can't frighten her off, I'll make her sorry she ever stuck her ugly nose into our business".

He spoke the last sentence with a grim relish that alarmed Clara. Just what nasty plan could he have in store for the unknown woman?

"I hope you're . . ." began the thin man, but then he suddenly broke off: he had noticed that Clara was listening in. His companion also looked round and saw Clara. He gave her a fearsome glare.

"Fuck off you!", he shouted at her. "Ain't got fuck all to do with you, so stay out of it if you know what's good for you, ginger bitch!"

Clara was deeply upset: none of her customers had ever spoken to her like that before. Too stunned to say anything in response, she turned away in shock, still trying to digest everything that had happened. She made her way to the backroom, breathing hard.

"Anything wrong, Clara?"

Clara looked up and smiled. She saw a black woman about the same height as herself, though slightly stockier, with braided hair, looking concerned.

"Oh, nothing much, Angela", said Clara, and she explained what had just happened.

"He said that?", exclaimed Angela. "Who the hell does he think he is? And who is he, anyway, do you know?"

"No", said Clara, "I've never seen him in here before but I'm sure I've seen him somewhere, on TV possibly".

"What's this? A celebrity in the County Line?"

Another black woman, tall and slim, with long straight hair, had just entered the room. She was bursting with laughter.

Angela frowned. "It's not funny, Lily", she said sternly, but Clara smiled. She told Lily the story of the strange encounter.

"Wow!", laughed Lily, "He must be the World Swearing Champion! What a silly man! He obviously can't think of too many words to say!"

She giggled. Angela's eyes narrowed, but Clara laughed along with Lily: she was already feeling much better. She went back to her work, where she was pleased to see that the two strangers had gone, and nothing of note happened until the late afternoon. The various televisions placed across the barroom were, as always, showing CNN's rolling news coverage and, as they always did at this time of day, the announcement appeared across the screen: "Daily White House Press Briefing". The screen cut away from a story about 2000 new jobs being created in the last week to a podium at the White House. In front of the podium a gaggle of journalists had gathered, and a tall, well-built and ruggedly handsome man was striding confidently towards his position behind the podium: Tom J Crawley, President of the United States. Just as Crawley was taking up his position behind the podium, the camera cut away to two other men standing at the side of the room. Clara let out a squeal of surprise.

"That's them!"

"What are you talking about, Clara?", asked Angela, who was about five feet away.

"The men I saw earlier! They're on TV! They work for the President!"

Angela walked over to Clara and looked at the screen.

"Oh yes, you're right", she said. "The big guy is Dave Trampler, Crawley's Chief of Staff, and the thin guy is Brian Conti, his personal lawyer".

"The big guy, that Trampler guy, is the one who shouted at me. I knew I'd seen them somewhere", said Clara, in awe.

"Well, maybe the President himself will pop in one day!", quipped Lily, who had come over to see what all the fuss was about.

At the briefing, President Crawley leaned over the front of the podium, smiling broadly.

"Right," he said, in a jovial voice, "who wants the first question? Yes, you, over there".

"Mr. President", the journalist he had pointed to said, "I'm sure that we all here would like to congratulate you on the continuing success of the Back to Work programme. You are really bringing hope and joy to the American people."

"Well, thank you, but really, you shouldn't flatter me", smiled Crawley. "Any more of that, and my head will be so swollen I won't be able to stand up!"

He laughed uproariously, most of the journalists joining in, some enthusiastically, others a little more nervously. Only one of them did not.

"Next question?", inquired Crawley, once the laughter had died down.

"Mr. President", said the next journalist, "I wonder what words you have for for Richard Russell".

"The new DC Police Commissioner? Well, obviously, I'm not here to tell him what to do", replied Crawley with a mischievous grin, "but, if he really wants me to . . ."

More laughter, with again only one journalist remaining silent.

The briefing continued, with Crawley constantly laughing and cracking jokes with the journalists. The relaxed and jolly atmosphere continued for about 15 minutes, until Crawley picked out the only journalist who had not laughed at his jokes.

"Holly MacIver, Washington Post", announced a short, stout woman with short dark hair. "Mr. President, I would like once again to bring it to your attention that $100bn has seemingly vanished from the federal government's coffers. Could you please provide an explanation this time?"

She spoke politely but firmly. Dave Trampler, who had until now been observing the proceedings with satisfaction, adopted an angry expression. Brian Conti looked anxious. Crawley, however, simply laughed.

"Now, now, Holly", he said, in the voice of an indulgent parent reluctantly admonishing a naughty child, "I've told you this before, but surely, you don't really expect me to know everything about federal money, do you? Next question."

Holly attempted to follow up her question, but was talked over by the next journalist, and Crawley faced no more probing questions for the remainder of the briefing. When it was finished, Holly was just packing up when she suddenly got the feeling that there was someone standing uncomfortably close behind her. She had a good idea who it was, and sure enough, she turned around to see Trampler.

"Listen you", he growled, thrusting his face into hers, "I've fucking just about had enough of you, coming to these briefings, showing no respect to the President".

"I am simply doing my job as a reporter, Mr. Trampler", she said, unblinkingly, though inwardly trembling. "You may scare the others, but you can't scare me".

"I'm warning you, bitch", snarled Trampler, "if you keep on with this bullshit, I'll stick my fucking cock right up your fucking ass!"

"Now, now, Dave, what's all this about?", came Crawley's booming voice.

"Sir, he just . . ." began Holly

"Well you shouldn't annoy him then, should you?", said Crawley, still in his habitual light-hearted tone. "Come on, Dave, time to get back to work".

The two men walked away, Trampler throwing Holly a dirty look over his shoulder as he did so. Holly quickly finished her packing, shaken but undeterred by her experience.

In the County Line, no one was paying any attention to all this. Staff and patrons alike had quickly lost interest in the press briefing just minutes after it had begun, and in barely any time at all the bar was back to normal: loud slurping noises, increasingly bad drunken jokes, the bartenders darting around from one end of the place to the other. Clara, however, could not get out of her mind the fact that the man who had insulted her had been the President's Chief of Staff. She was glad when her shift came to an end, and she, Angela and Lily left the County Line together.

"Are you coming to the Good Time tonight, or is that a silly question?", asked Lily, smiling mischievously at Clara as the three friends stepped out on to the street.

"Do you even need to ask?", grinned Clara.

"All right, we'll see each other at nine. What about you, Angela? Break the habit of a lifetime?", inquired Lily, laughing again as though she knew what the answer would be.

"No", said Angela firmly, "There are more important things in this world".

"Muck up all the politics, I expect", quipped Lily: she and Clara both laughed, while Angela's face was stony. Clara, and, a little later, Lily broke off laughing: there was an awkward silence between the three friends.

"Well, anyway", said Clara, trying to defuse the tension, "See you tomorrow, Angela".

Clara and Angela hugged, with Angela telling her, "See you, and don't let that Trampler jerk get you down."

"I won't", Clara promised, though this was far from what she was feeling.

Clara then said her goodbyes to Lily, and the three women went their separate ways.

Clara's apartment block was located on Hunter Street, a long road that began just to the left of the County Line. It took about 15 minutes for her to walk from the County Line to her block, all the while troubled by the incident with Trampler. She supposed that she had been snooping, but surely she had not deserved such foul-mouthed abuse, and he himself had clearly been up to no good: again she wondered what it may be. She was still thinking this over when she reached the front door of her apartment block: it was at the very end of the street, and just beyond it was a narrow dark alley that nobody ever went down. Clara opened the front door and walked up one flight of steps, then turned to the right and walked past three more doors before she came to her own apartment.

Clara's apartment was a small one. There was a narrow passageway just behind the door, and straight ahead was the living room, which also served as a dining room and bedroom. About half the width the living room was taken up with the bed, which was positioned against the side wall halfway between the door and the back wall. Beyond the bed there was a sofa big enough for only one person, five feet away from a small table where a television stood. At the foot of the bed was another small table with two old creaky chairs in front of it: Clara's chest of drawers was situated against the wall just to the left of the living room door, with a mirror above it. The remainder of the walls were covered with posters of Stephen Strasburg, Bryce Harper, Daniel Murphy and other great Washington Nationals baseball players. The kitchen was on the left of the living room, and was a very cramped space, with only a narrow floor surrounded on both sides by cupboards: the sink was about three-quarters of the way on the left hand side, and the washing machine was directly opposite. The bathroom lay to the right of the living room: it too was very small, with a bath-cum-shower, a toilet and a sink, and very little room.

Clara headed straight for the kitchen and made herself a meal of noodles and baked beans, which she ate at the wooden table in the living room. When she had finished, and washed and dried the dishes, she moved across the room to sit in the sofa, took her phone out of her pocket and called her mother.

"Hi there, honey", came a rather prim voice at the other end of the line. "How are you?"

"I'm OK, Mom, but something real weird happened to me today", replied Clara, and she began to talk about her unpleasant encounter with Trampler, only for her mother to interrupt her:

"You really met the President's Chief of Staff? Holy cow! I'm so jealous!"

Clara thought for a moment about how she would respond.

"Yes, but, Mom", she said, "he wasn't very nice to me", and she explained what had happened.

"Don't be so silly, Clara," said her mother dismissively. "You shouldn't have been interfering, I'm sure that's all he was trying to say. If he really were as horrible as you say, the President would never have hired him."

