Nahum Tate

Nahum Tate was an Irish-born poet who became Poet Laureate in 1692, remembered chiefly for what he did to other people's work. His adaptation of King Lear gave the play a happy ending, with Cordelia surviving to marry Edgar, and held the English stage in place of Shakespeare's for a century and a half. With Nicholas Brady he produced the metrical psalter that gave English hymnody "While shepherds watched their flocks by night". His own tragedy Brutus of Alba, first called Dido and Aeneas, he rebuilt as the libretto for Purcell. He died in a debtors' refuge in Southwark.