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King Lear vs Nahum Tate's Edgar-Marries-Cordelia King Lear

As anyone who has been following my blog for the past few months can probably guess, I am a big Shakespeare nerd, and King Lear is my favorite Shakespeare play. Because of this, I decided to track down Nahum Tate's "happy ending" rewrite of King Lear (written around 1681) and the anonymous King Leir (written in the 1590s and one of Shakespeare's sources for his King Lear) and see how they compared to Shakespeare's version. The results were...interesting. And hilarious.

This particular post will be about Nahum Tate's Lear. King Leir will get its own, separate post. I'm starting with Tate's Lear because it's probably more widely known (and, being a rewrite, naturally is much more similar to Shakespeare's play than King Leir). Here's what stood out to me:

-Nahum Tate actually reworked a more substantial number of lines than I expected him to. Most of the play is generally the same as Shakespeare's version, but the specific word choices are different (and often not nearly as impactful). That being said, he still kept enough of Shakespeare's lines to remind you that this is basically just an edited version of Shakespeare's play. And that it was much better before the edits.

-The play actually opens with a modified version of Edmund's "Thou, nature" speech, rather than with the conversation between Kent, Gloucester, and Edmund (which is cut completely from the play, unfortunately). He also explicitly tells us that he's been working to set his father and brother against each other for some time now, so the scene where he shows Gloucester the forged letter is now not the first part of his plan. Needless to say, I prefer the Shakespeare version, especially since the loss of the Kent/Gloucester/Edmund speech means that some of the nuance in Gloucester and Edmund's relationship gets lost.

-The King of France just doesn't exist in this version. The Duke of Burgundy is still a suitor for Cordelia, but she wants to marry Edgar here. I would make fun of this, given that Edgar and Cordelia never speak in Shakespeare's play, but I sort of ship Cordelia with the Fool, and they also never speak with each other in Shakespeare's play, so I'll let Tate off for this one. Except I won't, because while I love writing King Lear fanfic, I have never decided that I could write Shakespeare better than Shakespeare and then altered the original play so that her actual husband doesn't exist.

-Substantially more annoying than the Cordelia/Edgar thing in general is the fact that, rather than refusing to participate in the love test because she doesn't want to falsely flatter the king by competing in "Who Loves Daddy the Most", she here refuses because...she doesn't want to get married to Burgundy. I mean, I'm all for not wanting to marry someone you don't love, but Cordelia's motivation in the original was much more interesting, and I kind of feel as though the rationale Tate provided for her was included solely because he thought Cordelia's initial reasons for refusing to participate in the love contest made her not feminine enough.

-Weirdly, even though Cordelia didn't want to marry Burgundy in the first place, when he refuses to marry her after her father disowns her, this for some reason makes her suspicious of Edgar's motivations in pursuing her (even though he's clearly interested in her after she's disowned!) and so she basically calls off their romance (at least temporarily).

-Also, since there's no King of France, Cordelia is just sort of...hanging around in England offstage somewhere while the remainder of the first two acts go down. She does pop back up again in Act III to go out into the storm and find her father, but I have no idea what she's doing in between the first scene and when she finally reappears.

-The Fool doesn't exist. At all. And his lines aren't given to anyone else, either. This is a major disappointment. It also means that Kent (who does at least still get to disguise himself as Caius) is the only important character who ends up going out into the storm with Lear.

-Oswald doesn't have a name in this version. He's just called "Gentleman" throughout (it's even what's used to delineate his lines!)

-Throughout the entirety of the scene where Edmund is trying to convince Edgar that their father is super angry with him for some obviously non-Edmund-related reason, Edgar is so busy moping over Cordelia dumping him that he barely even pays attention to what Edmund has to say, and Edmund has to try much harder than in Shakespeare's version to get the message across. Clearly, Edgar has his priorities straightened out.

-Edgar's "I'm going to pretend to be a naked crazy person" soliloquy includes several references to Cordelia, because we're never going to see the end of this added plot element.