Clara hastily changed the subject, and once the call was finished, she spent the evening playing on her phone. She browsed the Internet, looking at articles about emperor penguins, the Aztecs and the Solar System: she was so intrigued when she read one online article explaining that although the Sun appears yellow in the sky, it is actually coloured white, that she tweeted about it.

At about half past eight, Clara put her phone down and walked over to her chest of drawers. She looked in the mirror and sighed. Her nose was too big, her cheekbones too flat, her figure too small, her legs too short. She also remembered Trampler calling her a "ginger bitch", and gazed sadly at her carrot-coloured curls. Why couldn't she have the small nose, the high cheekbones, the tall slim figure, the long thin legs, the flowing blonde locks of the women she saw on the Internet or on TV all the time? Sighing again, she tried out various dresses, eventually settling on a lovely green one that Angela had bought her for her last birthday. After putting on lipstick and mascara, Clara took a selfie of herself in the dress, uploaded it to Instagram, and set out for the Good Time club.

The Good Time was about a 10 minute walk from Clara's house: she had to cross the street from in front of her door and then walk straight on. Lily was outside already waiting for her, and the two friends went in together. The club was a very large place: the bar ran along the length of the left hand wall, small tables filled the half or so of the floor nearest the door, and the rest comprised a dancefloor. In the far right hand corner was a DJ pumping out dance record after dance record. Clara was soon in her element, buying drinks for herself and Lily (she insisted on buying all the drinks herself), dancing and singing. Several people, including Lily, had told Clara she had a beautiful singing voice: she wasn't so sure of this herself, but she still enjoyed doing it. She also loved being on the dance floor and was a very expressive performer, twisting, spinning and jumping with equal abandon. She also spent large parts of the evening going up to complete strangers and chatting with them, and even inviting them to dance with her: she was always at ease doing this. Soon, she had quite forgotten about the encounter with Trampler: it was as though it had all been a bad dream.

At around midnight, Clara was standing next to Lily, leaning against the bar, taking a breather from a particularly intense session of dancing, when a young woman walked up to her. About a head taller than Clara, she had deep brown skin, jet black hair and large, soft brown eyes: Clara's first thought was that she was very pretty. She also had a very bold manner: she strode confidently up to Clara as though they were old friends, and she gave the impression that nothing would ever faze her - very impressive, thought Clara.

"Hello", beamed the newcomer. "I've just been watching you dancing. You were superb. I don't think  I've ever seen dancing as confident, as exciting, as graceful as that".

"Well, thanks", said Clara, blushing slightly.

"I was wondering", continued the stranger, "if you would do me the honour of dancing with me".

Lily giggled, but the stranger either did not hear her or pretended not to.

"I would love to", said Clara eagerly: no one had ever asked her to dance before.

The woman held out her hand to Clara, and Clara unhesitatingly clasped it: her new friend gracefully drew Clara towards her, until their faces were just an inch apart

"Oh I'm sorry, I quite forgot to ask you your name", laughed the other.

"Oh it's all right", smiled Clara. "My name is Clara Hewson. What's yours?"

"Devi Bose", came the reply.

They began to dance, with Clara taking particular notice of how smooth and elegant Devi's moves were. As she spun, Devi's long black hair swung gracefully from side to side, drawing Clara's admiring gaze, and her brown eyes seemed to sparkle as the lights shone down on them. As the dance went on, Devi became increasingly bold, frequently complimenting Clara ("That was wonderful, Clara". "You're an amazing dancer". "You have such lovely eyes".), caressing Clara's cheeks and hair, and at one point spinning Clara around so that she ended up falling into Devi's arms.

After about an hour of dancing, they stopped, and walked hand in hand back to Lily at the bar.

"Devi", smiled Clara, "I'd like to introduce you to my friend Lily Watkins. Lily, this is Devi Bose."

"Pleased to meet you", said Devi grandly, offering her hand to Lily.

"Wow, Clara, you've scored a home run there", giggled Lily mischievously, as she shook Devi's hand. "Fancy a pretty, high-class girl actually liking you!"

"It's OK, Devi, she doesn't mean anything bad by it", explained Clara, noticing that Devi was frowning. "It's just how she is".

Devi brightened up. "Would you like another dance, Clara?", she asked.

"I'm afraid I can't", said Clara regretfully. "I need to go home now, I've got work tomorrow morning".

Devi looked slightly disappointed, but then she asked, "Would you like to go out tomorrow night, then? Just the two of us?"

"Hell yes!", replied Clara, almost shouting with joy.

"Shall we meet at the Golden Kettle, then?", suggested Devi.

Clara looked puzzled.

"You don't know where it is?" Devi sounded as though Clara had just said she didn't know what day it was.

"It's OK, I can find it on Google Maps", said Clara hastily.

"Well, that's all right then", smiled Devi. "We'll meet up at eight, shall we?"

"Fine by me", was Clara's response.

"Well, goodnight then, Clara, and see you tomorrow night". Devi leaned over and sweetly kissed Clara on the cheek.

"Goodnight", said Clara, feeling pleased, flattered and surprised. She gave Devi a tentative hug.

Clara positively skipped all the way home. What did that horrible man matter when she had just had a wonderful night out? She had a feeling of exhilaration: she had had two or three brief relationships with men before, but she had never felt about anyone the way she felt about Devi. What a wonderful woman she was! So pretty, so charming, so confident! As she climbed into her bed, her heart excitedly hammering against her chest, Clara could hardly wait for the next evening to come.

Bastardising the Bard? Adaptations of Shakespeare

The BBC Four dramatisation of Shakespeare's King Lear, broadcast earlier this year, provides an opportunity to remember that for well over a century, Nahum Tate's 1681 adaptation of the play replaced Shakespeare's version on the stage. Nor was this situation unique to King Lear: during the Restoration and the eighteenth century, nearly all of Shakespeare's plays were displaced from the stage by rewritten versions that sought to "improve" the plays to suit contemporary tastes. This blogpost takes a look at some of the most important of Shakespeare's adapters, with a particular focus on Tate's King Lear. It does not examine every single adaptation - there were so many of them (at least 123) that to do so would take too much time and space. It is also limited to rewritings of the plays that were intended to replace Shakespeare's original on the stage - it does not include works that are derived from the plays but not intended to replace them, such as West Side Story.

Why Adapt Shakespeare?

To us, it may seem sacrilege of the highest order for lesser playwrights to presume to "improve" the works of the great Shakespeare, and even more so for those inferior works to be performed in place of the Bard's masterpieces. However, during the Restoration and the eighteenth century, Shakespeare did not hold the sacrosanct status that he does today. Although his genius with language and theatrical effectiveness were universally acknowledged, there was also a widespread feeling that he had major defects: he was criticised for improbable plotting, mixing the genres of comedy and tragedy, and for failing to conform to the neoclassical unities of time, place and action (i.e. setting the play within a single day in a single location with a single action). In fact, Shakespeare's early eighteenth century editors felt the need to excuse his "faults". His work was seen as outdated: John Evelyn recorded seeing a performance of Hamlet on 26th November 1661, opining that "the old playe began to disgust this refined age". There was also a widespread demand for clearer language, poetic justice and more sentimentality. In addition, many adaptations were intended to take advantage of the innovations of the Restoration stage: for example, women being allowed to act for the first time (thus allowing an expansion in the number of female parts - as well as opportunities for titillation), and music and dancing. Restoration audiences tended to be more exclusive and elitist than in Shakespeare's lifetime, with the King and other members of the royal family attending for the first time. The political climate of the Restoration was also a factor: most of Shakespeare's English histories and Roman tragedies were rewritten as political commentaries against challenges to the established order.

The First Adapters

The first person to adapt Shakespeare was Sir William Davenant, a poet and playwright born in Oxford in 1606, who was Shakespeare's godson and reputed to be the Bard's illegitimate son. After the Restoration, Davenant headed the Duke's Company, a theatre company patronised by the future King James II, then Duke of York. His first Shakespeare adaptation, The Law Against Lovers, was first performed in 1662: it is an adaptation of Measure for Measure, and also includes Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. The fact that both these plays include a strong female character may have been a reason Davenant chose them, to take advantage of the advent of actresses. In addition, this choice reflected the prevalence in Restoration audiences of upper and middle class women who wanted to see intelligent female characters, not the simpering heroines traditionally portrayed. In Davenant's version, Benedick is Angelo's brother, while Beatrice is Julietta's cousin. The setting is moved from Vienna to Turin. Beatrice and Benedick urge Angelo to spare Claudio, and plot to free Claudio and Julietta from prison. Julietta has a significantly larger role than in Shakespeare: notably, she offers to sacrifice herself to enable Claudio to escape. Claudio soon repents his plea to Isabella to lie with Angelo, asking her only to take care of Julietta. Instead of Mariana, who is missing from the play, sleeping with Angelo in Isabella's place, Isabella suggests that Julietta do so, as a test, after the latter begs her to comply with Angelo's desires. Isabella is more moralistic than in Shakespeare, lecturing Julietta for having slept with Claudio. Most significantly, Angelo's demand for Isabella to lie with him is merely a test of her virtue - thus simplifying the moral complexity of Shakespeare's original - and, as in Shakespeare's sources, they eventually marry. Strangely, Davenant has Isabella reject Angelo's original proposal of marriage, but silently accept the Duke's order to be betrothed to him at the end of the play. At the end of the play, the Duke abdicates and retires to a monastery: he is also a considerably less manipulative figure than in the original, as he does not deceive Isabella into believing that Claudio has been executed. Overall, Davenant makes Measure for Measure lighter and more humorous, matching the Restoration objections to mixing of comedy and tragedy. Samuel Pepys saw The Law Against Lovers at Lincoln's Inn Fields on 18th February 1662, pronouncing it "a good play and well performed, especially the little girl's, whom I never saw before, dancing and singing" (a reference to the 14-year-old Moll Davis). Neither Pepys not his fellow diarist John Evelyn, who was also in the audience that night, seems to have been aware that the play was an adaptation of Shakespeare, as Davenant did not acknowledge his debt to the Bard. Also, despite Pepys's favourable impression, The Law Against Lovers was not popular with audiences, and was never revived after its original production.

