All’s well that ends well | 13 September 2018

In Competition No. 3065 you were invited to supply a happy ending for a well-known play, poem or novel.
 
Nahum Tate (the worst poet laureate ‘if he had not succeeded Shadwell’, according to Robert Southey) gave King Lear a cheery ending: Lear regains his throne, Cordelia marries Edgar, and Edgar joyfully declares that ‘truth and virtue shall at last succeed’. Charles Lamb hated it, but Samuel Johnson was a fan and so were the punters, it seems: Tate’s 1681 The History of King Lear is thought to have replaced Shakespeare’s version on the English stage, in whole or in part, for some 150 years. In a generally mediocre entry, Ian Baird, Paul Carpenter and Adrian Fry stood out. But the cash prizes go to the Pollyannas printed below, who take £25 each.

Man hands this mystery on to man,
Which deepens like a coastal shelf:
Where all that’s wrong with you began,
How not to pass it on yourself.