It is unlikely that even the erudite readers of the Literary Review know much about Nahum Tate (1652–1715), one of our dimmer Poet Laureates in a crowded field. Historians remember Tate for a walk-on part in Pope’s Dunciad, but he does have a better claim to fame – apart, that is, from writing a poem about tea called Panacea. For it was Nahum who had the bright idea of cheering up King Lear by chopping out the difficult bits and allowing Cordelia to survive and marry Edmund, in a version of the play which held the stage for more than a century.

Apr 2007

Categories

Critical Mass

He was Moral, but Was He Great?

But What Was It?

Critical Thinking

Austen’s Onion

War Made Him

Empires of the Mind

Sons of Scotland

A Child Of Nature

Less Is Moore

A Widower Writes

The Man and The Mask

Writer & Co

A Large Corpus

‘These Fragments I Have Shored Against my Ruins’

Remembrance of Paintings Past

Literary Lucubrations

It’s All Relative

Literary Legacies

Age Cannot Wither Us

The Outsider

The Birth of Sredni Vashtar

Out of the Fog

Kierkegaard & Chocolate

Sign Up to our newsletter

@Lit_Review

Last Tweets