Not deterred by the failure of The Law Against Lovers, in 1664 Davenant produced an adaptation of Macbeth. It is easy to see the political appeal of a play about a regicidal usurper who is ultimately deposed by the murdered King's son. As with The Law Against Lovers, Davenant exploited the arrival of women on stage, greatly expanding the roles of both Lady Macbeth (despite her notoriety, not even in the top 20 of Shakespeare's largest female roles) and Lady Macduff (whom Shakespeare only allows one scene). For example, in one scene the two women actually speak to one another, with Lady Macduff lecturing her counterpart on honour. Davenant also expands Macduff's role, to establish a contrast between him and his wife, on the one hand, and the Macbeths, on the other: in fact, in one scene Lady Macduff explicitly advises her husband not to seize the Scottish throne, when he is contemplating taking revenge on Macbeth for Duncan's murder. Macbeth is far more resolute in his determination to kill Duncan, and at an earlier stage, than in Shakespeare.  Late in the play, an insane and conscience-stricken (but not yet sleep-walking) Lady Macbeth rebukes her husband for killing Duncan: when he points out that she incited him, Lady Macbeth replies "You were a Man/And by the charter of your Sex you should have govern'd me": a nod to Restoration political ideology on the wickedness of defying the natural order of things. Macbeth dies with the words, "Farewell vain World, and what's most vain in it, Ambition". In addition, Davenant responded to the demand for special effects by having the witches flying and singing: this was perhaps because the Restoration was an age of rationalism, and theatregoers no longer believed in witches, and so would not be frightened by them. In the final scene, as a nod towards Restoration ideals of decorum, Macduff displays Macbeth's sword rather than his head: similarly, the murders of Banquo and of Macduff's family are not shown on stage. As a nod to contemporary politics, Davenant has Fleance, alleged ancestor of the Stuart monarchs, return from exile in France, where Charles II had lived during the Interregnum (in Shakespeare, where Fleance escapes to is never mentioned). Davenant also emphasised clarity of language rather than the quality of Shakespeare's poetry: for example, when Shakespeare's Macbeth learns of his wife's death, he speaks the famous words:

She should have died hereafter: 

There would have been a time for such a word -

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.

In Davenant's hands, this becomes:

She should have died hereafter, I brought

Her here, to see my victims, and not to die.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in a stealing pace from day to day

To the last minute of recorded time:

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

To their eternal night;

The thought occurs that "Creeps in a stealing pace from day to day" would, in any other context, be regarded as a fairly competent piece of writing, but not when it replaces Shakespeare's great metaphor. Davenant's determination to literalise Shakespeare's vivid and memorable imagery at times reaches ridiculous proportions. Thus, Macduff's line on discovering the murdered body of Duncan,

Approach the chamber, and destroy your sight

With a new Gorgon

is replaced by:

Approach the chamber, and behold a sight

Enough to turn spectators into a stone.

Despite, or perhaps because of, these changes, unlike The Law Against Lovers, Davenant's Macbeth was highly popular - Pepys witnessed it on 5th November 1664 and approved it - and held the stage until David Garrick's 1744 production (see below).

In 1667, Davenant joined forces with John Dryden, the leading poet and playwright of the Restoration, to write The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island: in 1674, Thomas Shadwell turned it into an opera. Davenant and Dryden retained much of Shakespeare's verse, while occasionally simplifying his language and grammar. They also add several new characters: Miranda is given a sister, Dorinda, while Prospero has a foster son called Hippolito, son of the Duke of Mantua, who, like Prospero has been usurped by Alonzo (as Davenant and Dryden spell the name), who has never seen a woman and is doomed to die if he ever does - he is a parallel figure to Miranda, who has never seen a man other than her father, and to Prospero himself. Dorinda and Hippolito meet and fall in love, and much comedy and titillation ensues as the two innocents discover sexual feeling for the first time, and Miranda is similarly confused about her feelings for Ferdinand. This turns The Tempest into a sexual comedy, a popular genre at the Restoration court. Chaos ensues as Hippolito, unaware of the codes of human society, desires to love all women, and jealousy develops between Miranda and Dorinda, before order, in the form of monogamous marriage, is finally restored. In addition, Ariel is given a lover, Milcha, and Caliban has a sister, Sycorax (in Shakespeare's version, the name of his deceased mother). Prospero is significantly less powerful: after Hippolito is wounded in a duel by Ferdinand over their competing desires for Miranda and believed dead, Prospero despairs, believing that his plan to marry Miranda to Ferdinand and Dorinda to Hippolito has failed, and that he will have to execute Ferdinand for murder (he tells Alonzo so), but Ariel is able to revive Hippolito. Prospero also never renounces his magic. This diminution in Prospero's power allows the sexual comedy to take centre stage. The play's tone is made lighter: Alonzo and Antonio express unprompted regret for usurping Prospero (in Shakespeare Antonio remains unrepentant), blaming it for the shipwreck, as during the Restoration it was politically necessary for a usurper to freely admit the wrongfulness of his actions. The focus is on romantic confusion and discovery rather than revenge and reconciliation as in Shakespeare. The original play's questions about the nature of man do not feature in the adaptation. For obvious political reasons, Gonzalo's ideas of a utopian commonwealth, and Antonio and Sebastian's intended regicide, are omitted.

Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo's plot to assassinate Prospero is replaced by a scene in which the sailors, believing Alonzo to be dead, resolve to form a government of their own (here Stephano is the ship's master and Trinculo the boatswain), but, in conjunction with Caliban and Sycorax, squabble over who should rule, and over who speaks for the people, leading to chaos: this satirises John Lilburne's argument that England fell back into a state of nature after Charles I's defeat in the Civil War, and the Commonwealth era more generally. But the play is not just a response to the events of 20 years earlier: the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London had led some to wonder if God disapproved of the return of the monarchy, and Dryden himself had already written Annus Mirabilis to argue that these catastrophic events in fact proved that Charles II was indeed divinely ordained. However, the play is not completely conservative: the sailors' attempts at government, ridiculous as they are, are paralleled by the aristocratic characters' jockeying for power that has driven them apart and led to their being stranded on the island, with order restored only by the young people's sexual desire and the magical intervention of Ariel, while Hippolito has to learn society's norms before he can rule Mantua. Alonzo is the Duke of Savoy, not the King of Naples as in Shakespeare's version: intriguingly, in its depiction of a Duke of Savoy who supplants his fellow Italian rulers, the play uncannily anticipates how Italy would be unified in the nineteenth century. There are also significantly more female characters: in Shakespeare's version, there is only one, Miranda (the only Shakespeare play with so few). Dryden wrote a prologue to the adaptation, describing Shakespeare as a writer whose "pow'r is as sacred as a King's", but also referring to the original Tempest as "old Shakespear's honour'd dust", suggesting that it was considered out of date. He also claimed that using a female actor to play the role of Hippolito "exceeded all the Magick in the Play". Davenant and Dryden's The Tempest was the most successful play of its age - Pepys saw it several times and praised its "variety" - and continued to be performed on stage until William Charles Macready's highly successful revival of Shakespeare's original text in 1838.

