Some twenty years after the Restoration, Nahum Tate
altered _King Lear_ for the stage, giving it a happy ending, and putting
Edgar in the place of the King of France as Cordelia's lover. From that
time Shakespeare's tragedy in its original form was never seen on the
stage for a century and a half. Betterton acted Tate's version; Garrick
acted it and Dr. Johnson approved it. Kemble acted it, Kean acted it. In
1823 Kean, 'stimulated by Hazlitt's remonstrances and Charles Lamb's
essays,' restored the original tragic ending. At last, in 1838, Macready
returned to Shakespeare's text throughout.
What is the meaning of these opposite sets of facts? Are the lovers of
Shakespeare wholly in the right; and is the general reader and
play-goer, were even Tate and Dr. Johnson, altogether in the wrong? I
venture to doubt it. When I read _King Lear_ two impressions are left on
my mind, which seem to answer roughly to the two sets of facts. _King
Lear_ seems to me Shakespeare's greatest achievement, but it seems to me
_not_ his best play. And I find that I tend to consider it from two
rather different points of view. When I regard it strictly as a drama,
it appears to me, though in certain parts overwhelming, decidedly
inferior as a whole to _Hamlet_, _Othello_ and _Macbeth_.
Pages:
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349