SOURCE: Spencer, Christopher. “A Word for Tate's King Lear.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 3, no. 1 (winter 1963): 241-51.

In the following essay, Spencer claims that Tate's King Lear should not be dismissed as hackery and a mutilation of Shakespeare's version, arguing that the play is coherent, entertaining, and has its own plan.

In 1959 Kenneth Muir remarked of Tate's King Lear, “The beautiful scene in which the King of France receives the despised and rejected Cordelia is cut, presumably because there was no room for a rival to her affections. … [And Tate] provides a scene with Lear and Cordelia in prison, lest we should be unable to imagine it from Lear's words before and after the death of Cordelia.”¹ Whatever the value of this criticism for Shakespeare's play, it is irrelevant to the adaptation. Since Cordelia is pursued and won by Edgar in Tate's version, what happens to France is...