Title: Restored and de-restored: killing off Garrick in John Philip Kemble's King Lear
Source document: Theatralia. 2021, vol. 24, iss. 1, pp. 92-100
Extent
92-100
-
ISSN1803-845X (print)2336-4548 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/TY2021-1-7
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/143816
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
Nahum Tate's Restoration version of King Lear (1680 or 1681) managed to replace Shakespeare's original on English stages for more than a century and a half. While the efforts of David Garrick and George Colman to reinstate Shakespeare's plot and language in English theatres in the latter half of the eighteenth century have been acknowledged, little has been said in this respect about the late eighteenth-century actor and theatre manager John Philip Kemble and his version of the play that premiered in 1792. The present article will try to propose the possible motivation of Kemble's step to discard Garrick's popular alteration and will also argue that the decision to erase Garrick's restorations and recur essentially to Tate's outmoded version of the play at the end of the eighteenth century was probably one of the factors that helped to restore Shakespeare's original in English theatres when King Lear was revived in the 1820s after a decade-long hiatus.
References
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[22] TATE, N[ahum]. 1756. The History of King Lear. London: printed for C. Hitch and L. Hawes etc., 1756. British Library, General Reference Collection C.119.dd.22.
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[2] BAKER, Hershel. 1942. John Philip Kemble: The Actor in His Theatre. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942.
[3] BOADEN, James. 1825. Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble. vol. I. London: printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1825.
[4] BOADEN, James. 1831. Memoirs of Mrs. Siddons Interspersed with Anecdotes of Authors and Actors. 2nd ed., vol. II. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831.
[5] BURNIM, Kalman A. 1961. David Garrick, Director. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1961.
[6] [COLMAN, George]. 1768. The History of King Lear. London: printed for R. Baldwin and T. Becket, 1768.
[7] CUNNINGHAM, Vanessa. 2008. Shakespeare and Garrick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
[8] DOBSON, Michael. 1992. The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation and Authorship, 1660–1769. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
[9] [GARRICK, David]. 1773. King Lear, A Tragedy, by Shakespeare. London: John Bell, 1773.
[10] GARRICK, David. 1786. King Lear, A Tragedy: Altered from Shakespeare. London: printed for C. Bathurst etc., 1786.
[11] HARRIS, Arthur John. Garrick, Colman, and King Lear: A Reconsideration. Shakespeare Quarterly 22 (1971): 1: 57–66. | DOI 10.2307/2868764
[12] HUNT, Leigh. 2003 [1808]. Theatrical Examiner, No. 18. The Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt, vol. I: Periodical Essays, 1805–14. Greg KUCICH and Jeffrey N. COX (eds.). London: Pickering and Chatto, 2003: 56–60.
[13] KEMBLE, J[ohn] P[hilip]. 1808. Shakespeare's King Lear (from Nahum Tate's Alterations). London: printed for the Theatre [Royal in Covent Garden], 1808.
[14] MARSDEN, Jean I. 1995. The Re-Imagined Text: Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1995.
[15] MULLIN, Emily. 2010. Macready's Triumph: The Restoration of King Lear to the British Stage. Penn History Review 18 (2010): 1: 17–35.
[16] ODELL, George C. D. 1920a. Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving. vol. I. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920.
[17] ODELL, George C. D. 1920b. Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving. vol. II. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920.
[18] PEDICORD, Harry William and Frederick Louis BERGMANN (eds.). 1981. The Plays of David Garrick, vol. III: Garrick's Adaptations of Shakespeare, 1744–1756. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981.
[19] SCOTT, Walter. 1826. Life of John Philip Kemble. Quarterly Review 34 (1826): 196–248.
[20] SHATTUCK, Charles H. 1974. General Introduction. In id. John Philip Kemble Promptbooks. vol. I. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the Folger Shakespeare Library, 1974: ix–xxi.
[21] TATE, N[ahum]. 1681. The History of King Lear. London: printed for E. Flesher, 1681.
[22] TATE, N[ahum]. 1756. The History of King Lear. London: printed for C. Hitch and L. Hawes etc., 1756. British Library, General Reference Collection C.119.dd.22.
[23] WOO, Celestine. 2008. Romantic Actors and Bardolatry: Performing Shakespeare from Garrick to Kean. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.