In 1677, Dryden himself wrote what is regarded as his finest work: All for Love, or The World Well Lost, an imitation, rather than an adaptation, of Antony and Cleopatra. Unlike Shakespeare's epic play, it follows the neoclassical unities and is set entirely in Alexandria during the last few days of the lovers' relationship. All for Love features significant new characters: Serapion, an Egyptian priest who foretells Egypt's conquest by Rome, and Ventidius, a Roman general who opposes Antony's relationship with Cleopatra, and eventually kills himself after Antony's own death. The role of Dolabella is significantly changed: in Shakespeare he is a follower of Caesar who appears in the final scene, warning Cleopatra that Caesar intends to lead her in triumph, but here he is a friend of Antony who was previously banished as a rival for Cleopatra's love, and it is he, rather than Agrippa, who proposes that Antony make peace with Caesar by marrying Octavia. Unlike in Shakespeare, Cleopatra and Octavia actually meet, and argue over Antony. Antony and Octavia have two daughters, as they had historically but not in Shakespeare's play.  Antony leaves Cleopatra in Act One, after Ventidius offers him troops to aid him against Caesar on condition of abandoning the Egyptian Queen (in Shakespeare, Antony and Caesar are not at war at the start of the play), but returns in Act Two after a meeting with Cleopatra. In Act Three, Dolabella persuades Antony to return to his true wife, Octavia, and their daughters, in order to end the war: in Shakespeare, Antony and Octavia only marry after Antony has left Cleopatra, not before. To prevent him from leaving, Cleopatra tries to make Antony jealous by holding hands with Dolabella, but Antony, when told of this by Ventidius and Octavia, tries to find a loophole to excuse Cleopatra, causing Octavia to finally abandon him. Antony's fleet betrays him to Caesar, as he suspects Cleopatra of doing in the original, but Cleopatra herself is clearly innocent of any betrayal (in Shakespeare, this question is left unanswered): Alexas, Cleopatra's eunuch, tries to persuade his mistress to desert to Caesar, but she refuses. Alexas, not Cleopatra, is the one who falsely tells Antony that Cleopatra is dead, causing his suicide. At the end of the play it is Serapion who delivers the lovers' eulogy, not Caesar, who does not appear in Dryden's version. In addition to Caesar, several other significant characters, such as Enobarbus, Lepidus and Pompey are absent. In keeping with Restoration beliefs about simple characterisation, Dryden's Cleopatra is more straightforwardly virtuous than Shakespeare's: in addition to the aforementioned alterations, her other morally dubious actions, such as striking and drawing a knife on the messenger who brings the news of Antony's marriage to Octavia, and kissing the hand of Caesar's ambassador after he encourages her to betray Antony, are omitted.

In 1679, Dryden adapted Troilus and Cressida, giving it the subtitle Truth Found Too Late. In his preface, Dryden expressed the view that Shakespeare's play did not please its audience, attributing this to its failure to uphold the unities, and to defects in structure, characterisation and language. He found the language obscure, and also objected that in Shakespeare Cressida's treachery goes unpunished. He summed up the original work as a "heap of rubbish, under which many excellent thoughts lie buried" but added that it still contained Shakespeare's "admirable genius". Dryden's Troilus is a much more plain-spoken figure than the garrulous young man depicted by Shakespeare. In Shakespeare, the lovers pledge themselves to each other and then make love, but Dryden has Cressida first insist on a promise of marriage. More significantly, Dryden's Cressida remains faithful to Troilus, though her father encourages her to pretend to love Diomedes to avoid suspicion and to enable them to escape back to Troy, and ultimately kills herself in front of Troilus and Diomedes to prove it after the former doubts her fidelity: Troilus is later killed by Achilles. By contrast, in the original, despite its traditional classification as a tragedy, both the title characters survive. Dryden provides a much neater conclusion than Shakespeare, in whose play the major issues remain unresolved at the end. The play was written during the Exclusion Crisis, when, as a result of the Popish Plot (a fictitious French-sponsored Catholic conspiracy to assassinate Charles II), the Earl of Shaftesbury and his "Country Party" - later known as the Whigs - were attempting to exclude the King's Catholic younger brother and heir presumptive, the future James II, from the succession. It has been suggested that Dryden draws parallels between the Greek camp and the Stuart court: notably, both are chaotic, and Agamemnon's struggles to bring Achilles back to the front line, it is argued, parallel Charles II's inability to control Shaftesbury. Dryden has Troilus attack priests for challenging secular authority, while Thersites rails against priests for encouraging religious fanaticism: these speeches target Titus Oates, the Anglican priest who had fabricated the Popish Plot. Thersites also attacks war, expressing Dryden's desire for a stable and ordered state. The Greeks' failure to defeat the Trojans is attributed to factionalism, in another clear reference to the Exclusion Crisis, and to the political party system it spawned. Truth Found Too Late would prove to be another popular Shakespeare adaptation, being printed several times, and was frequently performed until 1734: by contrast, the original play was not performed at all from the Restoration until 1907.

The Art of Tate

Nahum Teate (as the name was originally spelt) was born in Dublin to a Puritan family in 1652. His father, Faithful Teate, was a Puritan cleric and a strong supporter of the Commonwealth, dedicating two sermons to Oliver Cromwell and Henry Cromwell, the Lord Protector's son and head of the Commonwealth government of Ireland. The younger Teate would, however, turn out to have very different political views from his father. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin in 1772, Nahum Teate moved to London to begin a writing career: in 1777, he changed the spelling of his surname to Tate. In 1692, he was appointed Poet Laureate, and held the post until his death, in hiding from his creditors, in 1715.

Tate wrote three adaptations of Shakespeare. The first, History of King Richard the Second, premiered at Drury Lane in January 1681. Not surprisingly, a play depicting the deposition and murder of a lawful King was taboo in the Restoration - even more so during the Exclusion Crisis - and Tate's adaptation was suppressed immediately. In order to meet these objections, Tate changed the setting and the names of all the characters, renamed the play The Sicilian Usurper, and adapted the text so that every scene was, in the words of Tate's preface, "full of respect to Majesty and the dignity of courts", notably by emphasising Richard's noble qualities (though without whitewashing him, as the Crown would probably have preferred, as neither Shakespeare's play nor the historical record would have permitted this), and vilifying the character of Bolingbroke. Tate's Richard nobly resigns the Crown voluntarily to avert civil war: perhaps suggesting that Charles II must concede the Whigs' demands to exclude his brother from the succession, for the same reason. But it was to no avail: the revised play was "silenc'd on the third day". The aggrieved Tate subsequently published his adaptation under its original title, with the justificatory preface quoted above.

In 1682, Tate wrote Ingratitude of a Commonwealth, or The Fall of Caius Martius Coriolanus: composed after Shaftesbury and his followers had been defeated, and the hereditary succession secured, as its title suggests it faithfully conforms to the current political climate, depicting Coriolanus entirely sympathetically, and making parallels between the Whigs and the demagogic tribunes - Coriolanus's contempt for the people is played down by Tate, while the plebians are more stupid and cowardly than in Shakespeare. The plebians' rebellion against Coriolanus causes the death not just of the central character, but his wife Virgilia and son Young Martius as well, while causing Volumnia to go mad. To keep the focus on the contemporary political allegory, the conflict with the Volscians is downplayed. It was one of a series of plays of this time putting across the government line, defending the established order and attacking those threatening the peace of the state: it contrasted markedly with the ambiguity in Shakespeare's original, not to mention the nuanced view advanced by Tate himself in his Richard II, and with the subtler and more intelligent Royalist propaganda in Davenant and Dryden's The Tempest. Tate opens with an "Epistle Dedicatory", asserting "The Moral therefore of these Scenes, being to Recommend Submission and Adherence to Establisht Lawful Power, which, in a word, is Loyalty". Tate's Coriolanus was not a success: however. just prior to writing it, he produced what was to prove the most famous, and among the most popular and the most enduring of all Shakespeare adaptations: The History of King Lear.

Tate's adaptation of King Lear, a play of which there are only two previous recorded performances during the Restoration, was first performed in 1681. In his dedicatory epistle to Thomas Boteler, Tate describes how, upon reading Shakespeare's play, he found "a Heap of Jewels, unstrung and unpolisht; yet so dazzling in their Disorder, that I soon perceiv'd I had seiz'd a Treasure", and his sincere admiration for the original is shown in the fact that Tate retained or only slightly modified many of Shakespeare's lines: however, he also added many lines of his own composition, as well as assigning some of Shakespeare's words to different characters, and the adaptation is about 800 lines shorter than the original. The leading Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells has noted that Tate "rather asked for trouble by retaining as much of Shakespeare as he did, thereby inviting odious comparisons with verse that he wrote himself". Also in the epistle, Tate explained that he wanted to "rectify what was wanting in the Regularity and Probability of the Tale", and to this end, devised a love plot between Cordelia and Edgar, two characters who in Shakespeare never interact. Tate believed that this would provide a more convincing explanation for Cordelia's refusal to flatter Lear in the opening scene, and would also make Edgar's decision to disguise himself "a generous Design" rather than "a poor Shift to save his Life". Thus, Tate has Cordelia explain, in an aside, that she will not flatter her father so that he will leave her without a dowry, enabling her to escape the "loath'd Embraces" of Burgundy (the King of France is omitted). Tate's alteration makes Cordelia a more devious character than the model of virtue found in Shakespeare, and makes Lear's anger at her more understandable: the King is aware of his daughter's ulterior motives, and opposes her relationship with Edgar as the latter, thanks to Edmund's machinations, is seen as a traitor. Lear is thus not being tyrannical, as he is in Shakespeare, but a responsible (if misled) ruler. Although Lear divides the kingdom, he does not abdicate (Tate had obviously learned the lessons from the suppression of his Richard II).

Despite the success of her strategem, when Burgundy departs, his obvious self-interest causes Cordelia to lose faith in Edgar's fidelity, and she tells him never to speak to her again of love. Unlike in Shakespeare, Cordelia remains in Britain, and attempts to find her father in the storm: she is also given a confidante, Arante. Edmund plans to rape Cordelia, and sends two men to abduct her: a significant blackening of a character who in Shakespeare's play is concerned solely with personal advancement. The disguised Edgar saves Cordelia from his half-brother's goons, and reveals his identity to her: she immediately accepts his love once again. The Fool is omitted. Lear is supported not by a French invasion, but by an uprising of the British people. Goneril and Regan secretly poison one another, rather than Goneril poisoning her sister before stabbing herself. Unlike in Shakespeare, Edgar reveals his identity to Edmund before their fight rather than after it, and Edmund dies without remorse and with no attempt to save Lear and Cordelia from the hangman. However, in Tate's most significant departure from Shakespeare's text, there is a happy ending, as there had been in all pre-Shakespearean versions of the Lear story. Lear kills two men who approach Cordelia in order to hang her, and Edgar and Albany arrive with a reprieve: Kent and Gloster (as Tate spells it) also survive. Albany resigns the crown to Lear, who in turn abdicates in favour of Cordelia, and agrees to Cordelia's and Edgar's betrothal. Lear, Kent and Gloster will retire "to some cool Cell", and Edgar concludes the play with the much derided line, "Truth and Virtue shall at last succeed".

