Your latest challenge was 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.
W.J. Webster/’This Be The Verse’ 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.
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