Page 62 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

STAGE-HISTORY Ivii
Lincoln's Inn Fields, 'between 1662 and 1665',
Betterton playing Lear; while in June 1675, it is said to
have been seen by Nell Gwyn. 1
In 1681 Tate's History of KingLear'was published,
and was acted the same year at Dorset Garden by the
Duke's company. Tate's book gives the cast: Lear
(Betterton), Edgar (Smith), Kent (Wiltshire), Edmund
(Williams), Gloucester (Gillow), Albany (Bowman),
Cornwall (Norris); Mrs (i.e. Miss) Barry was Cordelia,
Mrs Shadwell (the poet's wife) Goneril, and a titled
lady, Lady Slingsby, Regan. Tate had remodelled the
play, making three major alterations: the happy ending
which everyone has heard of; a love-story, of Edgar and
Cordelia, running through the whole play (France and
Burgundy are cut out); and the omission of the Fool. The
love-theme Tate in his dedicatory epistle claims as an.
'Expedient' happily hit on 'to rectifie' a lack of'Regu-
larity and Probability' in Shakespeare's plot; it 'renders
Cordelia's Indifference and her Father's Passion prob-
able', and turns Edgar's disguise from 'a poor Shift to
save his Life' into 'a generous Design' for helping
Cordelia. Unfortunately it entailed many new scenes of
incongruous sentimentality in Tate's inferior verse. The
new ending which left Lear and Cordelia safe and happy
took the place of what many, notably Dr Johnson, have
felt to be unendurably painful; 4 it also conserved the
ideal of 'poetic justice' which many besides Johnson
clung to, and vindicated the righteous control of the
Universe, as its final lines emphasize—Cordelia's' bright
Example shall convince the World....That Truth and
1
Hazelton Spencer, Shakespeare Improved (1927), p. 7$,
and Montague Summers's ed. of Downes, op. at. (1928),
p. 188, cite for this the Historical MSS. Commission, in. 266.
s
See Raleigh, Johnson on Shakespeare (1908), pp. 161-25
cf. also A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy (1904),
pp. 232-4.