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Nahum Tate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nahum Tate (1652 – 1715) was an Irish Protestant poet, hymnist and lyricist, who became Poet Laureate in 1692.
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Nahum Tate was born in Dublin in 1652, the son of Faithful Teate, an Irish clergyman[1], who had written a quaint 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.[2]
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, (music by Henry Purcell), and The Loyal General (1680), were followed by a series of adaptations from Elizabethan dramas.[3]
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.[4]
King Lear[5] (1687) 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 White Devil; and Sir Aston Cockayne's Trappolin suppos'd a Prince he imitated in Duke and no Duke (1685).[6]
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. A supplement was licensed in 1703. Some of these hymns, notably "While Shepherds watched", and "As pants the hart,, rise above the general level, and are said to be Tate's work. [7]
Tate wrote the words to a number of hymns, of which the most famous is the Christmas carol "Song of the Angels at the Nativity of our Blessed Saviour", more famously known by its opening line "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks". Tate wrote the libretto for Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas in 1689. He also wrote the text for Purcell's Ode "Come ye Sons of Art" in 1694. In 1682 Tate collaborated with John Dryden to complete the second half of his epic poem Absalom and Achitophel.[8]
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.
Tate was named as poet laureate in 1692. 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.[9]
| Preceded by Thomas Shadwell |
British Poet Laureate 1692–1715 |
Succeeded by Nicholas Rowe |
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Whilst Shepherds watch'd their flocks by night, |
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- Selected Writings of the Laureate Dunces, Nahum Tate (Laureate 1692-1715), Laurence Eusden (1718-1730), and Colley Cibber (1730-1757) (Studies in British Literature, V. 40): Peter Heaney, editor.
