Page 61 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

Ivi

THE STAGE-HISTORY OF
KING LEAR

Any survey, however summary, of the stage-fortunes of
our play must include its adaptation by Nahum Tate,
which displaced the original as the basis of all productions
for a century and a half. So popular was it that the
eighteenth-century performances far outnumber those
of any other period; and in the nineteenth century such
outstanding critics as Lamb, Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt
never saw the original staged.
Of pre-Restoration productions only two records are
known.The entry of Shakespeare's Learin the Stationers'
Register of 26 November 1607, mentions a performance
before the King at Whitehall on the night of St Stephen's
Day (26 December) 1606, 'by his maiesties servantes
playinge vsually at the Globe'; and the 'Pied Bull'
quarto (Q 1) of 1608 repeats the information on its
title-page. The other notice tells the story of a group of
Yorkshire players from Egton who at Candlemas
(2 February) 1610 acted the play at Sir John York's
mansion, Gowthwaite Hall in Nidderdale, when
Christopher Simpson, who originally gathered together
these strolling players, probably acted the king. They
used 'printed books', which for this play must have
1
been copies of Q i. After the Restoration at least two
revivals preceded the disappearance of Shakespeare's
Lear from the stage. John Downes in his Roscius
Anglicanus (1708) names it in a list of the plays pre-
sented by Davenant's company ('the Duke's') at
1
See for fuller details C. J. Sisson in The Review of
English Studies (1942), pp. 135-43, and the Stage-History
of Pericles in this edition, p. xxxi.