These days Shakespeare is firmly established as one of the cornerstones of our theatrical culture, but it wasn't always that way. During his lifetimes, William Shakespeare was just another talented playwright working alongside writers like Marlowe, Jonson and Webster, and much of his work fell out of favour during the Restoration and Eighteen Century, when it was considered "crude" and "unrefined". It wasn't until the Romantic movement of the Nineteenth Century that "bardolatry" took hold, and full-scale worship of the Swan of Avon as the most transcendent genius of his age became common practice.
As a consequence, liberties were often taken with Restoration Shakespeare which would be unimaginable now. Modern directors might cut some speeches or eliminate minor characters - after all, without such editing, plays like Hamlet can last for up to six hours - but Shakespeare's words themselves are considered pretty sacrosanct. This was not the case during the Restoration (1660s-1680s), when enthusiastic writers such as Nahum Tate and William Davenant set out to "improve" on Shakespeare's works, often completely rewriting them in the process. The art of Shakespeare adaptation was brutally irreverent in the Restoration.
The most notorious example of a Shakespeare rewrite was Nahum Tate's version of King Lear (The History of King Lear, 1681). Tate read over the brooding, tragic masterpiece, and decided that it could really do with a happy ending to lighten things up. He rearranged the opening scenes so that Gloucester's son Edgar falls in love with Lear's daughter Cordelia. The last scene is also drastically rewritten; neither Lear nor Cordelia die, and the young lovers marry, providing the hope of an heir to carry on the royal line. These changes brough Shakespeare's play more in line with Tate's ideals of tragedy - it is a less dark, uncompromising piece with a more uplifting ending. However, this is achieved at the cost of much of Shakespeare's poetic power and many of Tate's new lines seem rather limp compared to the originals, for example:
Could there yet be addition to their guilt?/ What will not they which wrong a father do?
or
Speak, for me thought I heard/ The charming voice of a descending god.
Other rewrites were motivated less by artistic ideals than theatrical spectacle. Whilst Shakespeare's original productions had used boys for female parts, King Charles II ordered in 1661 that women should be allowed onto the stage for the first time. Impressarios rushed to cash in on this theatrical novelty, and find plays that would show off their new actresses to best advantage. When they couldn't find existing female roles, they frequently wrote new ones, thus in Dryden and Davenant's version of The Tempest (1667, called The Enchanted Island), Caliban and Miranda both have sisters for no obvious reason, and whole scenes are spent in seventeenth century "girl talk". Stage technology had also advanced by the Restoration, allowing Davenant to produce an innovative Macbeth (1667) which sent the witches flying across the stage during a song and dance interlude. Not all the audience were impressed, however, one noting scornfully that attention was diverted by "new and costly MACHINES."
These alterations and rewrites seem almost sacrilegious to modern taste, but they do remind us that performing Shakespeare is about putting on a good show - an idea which some worthy producers of the great Bard might do well to keep in mind...
Sources: The History of King Lear, Nahum Tate (1681); A Companion to Restoration Drama ed. Susan J. Owen (2001); The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre, ed. Deborah Payne Fisk (2000)