As with Tate's other Shakespeare adaptations, the political context is key to understanding his version of King Lear. In particular, his portrayal of Edmund, the bastard who attempts to usurp his legitimate half-brother, is a response to the Whigs' championing of the Duke of Monmouth, illegitimate son of Charles II, as an alternative heir to the throne. In the final scene, Gloster hails "the King's blest Restauration": no one could have missed that reference. The decision to have Lear restored to his throne may also have been a reaction to the suppression of Tate's Richard II. The omission of the French invasion also reflects political sensitivities during the hysteria over the Popish Plot, and perhaps also over Charles II's controversial dealings with Louis XIV. Other alterations are in tune with Restoration literary tastes, such as the idea of poetic justice (critics traditionally regarded Cordelia's death as a violation of this principle), and the impropriety of mixing comedy and tragedy (hence the omission of the Fool): Tate also exploits audience demand for titillation through amorous scenes between Edmund and both Goneril and Regan, the attempted rape of Cordelia, and a scene in which Cordelia wears men's pants to reveal the actress's ankles. The love plot, Cordelia's expanded role and the creation of Arante are also a product of the advent of women on the Restoration stage.

The History of King Lear premiered at the Duke's Theatre in London in 1681: in his dedicatory epistle, Tate relates how he was "Rackt with no small Fears" but "found it well receiv'd by my Audience". Indeed, his adaptation would prove remarkably popular, supplanting Shakespeare's play on the stage until well into the nineteenth century: as Wells has noted, it was "one of the longest lasting successes of the English drama". Samuel Johnson, who found Shakespeare's final scene unbearable, approved of Tate's happy ending, opining, "In the present case the public has decided. Cordelia from the time of Tate has always retired with victory and felicity". Despite this, most critics, confronted with the stark contrast between Shakespeare's masterpiece and the play as performed on stage, were scathing of Tate, taking the view that all that Lear has suffered makes "a fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him", in the words of Charles Lamb. They were also scornful of Tate's portrayal of Cordelia. Anna Jameson, in her book Shakespeare's Heroines (1832), was especially critical. Sharing the view that no one would want to see Lear's life prolonged after so much torment, she nevertheless did acknowledge that the story did have a happy ending in Shakespeare's sources. However, Jameson was highly critical of the Cordelia/Edgar love plot, which had no such precedent (the sub-plot in which Edgar features derives from a separate source, Philip Sidney's play Arcadia), writing that Tate had:

converted the seraph-like Cordelia into a puling love-heroine, and sent her off victorious at the end of the play - exit with drums and colours flying - to be married to Edgar. Now anything more absurd, more discordant with all our previous impressions, and with the characters as unfolded to us, can hardly be imagined.

By contrast, in his classic study Shakespearean Tragedy (1902), significantly written long after Tate's version had finally disappeared from the stage, A C Bradley presented a more considered view, making a genuine attempt to understand the long-running success of the adaptation. Though Bradley criticised the love plot and the happy ending, he also "venture[d] to doubt" that "Tate and Dr. Johnson [were] altogether in the wrong". Bradley noted that while King Lear is often described as Shakespeare's greatest work, it is less popular on the stage than the other three great tragedies, Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, because, he felt, of the harshness of its ending. Bradley distinguished between what he called the philanthropic sense, which desires that all tragic figures be saved, and the dramatic sense, which wishes only that Lear and Cordelia should survive, suggesting that it was this sense that had both led Tate to adapt the play, and to the popularity of his version. He suggested that our emotions have already been aroused before Lear and Cordelia's deaths, and, in a point well worth considering, that Shakespeare would have given Lear "peace and happiness by Cordelia's fireside" had he written the play a few years later, when he composed Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale (both of which feature fathers who imprison or banish their daughters, but are eventually reconciled to them). Although Bradley agreed with Lamb that Lear deserves "a fair dismissal from the stage of life", he added that "it is precisely this fair dismissal which we desire for him", rather than having to suffer more agony, in the form of Cordelia's death.

Cibber and Garrick

In the eighteenth century, the trend of adapting Shakespeare continued. The political climate now was very different to that of the Restoration: it was not republicanism that was seen as subversive to the established order, but rather absolute monarchy, in the form of Jacobitism. An example of this shift is John Dennis's 1709 adaptation of Coriolanus, The Invader of his Country, which in contrast to Tate's Restoration version is heavily anti-Coriolanus, making parallels with the Jacobite Pretender who, a year earlier, had unsuccessfully attempted to invade Scotland. Thus, eighteenth-century Shakespeare adaptations generally lack the political messages of their Restoration counterparts. Nevertheless, the belief in the importance of the neoclassical unities remained dominant, and continued to contribute to the absence of Shakespeare's originals from the stage.

The two most significant Shakespeare adaptors of the eighteenth century were the actor-managers Colley Cibber (1671-1757) and David Garrick (1717-1779). Cibber's Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John was written in 1736. As its title suggests, it emphasises the anti-Catholic aspect (King John was long seen as a Protestant hero because he quarreled with the Pope) which is played down in Shakespeare's original. Cibber's play was ridiculed during its rehearsals and was withdrawn without being acted. However, in 1745, during the Jacobite uprising of that year, it was finally performed, capitalising on the anti-Catholic mood that the rising generated, with Cibber as Pandulph, the Papal legate who excommunicates John.

Richard III (1699) was also initially a disaster: the Master of the Revels censored its first act, which was seen as too true to life, too brutal and likely to generate sympathy for James II, who had been driven into exile only a decade earlier. In addition, its first performance was a flop with both audiences and critics. However, the play was revived in full in 1704, and became one of the most popular Shakespeare adaptations, though as with Tate's King Lear, its theatrical success contrasted with a negative critical reaction. In fact, in nineteenth century America, Cibber's Richard III was the most performed "Shakespeare" play. Cibber retained fewer than a quarter of Shakespeare's lines. The scene opens with the murder of Henry VI, which in Shakespeare occurs not in Richard III but in the earlier play Henry VI Part 3. The characters of Edward IV, Clarence, Hastings and Queen Margaret are omitted. Richard has seven new soliloquies, making him an even more dominant character than in the original, and also a new scene where he and Lady Ann argue after their marriage: in Shakespeare, Anne has only two scenes, the famous one in which Richard successfully woos her over the coffin of the father-in-law he has murdered, and one where she laments their marriage to the Duchess of York and Queen Elizabeth - she and Richard never interact as a married couple. Cibber gives Queen Elizabeth an aside in which she admits that she is deceiving Richard when she apparently agrees to her daughter's marriage to him: Shakespeare leaves the issue ambiguous. Cibber thus followed the common practice of Shakespeare's adapters in introducing greater clarity to the text. Cibber's play is also far more gory than Shakespeare's. For example, in contrast to the original, Cibber has the murder of the Princes in the Tower take place on stage, and also shows their bodies being thrown into the Thames on Richard's orders (in Shakespeare Tyrrell informs Richard that the chaplain of the Tower has buried the boys but he does not know where).

David Garrick, the greatest actor of the eighteenth century, restored many of Shakespeare's original texts, but also made his own alterations to them. His adaptations were generally the ones performed on the stage for the remainder of the eighteenth century. In 1744, aged just 27, Garrick performed Macbeth "as Shakespeare wrote it". Garrick restored much of Shakespeare's language at the expense of Davenant's, and omitted Davenant's additions to Lady Macduff's role, and most of the scene in which she and her son are murdered, as well as all but two of the witches' songs, but made some changes of his own, notably giving Macbeth a dying speech. He also follows what was then the custom of omitting Lady Macbeth from the scene after Duncan's murder, and retains Davenant's decision to have Macbeth's sword, rather than his head, displayed in the final scene.

In 1750, Garrick performed a version of Romeo and Juliet in which he excised many of Shakespeare's bawdy lines, reduced the role of Mercutio, and, most strikingly, has Juliet wake up while Romeo is still dying from the poison: this detail had occurred in most of the pre-Shakespearean versions of the story (though not in Shakespeare's direct source, Arthur Brooke's poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet), as well as in Thomas Otway's The History and Fall of Caius Marius (1679), the version that held the stage in the early eighteenth century. Baz Luhrmann's blockbuster 1996 film adaptation of the play, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, partially follows this: Juliet wakes just after Romeo has drunk the poison, but the final tortured conversation that Garrick gave the lovers is omitted. Two years later, Garrick made further alterations, omitting Romeo's love for Rosaline, and adding a funeral procession for Juliet when her family mistakenly believes her dead.

