The History of King Lear: Acted at the Duke's Theatre. Reviv'd with Alterations. By N. Tate. (1681)

Summary: This is a 1681 quarto version of William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear: Acted at the Duke's Theatre, reviv'd with alterations--that is, "adapted" for the Restoration stage, by Nahum Tate (1652-1715). Tate's adaptation of King Lear to the taste of his own era proved both successful and long-lived. In his Lear, neither the Fool nor the King of France appears as a character, Cordelia and Edgar are romantically linked, and Lear wins back his kingdom as part of the play's happy ending. Scholars have called his version--which also rewrites a great deal of the play's poetry--a "crime." Despite being itself the victim of tampering (as, for instance, by George Colman the Elder in 1768), it nonetheless held the stage for more than one hundred and fifty years, from 1681 until 1838, when William Charles Macready performed the "original" version.

Physical description: 1 volume:

Held by: Horace Howard Furness Memorial [Shakespeare] Library, Department of Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania [call number: Furness EC.Sh155.F681t c.2 ]

Facsimile note: The pages of the text appear at approximately one and a half times the size of the original. Their exact size will vary with monitors. They have been adjusted for clarity and visibility. No other alterations or enhancements have been made. These adjustments may occasionally result in color and brightness variations which exaggerate those of the original.

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Prologue
• The Persons

Links below move to the beginning of each indicated scene

Act & Scene Index
Act	Scenes
One	One
Two	Gloster's House
Three	A Desert Heath	Gloster's Palace	The Field Scene	The Palace
Four	A Grotto	The Field Scene	Gonerill's Palace	Field Scene	A Chamber
Five	A Camp	A Valley near the Camp	A Prison

• Epilogue