Page 65 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

Ix K I N G LEAR
London saw him as the King till he retired. In 1746 the
manager, Rich, induced him to come to Covent Garden;
but in autumn 1747 he was back in the Lane, now co-
manager with Lacy. Here on 28 October 1756 he
staged the play 'with restorations from Shakespeare',
having his friend and biographer Davies's wife as
1
Cordelia. His restorations, though once supposed to be
negligible, were in fact very considerable. The plot
remains Tate's, with the love story, the happy ending,
and no Fool; but apart from additions and omissions
which this entailed, the dialogue is chiefly Shakespeare's,
and Mr Hogan's calculation is that 'a good seventy per
cent' is 'Shakespeare verbatim'.* This year and the next
Barry was competing with him at the rival house in the
title part, but what Davies deemed Garrick's 'perfect
exhibition' of it so outshone Barry's 'very respectable'
3
rendering that from October 1767 to April 1774 he was
content to understudy him at Drury Lane before return-
ing to Covent Garden, where his last Lear was in
February 1776. Miss Nossiter was Barry's first Cordelia
at the Garden, 1756-7; but his most frequent partner
was Ann Dancer (Mrs Barry from 1768), who acted the
part with him from 1766 to 1776. In February 1768 a
more thorough-going revision of Tate by the elder
George Colman was acted at Covent Garden with
Powell and Mrs Yates as principals (they had partnered
thus at Drury Lane in the 1765-6 season). Working
largely from Shakespeare's text, Colman discarded the
love-scenes, but kept Tate's ending. He omitted
1
Hogan, op. cit. II, 337.
a
Privately communicated. Cf. his op. cit. ir, 334, and
A. C. Sprague, Shakespearian Players and Performances
(1954) (British ed.), p. 32: 'Shakespeare owes a great deal
to this actor—even... in the matter of restoring his words to
the stage.'
3 Thomas Davies, Life ofGarrick (1781), ir, 249.