In 1754, Garrick devised an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew, entitled Catherine and Petruchio. This version retains many features of the original, but omits the Christopher Sly frame narrative and the Bianca sub-plot (in Garrick, Bianca is married to Hortensio before the action begins, in contrast to the original, in which she marries Lucentio and Baptista is insistent that Bianca will not wed until Katherine has been married off). The ending of the play is significantly different: Catherine does not pledge to place her hand under her husband's foot, nor does she pontificate on women's weaknesses, as she does in the original. Instead, she responds to her father's assertion that she has been "altered" with "Indeed I am - I am transformed to stone". Also in contrast to Shakespeare, Petruchio responds to his wife's speech by stating that his cruelty to her (this was the first production when Petruchio brings a whip onto the stage) has merely been an act, and that they will henceforward live in "mutual Love, Compliance and Regard". Garrick's version could thus be said to be more feminist than Shakespeare's: however, he has Petruchio conclude the play be asserting that it is shameful for women to "seek for rule, supremacy, and sway/Where bound to love, to honour and obey". The Fairies, an operatic adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, was performed anonymously in 1755, and was never printed under Garrick's own name, largely because of negative British perceptions of opera. Garrick omits the mechanicals, and introduces songs from many non-Shakespearean sources, including the works of Ben Jonson. The score was written by John Smith, a pupil of Handel.

Two more adaptations followed in 1756. The first of these, Florizel and Perdita - A Dramatic Romance, is an adaptation of The Winter's Tale. In an age that prized the unities, The Winter's Tale was frequently criticised over the 16-year gap between Acts 3 and 4, the shifting of the action from Sicilia to Bohemia and back again, and its bold mixing of comedy and tragedy: Dryden in 1670 had dismissed it along with Love's Labour's Lost and Measure for Measure as "either grounded in impossibilities or at least so meanly written that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment", while William Warburton, soon to be Bishop of Gloucester, wrote to Garrick praising him for "giving an elegant form to a monstrous composition". At the same time however, the play's eighteenth-century detractors, in contrast to Dryden, also tended to be in two minds: in his 1747 edition of Shakespeare's works, Warburton wrote "the meanness of the fable and the extravagant conduct of it ha[s] misled some of great name into a wrong judgement of its merit; which, as far as it regards sentiment and character, is scare inferior to any in the whole collection", while Samuel Johnson, in his 1765 edition, opined that The Winter's Tale was, "with all its absurdities, very entertaining". Eighteenth-century critics generally admired the play's verse and effectiveness, but balked at the improbable storyline and its flagrant violation of the unities.

In response to these objections, Garrick sets the entire play in Bohemia, where Leontes arrives at the beginning of the play (in Shakespeare, it is Polixenes, Camillo, Florizel and Perdita who travel to Sicilia, the opposite scenario to Garrick's), where Camillo narrates the events of 16 years previously to a Bohemian Gentleman, and where Paulina and the supposedly dead Hermione have fled. Leontes is shipwrecked on the Bohemian coast, and is invited by the Shepherd to his cottage: he subsequently appears in the sheep-shearing scene, where he notices and admires Perdita, and takes some of Polixenes's lines about fathers and their sons' marriages. The climax of the play - the wedding of Florizel and Perdita, and the statue scene - takes place at the Bohemian court. Significant changes are made to characterisation: notably, Paulina is far less outspoken than in Shakespeare, with the lines in which she accuses Leontes of killing Hermione instead assigned, in slightly altered form, to Leontes himself. In so doing, Garrick reinforces the "appropriate" gender roles and somewhat dilutes the strong female characters of the original text: this was in keeping with the view of most eighteenth-century editors, for example Lewis Theobald deemed Paulina to be "gross and blunt". Similarly, in Garrick's version of the statue scene, Hermione addresses Leontes as "My lord, my king . . ./My husband!" (in Shakespeare, though she embraces Leontes, she does not speak to him). In addition, Leontes is more penitent than in the original: he does not need Paulina to remind him of his wrongdoings, and is said to have twice attempted suicide, which never occurs in Shakespeare (Garrick may have derived this idea from Shakespeare's source, Robert Greene's novel Pandosto, whose titular protagonist does ultimately kill himself). Also, in common with the theatrical custom of the time, Garrick increases the sentimentality of the play - characters frequently weep, including Paulina, who never does so in the original: most importantly, Leontes weeps when Hermione apparently returns from the dead.

Also in 1756, Garrick put on an operatic version of The Tempest, with music by John Christopher Smith: it proved a flop, and the following year, at Drury Lane, Garrick put on a version similar to the original. In 1772, he performed an adaptation of Hamlet which omits the final act, with Hamlet's death occurring just 60 lines after Ophelia's funeral. The gravediggers and the duel with Laertes are missing, however in compensation Garrick restored the long-excised roles of Polonius and Laertes, as well as Claudius's prayer scene.

In 1742, Garrick performed Tate's King Lear, in its full text, but playbills advertising the following year's production at Lincoln's Inn Fields mention "restorations from Shakespeare". In 1756, Garrick restored much of Shakespeare's text, but he retained Tate's substantive changes - the love plot, the omission of the Fool, and the happy ending. Garrick's performances of Lear drew tears from his audiences, even without the tragic ending. However, in 1809, John Philip Kemble replaced some of Garrick's Shakespearean restorations, reverting to Tate's passages.

Return of the Bard

In the Romantic period, Shakespeare's reputation dramatically improved, to the extent that he was often seen in quasi-mystical terms as the supreme and sacrosanct English poet. In addition, the belief that plays must conform to the unities was abandoned. Consequently, his plays gradually returned to the stage in the nineteenth century, displacing the adapted versions. For example, in 1823, Edmund Kean became the first actor-manager to restore the tragic ending of King Lear, though retaining much of Tate in the early acts. But his production was not well received, and after just three performances, he regretfully reverted to Tate's final scene. In 1834, William Charles Macready, who had previously described Tate's adaptation as a "miserable debilitation and disfigurement of Shakespeare's sublime tragedy", put on a "restored" version of Shakespeare's text, permanently restoring the tragic ending, though maintaining the omission of the Fool. In 1838, Macready purged the text of Tate altogether, restoring the Fool and performing an abridged version of Shakespeare's text. The production was successful, and from henceforward, Shakespeare permanently supplanted Tate on the British stage: the full original text was performed in 1845 by Samuel Phelps. In the United States, however, Tate continued to be performed until 1875.

In 1821, Macready also attempted to revert to Shakespeare's text of Richard III, but such was the negative response from the audience that he ended the run after only two performances: in 1831, he performed Cibber's version, with only minor alterations. Phelps attempted to restore Shakespeare's version in 1845, but again it was not a success and he reverted to Cibber in 1862. Henry Irving's staging of an abbreviated Shakespeare text in 1877 was also a failure. Many nineteenth-century performances of Richard III were a hybrid of Shakespeare and Cibber: for example, an 1847 production was based mainly on Cibber, but included Shakespeare's famous opening couplet, "Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York", which Cibber omits. Cibber continued to be performed well into the twentieth century, and even today, some of Cibber's lines, notably "Off with his head! So much for Buckingham", occasionally crop up in performances of the Shakespeare play. For example, the line features in Laurence Olivier's classic 1955 film version. Cibber's practice of grafting material from Henry VI Part 3 into Richard III is also followed by Olivier, and many other modern productions.

Conclusion

As we can see, a wide variety of Shakespeare plays were adapted over the years by numerous adapters: we have only scratched the surface in this blogpost. After Shakespeare's originals returned to the stage, there was a long backlash against the adaptations, perceived as inferior, even blasphemous, corruptions of the greatest body of literature in the English language. It cannot be doubted that many of the alterations were ill-advised: consider Davenant's ridiculous simplification of the language in Macbeth, which to modern eyes and ears can seem a gross insult to Shakespeare's sublime poetry. Other examples are Davenant's simplification of Angelo's character in The Law Against Lovers, and Tate's crude handling of the political complexities of Coriolanus. Many other adaptations, however, such as Davenant and Dryden's The Tempest, Dryden's Troilus and Cressida and Tate's Richard II, are intelligent reflections on the contemporary political situation: one very different from that in Shakespeare's time. Others result from a sophisticated engagement with Shakespeare's text: witness Tate's observation that Cordelia needs a better reason for refusing to flatter Lear, and Edgar a better excuse for disguising himself. In recent years, more considered analyses of the adaptations have appeared, acknowledging them as products of their time, and of theatrical tastes very different from those when Shakespeare was alive: in fact it was thanks to the adaptations that Shakespeare remained popular with Restoration audiences.

It also cannot be denied that at least some of the adaptations are theatrically effective: the enduring popularity of Tate's King Lear and Cibber's Richard III illustrate this, as does the success of occasional modern revivals. In March 1985, Tate's King Lear was revived by the Riverside Shakespeare Company at the Shakespeare Centre in New York City, to good reviews. The production was notable for Restoration stage conventions such as a raked stage covered with green felt (as was the convention for tragedies then), and footlights used for illumination on an apron stage: it also made use of Garrick-era period costumes, and musical interludes sung by the cast during act breaks, accompanied by a harpsichord in the orchestra pit in front of the stage. It proved one of the Riverside Company's most popular productions. It was also part of the American Shakespeare Centre's "Slightly Skewed Shakespeare" Staged Reading series in 2013-14, performed by graduate students from Mary Baldwin's College on 19th April 2014. In addition, it has been performed at the Globe Theatre. Davenant's Macbeth was revived at the Folger Theatre in 2018, set in an asylum, and received good reviews. Lady Macduff's anti-war speeches, and the expanded role of women in the play, made it appealing to modern audiences. The incorporation of the adapters' alterations in the Olivier and Luhrmann films also testifies to their effectiveness. The adaptations ultimately must be understood as products of their time, as scholars are increasingly acknowledging, and they give a fascinating insight into how the reputation of Shakespeare and his works has changed over the centuries.

