Riverside Shakespeare Company
In 1985 the Riverside Shakespeare Company presented the New York premiere of "The History of King Lear", adapted with a happy ending by 18th-century English Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate, from William Shakespeare's "King Lear". The production was directed by W. Stuart McDowell, produced by Andrew B. Harris, who had joined Riverside as its executive director at the beginning of the season.
The History of King Lear
While Tate's version proved extremely popular on the stage, the response of literary critics has generally been negative. An early example of approval from a critic is found in Charles Gildon's "Remarks on the Plays of Shakespeare" in 1710:
The King and "Cordelia" ought by no means to have dy'd, and therefore Mr "Tate" has very justly alter'd that particular, which must disgust the Reader and Audience to have Vertue and Piety meet so unjust a Reward. . . . We rejoice at the deaths of the "Bastard" and the two Sisters, as of Monsters in Nature under whom the very Earth must groan. And we see with horror and Indignation the Death of the King, "Cordelia" and "Kent".
The translator and author Thomas Cooke also gave Tate's version his blessing: in the introduction to his own play "The Triumphs of Love and Honour" (1731), he commented that Lear and Gloucester "are made sensible or their Errors, and are placed in a State of Tranquility and Ease agreeable to their Age and Condition . . . rejoicing in the Felicity of "Edgar" and "Cordelia"." Cooke added that he had "read many Sermons, but remember[ed] no one that contains so fine a Lesson of Morality as this Play."