-Regan starts expressing a romantic interest in Edmund the first time they meet (in what would be Act II, scene i of Shakespeare's play). Shakespeare's play doesn't have her mention Edmund in any romantic capacity until Act IV, scene v, well after her husband's death.

-Most of the rest of the stuff leading up to Lear running out into the storm plays out the same as in Shakespeare's version, though with altered lines and with all traces of the Fool eliminated. Though the absence of the Fool also means that the entirety of Act I scene v of Shakespeare's play is absent from Tate's version, since that scene consists of nothing but Lear talking to the Fool.

-Kent has to sort of take the Fool's place in the storm scenes (leading to the somewhat odd effect of Lear calling Kent "my boy" and "my poor knave").

-Both Goneril and Regan are openly pursuing Edmund by the start of Act III (he already has love letters from them both in what would be Shakespeare's Act III, scene iii!). This is especially notable in Regan's case, since she does not attempt to cheat on her husband with Edmund in Shakespeare's version.

-A more interesting addition is the fact that in this version, the common people are fed up with Goneril and Regan (and presumably the Duke of Cornwall as well) because they "Already have impos'd the galling Yoke Of Taxes, and hard Impositions on the drudging Peasants Neck, who bellow out their loud Complaints in Vain". This is sort of hinted at in Shakespeare's version, but not to this extent and not until rather later in the play (most of the anger in that version seems to stem from Gloucester's blinding, which hasn't happened yet in Act III scene iii).

-Also, Cordelia pops up in this scene to beg Gloucester to help her father. He's understandably surprised by her concern for Lear, but tells her that he is, in fact, going to help her father (and that he was planning to do that anyway).

-And Edmund immediately decides that he's attracted to Cordelia in addition to both of her sisters (his affair with them seems a lot less politically motivated on his part than it does in Shakespeare's version)-----and then moves far beyond the pale of even allowing his father's eyes to be gouged out when he decides that he's going to have his men kidnap Cordelia so that he can rape her. Just in case the audience hadn't worked out he was the villain yet!

-Because women were allowed on stage by the time Tate did this rewrite, he decided to add in another female character named Arante. She serves as Cordelia's lady's maid, but sadly doesn't get enough stage time to get a personality or do all that much. If you're going to add in new characters, why not go whole-hog and actually develop them?

-The scene where Lear puts his "daughters" on trial in the farmhouse is cut entirely (though the "Let them anatomize Regan" line gets to stay in).

-Lear's "when the mind's free, the body's delicate" line gets given to Cordelia, who is wandering the heath with Arante in search of her father. Then she and Arante get attacked by Edmund's goons, only to be saved by Edgar.

-Unfortunately, this results in the rekindling of the romance between Edgar and Cordelia.

-Regan is now aggressively flirting with Edmund right before Gloucester is brought in to be blinded.

-Regan does not get to kill the servant who stands up to, and mortally wounds, Cornwall. I guess Cornwall just kills him? That's disappointing.

-Before committing suicide, Gloucester actually plans to actively go around showing people how awful Regan and Cornwall are in the hopes of getting them to revolt against the two older daughters. That's a clever stratagem, though I'm surprised Gloucester's mentally stable enough to come up with it, given how he's just gotten his eyes gouged out and all.

-The revolt is also being supported by some dude named the Duke of Combray, who apparently just hates the Duke of Cornwall for old family reasons. He doesn't appear in person in the play at all, and he doesn't exist in Shakespeare.

-Tate's Act IV begins with a completely new full-on love scene between Regan and Edmund. Mind you, Cornwall's actively dying while this is going on, and Regan even says that she hopes that he will die so that she can marry Edmund. Again, there's not a trace of this in Shakespeare's version; Regan doesn't mention Edmund romantically until scene five of this act, at which point her husband is very dead. Regan also finds Goneril's love letter to Edmund during this scene between them (not the "kill my husband" letter, the other one from earlier. Goneril sends two letters to Edmund in this version.)

-Oh, and Regan also gets Goneril's "my fool usurps my body" line.