An Astronomical Surprise - The Discovery of the Planet Uranus

There have been many milestones in the history of astronomy: foremost among them, of course, being Nicolaus Copernicus's daring suggestion that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the centre of the Universe. But since the triumph of the Copernican Revolution, there has been no more sensational event in astronomy than William Herschel's unexpected discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781. Ever since antiquity, it had been taken for granted that there were five planets beyond the Earth - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Although Giordano Bruno had proposed in the late sixteenth century that stars beyond the Sun might have planets of their own, it never seems to have occurred to anyone that there might be other planets in the Solar System. At a stroke, the Solar System was doubled in size: even more shocking was that an amateur astronomer had made a discovery that had eluded the finest professionals. In addition, not only was Herschel's discovery sensational in its own right, it also directly contributed to more discoveries: notably the asteroids, because of a mathematical formula which the discovery of Uranus seemed to vindicate, and to the eighth planet, Neptune, as a result of irregularities in Uranus's orbit. In short, the discovery of Uranus, just like the Copernican Revolution, fundamentally changed our view of the Solar System.

The Discoverer

Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel was born in Hanover on 15th November 1738: his father Isaac came from a Jewish family, originally from Moravia in what is now the Czech Republic, that had converted to Lutheranism in the seventeenth century. Isaac Herschel was an oboist in the Hanover Military Band, and Wilhelm and elder brother Jakob followed in his footsteps, being engaged as oboists in the Hanoverian Guards. In 1757, after Hanover's forces were defeated by the French at the Battle of Hastenbeck, Isaac Herschel sent his two sons to Britain - then in personal union with Hanover - for their own safety. Wilhelm quickly learned English, going by the English version of his name, Frederick William, and forged a successful career as a musician and composer. In 1772, he was joined by his sister Caroline, ultimately to become a distinguished astronomer in her own right.

Herschel began to take an interest in astronomy in the 1770s, building telescopes to observe the night sky. He was constantly assisted in his activities by Caroline. His discovery of Uranus made his reputation: he was awarded the Copley Medal and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1782 was appointed the official astronomer to King George III (not, note, the Astronomer Royal) and awarded an annual stipend of £200 (£24,000 in today's money, though less than he had earned as a musician) on condition that he move to Windsor to enable the royal family to look through his telescopes. He gave up his musical career to dedicate himself to his new position. In the remainder of his career, he discovered more than 800 binary or multiple star systems, six galaxies (though they were not recognised as such until two centuries after his death), two moons each of Saturn and Uranus, the motion of the Sun through space, and infrared light in sunlight. In 1816, he was knighted. On 8th May 1788, he married the widow Mary Pitt (nee Baldwin) (causing a bitter rift with Caroline, who lost her position in her brother's household as a result). The couple had one child, John, who would become a notable scientist in his own right. William Herschel died in Slough on 25th August 1822.

The Discovery

On the night of 13th March 1781, Herschel - uncharacteristically working alone rather than with Caroline - was searching for binary stars (using the telescope seen on the left) from the garden of his house in Bath, when he noticed a curious object in the constellation of Taurus. In his journal, he recorded "either [a] Nebulous star or perhaps a comet. Four days later, he records, "I looked for the Comet or Nebulous Star and found that it is a Comet, for it has changed its place". As Herschel noted, the object could not be a star, as it had moved: as no one expected there were any planets other than those already known, and as the asteroids had not yet been discovered, a moving object could only be a comet. On 26th April, Herschel presented his discovery to the Royal Society and also notified Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, still not suspecting that the object he had found was anything other than a comet. However, on 23rd March, three days before Herschel described the "comet" to the Royal Society, Maskelyne wrote back, noting that the object apparently had no coma (surrounding cloud of gas and dust) or tail, and suggesting that the object might be a planet.

Though Herschel continued to describe his discovery as a comet, other astronomers shared Maskelyne's suspicions. Not only did the object lack a coma and tail, as Maskelyne had pointed out, but also for a comet to be as bright as this one, it would have to be very close to the Sun, and a comet so close to the Sun would be moving much faster than this object. Maskelyne called on astronomers across Europe to examine the object, and they duly took up the challenge. While travelling through Europe, Swedish-speaking Finnish astronomer Anders Johan Lexell made preliminary calculations of the orbit of the mysterious object, based on Herschel's and Maskelyne's observations. On returning to Russia, where he was based, Lexell made a more precise calculation of the object's orbit, but due to the orbit's length it was not clear whether the object had a near-circular orbit, like a planet, or a highly elliptical one, like a comet. However, Lexell subsequently found the record of a star observed in the constellation of Pisces in 1759 by German astronomer Christian Mayer but which was not catalogued and had seemingly disappeared from the sky by the time another German astronomer, Johann Elert Bode, sought it. Lexell assumed that this was an earlier sighting of Herschel's "comet": he was thus able to calculate its orbit, which turned out to be regular, establishing that the object was in fact a planet. He also accurately calculated the new planet's size, aided by the fact that Mars happened to be close to it at the time. Independently of Lexell, Bode also made orbital calculations. After consulting older star charts, Bode realised that Herschel's object had been catalogued as a star several times: for example, Britain's first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, had listed it at least six times as 34 Tauri in his 1690 catalogue. These earlier observations gave Bode the necessary information to calculate a precise orbit. By now, there could be no doubt about it: William Herschel had indeed discovered a new planet.

Choosing a Name

It was truly an unprecedented moment in the history of astronomy: the first five planets beyond the Earth had been known to all civilisations since time immemorial, and no individual could claim to have "discovered" them, in the same way that no one can be hailed as the discoverer of fire, or the inventor of telling the time. Since the invention of the telescope in 1609, many major discoveries had been made: moons around Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn's rings, Halley's Comet and numerous stars, but never a new planet.

As soon as the seventh planet's existence was confirmed, a heated debate arose about what name should be given to it. The names of the other planets derive from classical gods: Mercury, the one that moves the swiftest across the sky, after the messenger god with wings on his sandals; Venus, the brightest planet, after the goddess of love and beauty; Mars, in view of its blood-red colour, after the god of war; Jupiter, the largest planet, after the king of the gods; and Saturn, the slowest moving planet, after the god of time. To us then, it might seem obvious that this precedent should be followed in naming the seventh planet, and eventually it would be: however, due to the unprecedented nature of the situation, it would be nearly 70 years before a name would be universally accepted. Also, at the time there was no clear pattern for naming newly discovered objects in the Solar System. Jupiter's four largest moons, known collectively as the Galilean moons after their discoverer, Galileo Galilei, are well known today under the names Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, after lovers (of different sexes) of the god Jupiter: however, Galileo himself never used these names. He instead named the moons Cosimo, Francesco, Carlo and Lorenzo, after his patrons, the Medici family. The names we use today were proposed by the now largely forgotten German astronomer Simon Marius, who had independently discovered the moons at the same time as Galileo. Out of spite, Galileo refused to use Marius's names, and after his own proposed names failed to catch on, preferred to number the moons in order of their distance from Jupiter: the names Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto would not be widely used until the twentieth century. Saturn's largest moon, Titan (so called because in mythology Saturn was king of a race of giants called the Titans) was discovered in 1655, but would not be named until 1847 (incidentally, it was named by John Herschel, son of the discoverer of Uranus), over 190 years later.

In 1783, William Herschel, having finally accepted that his discovery was a planet, received a letter from Maskelyne, urging him to "do the astronomical world a faver [sic] to give a name to your planet, which is entirely your own, which we are so much obliged to you for the discovery of". Herschel proposed that his planet be named Georgium Sidus ("George's Star"), in honour of George III, successfully hoping that this would encourage the King to honour him and enable him to become a full-time astronomer. He justified this choice in a letter to Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society:

In the fabulous ages of ancient times the appellations of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were given to the Planets, as being the names of their principal heroes and divinities. In the present more philosophical era it would hardly be allowable to have recourse and call it Juno, Pallas, Apollo or Minerva [though incidentally all four of the above names would later be given to asteroids], for a name to our new heavenly body. The first consideration of any particular event, or remarkable incident, seems to be its chronology: if in any future age it should be asked, when this last-found Planet was discovered? It would be a very satisfactory answer to say, "In the reign of King George the Third" [At the time it was common for major events to be dated by reference to the monarch in whose reign they occurred]

This name caught on in Britain (and, under today's naming rules which assign exclusive naming rights to the discoverer, would have had to have been accepted), but was never accepted elsewhere: the French were especially averse to honouring their traditional enemy. French astronomer Jérôme Lalande suggested naming the planet "Herschel": though the idea of naming a planet after its discoverer may seem quaint now, it should be remembered that this is still how comets are named, and has been ever since Halley's Comet became the first to have its orbit calculated. Swiss mathematician Johann Bernoulli favoured "Hypercronius" or "Transsaturnis" both meaning "above Saturn", while others made the case for Cybele, based on a dubious belief that the word means "dumb-bell", befitting a planet that had for so long remained silent. In a similar jesting vein, German astronomer Hofrath Lichtenberg suggested "Austräa", after the last Greek goddess to flee from the Earth, but he soon acknowledged the unsuitability of this name as Austräa was one of the goddesses identified with the constellation of Virgo. Swedish astronomer Erik Prosperin proposed "Neptune", presumably in reference to the planet's blue colour, Neptune being the Roman god of the sea. Lexell proposed, as a compromise, calling the planet "Neptune de George III" or "Neptune de Grande-Bretagne". Some British astronomers were attracted to this proposal, seeing it as a way of honouring Britain's naval victories. Prosperin's name eventually fell by the wayside, but it pointed to where the naming debate was eventually heading: towards the name of a classical god.

