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.
Fee-fi-fo-fum
The rhyme appears in the pamphlet "Haue with You to Saffron-Walden" (published in 1596) written by Thomas Nashe (who mentions that the rhyme was already old and its origins obscure):
In William Shakespeare's play "King Lear" (c. 1605), the character Edgar exclaims:Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man.The verse in "King Lear" makes use of the archaic word "fie", used to express disapproval. This word is used repeatedly in Shakespeare's works: King Lear shouts, "Fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!", and in "Antony and Cleopatra", Mark Antony's exclaims, "O fie, fie, fie!"