-Because there's no King of France, the French invasion becomes a sort of civil war, one that comes in large part from a peasant's revolt. That's actually a neat idea, even if it removes any semblance of moral ambiguity from the upcoming battle (and indeed raises the question of why Albany fights against them at all).

-Kent, Gloucester, and Cordelia meet together in a sequence that doesn't exist in Shakespeare's version (it comes midway through Shakespeare's Act IV scene i). This also means that Gloucester learns about Kent's disguise in Tate's version (there's no indication that he ever learns about it in Shakespeare's).

-Even though Regan got a new scene to be romantic with Edmund, the scene where Goneril does the same (after Edmund escorts her back to her castle) is missing entirely. And so is Edmund. And so is Albany, meaning that her argument with him is also missing entirely.

-Goneril is the one who tells Oswald (excuse me, "Gentleman") that he should kill the now-blind Gloucester, rather than Regan being the one to do it. This in turn has the knock-on effect that Act IV scene v (the one where Regan first expresses interest in Edmund in Shakespeare's Lear, tries to read Goneril's letter to Edmund, and tells him to kill Gloucester) is also entirely cut.

-Cordelia explicitly does not go to the battlefield in Tate's version (whether she does so in Shakespeare's is unclear, though she does seem to be in charge of the French army there). Instead, Kent seems to lead the forces that are in support of Lear.

-Tate's Act V begins with Goneril putting the poison into Regan's drink onstage (before they've even won the battle!)

-Conversely, we don't get to see Edgar giving Albany Goneril's letter to Edmund and offering to fight Edmund on Albany's behalf.

-Instead of Edmund telling the soldiers to hang Lear and Cordelia, Goneril does it instead. I...actually don't mind this change too much. Especially since this Edmund is already an attempted rapist, so he doesn't really need to be MORE evil (and Goneril was in on the plan to have them hanged in Shakespeare's version anyhow).

-Edgar challenges Edmund to a duel on his own behalf, rather than on Albany's (and indeed, Albany doesn't know about the fact that his wife is plotting to kill him to be with Edmund since Edgar never gave him the letter, so he doesn't charge Edmund with treason himself at all!)

-The scene between Cordelia and Lear, rather than being at the beginning of the last scene, instead takes places partway through it, though rather than being taken to prison, it happens when they're already in prison. Kent is there too, and he's an awkward third wheel.

-Edgar also doesn't fight the duel in disguise---Edmund knows it's him from the get-go.

-Edgar finally gives the letter to Albany once the duel has already started.

-Regan is actually onstage for the duel in this version (in Shakespeare's version Goneril's poison does her in much more quickly and she's already dying offstage by the time the duel starts).

-Oh, and instead of Goneril committing suicide, she and Regan have an argument that leads to the revelation that Regan poisoned her too. Which sucks, because Goneril running offstage and stabbing herself is much more memorable than having them both poison each other.

-Weirdly, the scene ends with both sisters and Edmund just sort of shrugging and going offstage to presumably all die together (I mean, at this point I guess there's not much else for them to do).

-Edmund at no point repents and tells Edgar and Albany to save Cordelia. The two of them just go off to talk to Edgar's father. So...uh...no idea how they later know to go to the prison, since nobody told them about the murder plot.

-King Lear saves Cordelia from two of the men who have come to kill her (rather than just killing the one who hangs her, as per Shakespeare's play). Then Edgar and Albany show up to save the day, so Cordelia and Lear don't die. And neither does Gloucester, who survives the revelation that it was his son who's been leading him all around the British countryside. -Lear gets his crown back, and Edgar and Cordelia get married. And everyone is happy (except the reader, maybe, who probably remembers how powerful, though bleak, Shakespeare's ending is).

-Also, Albany just gets the shaft throughout the play. He's not a super active character in Shakespeare's version, but he basically accomplishes nothing at all here.

TL;DR: Tate probably just should have done his own take on the King Lear story rather than trying to improve Shakespeare's.

#william shakespeare #shakespeare #king lear #nahum tate's king lear #goneril #regan #cordelia #edgar #edmund #no Fool