It was Bode, in a March 1782 treatise, who was the first to propose the name Uranus. He argued that the planet should be named after a classical deity so as not to stand out from the other planets. Why Uranus? In Greek mythology, Uranus was a personification of the sky: he was both the son and the husband of Gaia - the Earth. They were the parents of the Titans, the Cyclopes (one-eyed giants) and the Hecantonchires (hundred-handed giants). However, Uranus hated all of their children and imprisoned them in Tartarus, deep within the Earth, which was painful (in more ways than one) to Gaia. Thus, she encouraged all of her sons to castrate Uranus using a great flint-bladed sickle that she had forged. Only the youngest of the Titans, Cronus (Saturn to the Romans), accepted the challenge, cutting off his father's genitals and throwing them into the sea. From Uranus's genitals was born the goddess Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans), and from his blood, which spilled onto the Earth, sprang the Giants, the Furies and the Meliae (ash-tree nymphs). Cronus and the Titans then ruled the Universe until they were deposed by Cronus's son Zeus (called Jupiter by the Romans). It was not, however, the rather gruesome nature of the Uranus myth that inspired Bode's suggestion: rather it was the belief that since Saturn was the father of Jupiter, so the new planet should be named after the father of Saturn. In support of Bode's choice, his Royal Swedish Academy colleague, German chemist Martin Klaproth, gave the name uranium to a newly discovered element in 1789 (this precedent would be followed subsequently, with the element neptunium being named after the newly discovered Neptune, and cerium and plutonium being named after the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto, both of which were initially regarded as planets). Uranus became the most popular choice for the planet's name, though "Georgium Sidus" remained widely used in Britain for many decades: Bode's name finally gained universal approval in 1850, when HM Nautical Almanac Office switched from "Georgium Sidus" to "Uranus". Uranus is, incidentally, the only planet named after a Greek rather than a Roman deity (Caelus was the Roman name of Uranus).

More Discoveries

Calculating Uranus's orbit, and choosing its name, were not the only contributions made by Bode to astronomy. In 1766, German astronomer Johann Daniel Titius had devised a mathematical formula that accurately predicted the average distances from the Sun of the six planets then known to exist. In 1772, Bode, then aged just 25, advanced the same formula: in later years, he acknowledged Tititus's priority. The Titius-Bode law, also known simply as Bode's law, was initially dismissed by most astronomers as an interesting coincidence, but perceptions of it were altered dramatically by the discovery of Uranus, which lay at exactly the right position for a trans-Saturnian planet. The law was now apparently vindicated: what was more, it predicted the existence of an undiscovered planet in between Mars and Jupiter. Bode, who could have been forgiven for feeling not a little triumphalistic, called on his fellow astronomers to search for this new planet. In 1800, requests were sent to 24 experienced astronomers, dubbed the "celestial police", to search for a fifth planet. One of those was the Sicilian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi: however, on 1st January 1801, before receiving the message, Piazzi had already discovered a small orbiting body which he named Ceres, again in the position predicted by Titius and Bode. Ceres was immediately accepted as the missing fifth planet, but just a year later, German astronomer Heinrich Olbers discovered another body, Pallas, in the same orbit as Ceres: it had always been assumed it was impossible for two planets to share an orbit. Herschel pointed out that Ceres and Pallas were much smaller than the other seven planets: so small that even in the best telescopes they only appeared as small pinpricks of light, like the stars, instead of fully formed discs, like the major planets, and proposed that they be referred to as "asteroids", meaning "star-like". Initially, Herschel's terminology was not accepted, and Ceres and Pallas continued to be referred to as planets, as did Juno, discovered in 1804 by Karl Harding, and Vesta, discovered by Olbers in 1807. Thus, for nearly 40 years, the Solar System had 11 planets. However, between 1845 and 1851, 11 more bodies orbiting between Mars and Jupiter were discovered: these too were originally classified as planets, and as such assigned astronomical symbols like all other planets. By 1851, there were so many planets that the astronomical symbols were becoming increasingly difficult to draw, so instead the asteroids were given numbers in order of discovery, thus implicitly classifying them apart from the planets, and gradually they ceased to be referred to as planets. An important precedent had been set: ever since the Copernican Revolution all objects orbiting the Sun, other than comets, had been classified as planets, but now the principle had been established that small objects, and those that shared their orbits with other bodies, did not count as planets, though the word "planet" remained without a formal definition. The discovery of Uranus had led to the discovery of a completely new set of Solar System bodies, and to a limitation in the type of objects regarded as planets: both changes to our view of the Solar System as significant as Uranus's discovery itself.

When Lexell first calculated Uranus's orbit, he noticed that its orbit was being perturbed (pulled out of its predicted path), and suggested that there could be other, more distant, planets, responsible for the perturbation. He also predicted that, based on his data on various comets, the size of the Solar System could be up to 100 astronomical units (i.e. 100 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun) or more, a much bolder estimate than most others at the time. In 1821, French astronomer Alexis Bouvard published astronomical tables of Uranus's orbit, predicting its future position based on Newton's laws of motion and gravitation: however, the planet deviated very significantly from these predictions, causing Bouvard, as Lexell had done, to hypothesise the existence of a eighth planet disturbing Uranus's orbit. In the mid-1840s, British astronomer John Couch Adams and Frenchman Urbain Le Verrier independently computed a position for the eighth planet, and Le Verrier sent his calculations to German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin Observatory. Galle received Le Verrier's letter on 23rd September and immediately began searching, assisted by his student Heinrich Louis d'Arrest. Just after midnight on 24th September 1846, Galle and d'Arrest observed Neptune after less than an hour of searching, less than one degree from Le Verrier's predicted position. Galle wrote to the French astronomer, "the planet whose place you have [predicted] really exists" (emphasis in original). Once again, the discovery of Uranus had led directly to a major new discovery, this time of another planet. (Incidentally, Neptune's discovery also discredited the Titius-Bode law, as its position did not conform to the law.)

But the discovery of Neptune was not to be the end of the story. Observations of Neptune's mass appeared to indicate that it alone was incapable of perturbing Uranus's orbit, as well as to apparent irregularities in Neptune's own orbit, leading to predictions of a large ninth planet. In 1930, Pluto was discovered by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, and was immediately accepted as a new planet, but it turned out to be far smaller than any other planet - and, more significantly, far too small to influence the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. As a result, several astronomers, notably Robert Sutton Harrington, predicted the existence of a giant 10th planet, but no such planet was ever found. In 1992, E Myles Standish recalculated Neptune's effect on Uranus, based on data from the Voyager 2 space probe, which had revised Neptune's mass downward by 0.5 per cent - this might not sound like much, but in the context of a planet as huge as Neptune this is comparable to the entire mass of Mars. With this new information, the irregularities in Uranus's and Neptune's orbits disappeared: in other words, there was not another giant planet in the Solar System. Also in 1992, astronomers began to discover that Pluto, just like Ceres, is not alone but belongs to a very large group of small icy bodies beyond Neptune's orbit known as the Kuiper belt. The discovery in 2003 of Eris, a distant body 27 per cent more massive than Pluto (though now known to be slightly smaller in diameter, contrary to what was initially thought) led the International Astronomical Union, in 2006, to devise a formal definition of the word planet for the first time. It determined, in keeping with the precedent set in relation to the asteroids in 1851, that a planet is a round body in orbit around the Sun that has "cleared the neighbourhood" around its orbit. Round bodies orbiting the Sun that have not "cleared their neighbourhoods", such as Pluto, Ceres and Eris, were to be classified as "dwarf planets". Although it cannot be said that the discovery of Uranus directly contributed to this decision, Uranus was indirectly one of the reasons that the search which uncovered Pluto began: its discovery thus can be said to have begun the process that led to the 2006 definition. In addition, this definition, as noted above, conformed with a precedent set with the asteroids, whose discovery was a consequence of the discovery of Uranus.

Conclusion

The discovery of Uranus was, in its own way, as significant a turning point in the history of astronomy as the publication of Copernicus's De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium. If the latter altered forever our conception of the Earth's - and by extension our own - place in the Universe, the former was the first indication that the Solar System is much bigger that had been assumed. It was the beginning of a process that would lead to the discovery of Neptune, the asteroids and the Kuiper belt, and eventually to a formal definition of the word planet for the first time. Of course, all these developments were inevitable, but it is still remarkable to think that it all began with a completely unforeseen discovery made by an amateur astronomer.