SOURCE: Spencer, Hazelton. “Tate's Adaptations.” In Shakespeare Improved: The Restoration Versions in Quarto and on the Stage, pp. 241-73. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927.

In the following excerpt, Spencer presents an analysis of Tate's adaptations of Shakespeare, detailing how his versions of King Lear, Richard II, and Coriolanus differ from the originals.

1. King Lear

For half a century after the death of Sir William D'Avenant, every one of the poets laureate took a hand in improving Shakespeare. … The name of [Nahum Tate] lives in the hymnals. His treatment of Shakespeare's lines is even worse than his doggerel rendering of David's—the pompous substantive, “Tatefication,” has been coined expressly to describe his bungling.¹

Though apparently not the first acted, Tate's Lear was the first written of his adaptations; this is evident from the epistle dedicatory to his Richard II. It was printed in quarto in 1681, the year of its...