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 His work was seen as outdated: John Evelyn recorded seeing a performance of Hamlet on 26th November 1661, opining that "the old playe began to disgust this refined age".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.