Tate, Nahum

(1652-1715)

   He was an Irish playwright, the son of a Dublin clergyman, who graduated B.A. from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1672. Moving to London in 1677, he changed his name from Teate to Tate and began his literary career. He collaborated with John Dryden (see entry) to complete the second half of Dryden's epic poem Absalom and Achitophel. In his adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear, Tate created a happy ending where Cordelia lives and marries Edgar and the fool is written out completely. The true version was not restored until the 19th century. He also wrote several hymns; the most well-known is the Christmas carol "While Shepherds Watched." On the death of Thomas Shadwell (1692), Tate was appointed poet laureate, then historiographer-royal, in 1702. With Nicholas Brady (see entry) he produced New Version of the Psalms in meter (1696). He was hiding from his creditors in the Mint when he died; he was buried in the neighboring church of St. George's. Some of his other poems: "As Pants the Hart," "Britannia's Prayer for the Queen," "Lord, Who's the Happy Man," "Old England," "Song for the New-Year 1708," "The Speech of Ajax."

   Sources: American Hymns Old and New, Vols. 1-2. Albert Christ-Janer and Charles W. Hughes, eds. Columbia University Press, 1980. Antholog y of Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714. George de F. Lord, ed. Yale University Press, 1975. Christmas Poems. John Hollander and J.D. McClatchy, eds. Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Selected Writings of the Laureate Dunces, Nahum Tate, Laurence Eusden, and Colley Cibber. The Edwin Mellen Press, 1999. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poems of John Dryden. Vol. 2, 1682-1685. Paul Hammond, ed. Longman, 1995. The Poetical Works of Dryden. George R. Noyes, ed. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1950. Treasury of Irish Religious Verse. Patrick Murray, ed. Crossroad, 1986. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).