Shakespeare’s plays became increasingly popular during the 18th century but were reworked to suit the tastes of the day. His style was still felt to be too erratic,
and poets such as Alexander Pope carefully tidied up any uneven verse lines. Shakespeare’s ending to King Lear was felt to be too distressing and Nahum Tate’s revised version (where Cordelia and the King survive)
was preferred to the original.
David Garrick rewrote the end of Romeo and Juliet so that the lovers speak to each other before dying in the tomb, and turned The Taming
of the Shrew into a farce. However, Garrick was also responsible for restoring much of Shakespeare’s original text to other plays.
The 18th century saw the development of Shakespeare as a national symbol. The Stratford Jubilee
of 1769, organised by Garrick, celebrated two hundred years since Shakespeare’s birth. A wooden octagonal playhouse was constructed beside the river at Stratford-upon-Avon but no work by Shakespeare was performed.
A planned procession of characters from Shakespeare’s plays was postponed due to terrible weather and eventually re-enacted on the stage at Drury Lane in London
where it proved an enormous hit.
Visit the Shakespeare in Performance Timeline
Introduction
