Nahum Tate: Poet Laureate, Shakespearean Vandal
“King Lear 2.0” with a happy ending upstaged Shakespeare’s original for decades
O saccharine-tongued Romance with obscene snoot!
Fair plumed vermin king of dramaturgic stray!
Heave diarrhetic pandering this day,
Shut up! Swine swill sacrileges: reboot!
Adieu! for once again the fierce jackboot,
Of commercialized exploitation for pissant pay
Must I burn, and turn instead back to that way,
The original Shakespeare surpasses knockoff fruit.
Poet Laureate? Meh, vandal I declare
To turn a tragedy into a comedy, to desecrate the theme,
Sooty Georgians choked and gasped through torchlit air
A goldfish blinded in a hurricane’s nothing.
But if what should endure be hidden by mediocrity
Give me new Icarus wings. I’ll skydive through hypocrisy.
-Tom Tordillo, 2022
My poem is an homage to John Keats, “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again.”
Keats was one of many critics/poets/fans who defended Shakespeare from those who would desecrate his work: scoundrels like Nahum Tate.
Nahum Tate converted “King Lear” into a comedy. His version was preferred to Shakespeare’s ‘depressing original’ for 150 years.
A poet who crafted lyrics that became a hymn like this might be worth forgiving…but no. The 3rd poet laureate of England was a knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats. Whatever that means.
That said, Nahum Tate did craft a hilarious extended poem about the myriad benefits of drinking tea.
You Statesmen, who in storms of Publick Helm
Would guide with skill, and save a sinking realm,
TEA, your Minerva, shall suggest such sense
Such safe and sudden turns of thought dispense,
That you, likeher Ulysses, may advise
And fart defigns that fhall the world furprife.
Which might make one wonder about the history of tea parties…
