Nahum Tate was born in Dublin in 1652, the son of Faithful Teate, an Irish clergyman, who had written a poem on the Trinity entitled Ter Tria. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin with a BA in 1672, and by 1676 he had moved to London and was writing for a living. The following year he had adopted the spelling Tate, which would remain until his death, in 1715, in Southwark, London, England.
Tate published a volume of poems in London in 1677, and became a regular writer for the stage. "Brutus of Alba, or The Enchanted Lovers" (1678), a tragedy dealing with Dido and Aeneas, later adapted to the libretto for Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas (1689?), and The Loyal General (1680), were followed by a series of adaptations from Elizabethan dramas.
In William Shakespeare's Richard II he altered the names of the characters, and changed the text so that every scene, to use his own words, was "full of respect to Majesty and the dignity of courts"; but in spite of these precautions The Sicilian Usurper (1681), as his rewrite was called, was suppressed on the third representation on account of a possible political interpretation.
King Lear (1681) was fitted with a happy ending in a marriage between Cordelia and Edgar; and Coriolanus became The Ingratitude of a Commonwealth (1682). From John Fletcher he adapted The Island Princess (1687); from Chapman and Marston's Eastward Ho he derived The Cuckold's Haven (1685); in 1707 he rewrote John Webster's The White Devil as Injured Love; and Sir Aston Cockayne's Trappolin suppos'd a Prince he imitated in Duke and no Duke (1685).
Tate's name is chiefly connected with these plays and with the famous New Version of the Psalms of David (1696), in which he collaborated with Nicholas Brady. Some items such as "As pants the hart" (Psalm 42) rise above the general level, and are said to be Tate's work.A supplement was licensed in 1703 which included the Christmas carol "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks", one of a number of hymns by Tate.
In 1682 Tate collaborated with John Dryden to complete the second half of his epic poem Absalom and Achitophel.
Tate wrote the libretto for Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas which was given its first known performance in 1689. He also wrote the text for Purcell's Birthday Ode "Come ye Sons of Art" in 1694. Tate also translated Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus, Girolamo Fracastoro's Latin pastoral poem on the subject of the disease of syphilis into English heroic couplets.
His poems were sharply criticized by Alexander Pope in The Dunciad.
Of his numerous poems the most original is Panacea, a poem on Tea (1700). In spite of his consistent Toryism, he succeeded Shadwell as poet laureate in 1692. He died within the precincts of the Mint, Southwark, where he had taken refuge from his creditors, in 1715.
In addition to the well known production by the Royal Shakespeare Company of Nicholas Nickleby in England and New York, directed by Trevor Nunn, in 1981, which included the concluding scene of Tate's version of Romeo and Juliet, with its happy ending, there has been at least one other production of Tate's work in New York.
In 1985, the Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City staged Tate's The History of King Lear in its original form, "happy ending" and all, directed by W. Stuart McDowell at The Shakespeare Center. This included removing the Fool altogether, adding a confidante for Cordelia, named Arante, as well as an "abduction" scene of Cordelia on the heath. The play concluded with multiple happy endings: for Lear and Kent, and Cordelia and Edgar, who presumably wed after the play's conclusion. Musical interludes were sung by cast members during the act breaks, accompanied by a harpsichord in the orchestra pit. (For more information about this, see Riverside Shakespeare Company, and King Lear.)
